Secret Fat Loss Tips For Dad’s Hey it’s Brad here and just like you I’m a Dad, a super proud one of course! I can appreciate the struggles and frustrations of getting in shape, I ballooned out during Pregnancy (in support of course) and struggled for the first year of our daughters life to get my shit together with my health and fitness.
I was training, but not with the intensity I used to.
I was also only able to produce a fraction of the motivation I once had to train.
And between running multiple businesses, sleepless nights and all the other usual stuff I began craving bad foods, and my diet slipped a little.
Then I found the solution.
I have created a super simple strategy to ensure I’m getting the results physically and mentally, and training super effectively without using up hours of family time or time I could be working on the business.
And I want to share them with you today.
Here’s my top 6 tips for Dads to get their S*** together.
1. Reduce your training sessions - Maximum 45min. However to ensure this time is effective, remove distractions, don’t train in the house while everyone is home, go to the park, or put some headphones in, you need to be focused.
2. Set numbers rather than repetitive sets - I’ve found that this tip alone has lifted my motivation to train. Rather than doing for example 3 x 10 sets of Bench press I will set a number like 100 and try to reach that in as quick a time as possible (while keeping good form of course). Or 50 Chin ups within a goal time. This helps me be effective and ensure’s I’m not slacking off as I’m trying to improve my weights or times each week.
3. Increase volume each and every week - Pretty simple. Every week improve your time, increase your weight or do more sets. Your body will be forced to adapt and improve.
4. Intermittent fast - Disclaimer, I’m not a doctor nor am I a nutritionist. So before you jump into this one be sure to seek advice as to whether it’s right for you. With that said, after doing plenty of research on this topic and trailing it myself, it’s been shown to be beneficial for guys in particular, regulating hormone levels, promoting Human Growth Hormone (HGH) and testosterone levels, which is great for fat loss and muscle building. I suggest just reducing your eating window in the day to 8 hours. Ensure that you get all your caloric needs within these 8 hours from great nutritious food sources.
5. Work on yourself - This is a huge component and something that I devote a lot of time to. Many guys however seem to shrug this off or avoid it. But working on yourself is key, as the health of your ‘inner world’ hugely influences the health of your outer world (health meaning: physical, relationships, wealth, career and more).
Start by reading books on personal development, subscribe to podcasts, email lists and video blogs on this topic. Mediate for 10,15 or 20minutes a day. - This doesn’t have to be the stereotype mediation of sitting there legs crossed humming away with your finger and thumb together this can be anything that takes your 100% focus and causes you to switch off to that usual Mind Chatter.
For me building things, playing footy, swimming in the ocean with my girls or listening to a self - guided meditation does this.
6. Lastly - Recover and de-stress - kind of ties in with the last point. However not to be forgotten. So many guys out there are busting their backs training hard and eating well to not yield any results, because what’s happening is their bodies aren’t recovering, so they can’t build learn muscle and continue to store fat. Being highly stressed from work, finances, too much training, lack of sleep, stimulants like coffee and pre workouts and poor nutrition all increase your levels of cortisol, and the more often cortisol is produced in your body the more difficult it is for your body to burn fat.
And if you’re not getting enough sleep your body will struggle to execute it’s recovery process and won’t secrete as much HGH or any of the other repairing properties in your body.
Meaning you will likely begin to even eat into your lean muscle, and remember the more lean muscle you have the more calories your body will burn to maintain it, so if you’re losing muscle your body will begin to use less calories in a day (decreasing your metabolism) = More likely to store fat. Not to mention the psychological effects of being highly stressed, but I’ll leave that for another post.
I hope these tips have been helpful, motivating, and insightful or at very least thought provoking.
