Of the two ways to create a calorie deficit, burning the fat is far superior to starving it. You see, cutting calories too much causes weight loss at first, but it also causes muscle loss and it eventually leads to a decrease in metabolism, so the weight loss stops. This is very common on conventional diets, right? You lose weight in the beginning, but then you hit a plateau that you just can’t break through. Cutting calories even more at this point only digs you even into a deeper "metabolic hole."

Eating more of the right foods (up to a certain point) actually increases your metabolic "heat" like putting wood on a fire. Food is energy; food is fuel, and it produces (metabolic) heat.

Exercise burns calories and creates a calorie deficit, but the real advantage of exercise over diet is that exercise increases your metabolism, dieting slows it down. Exercise also has major health benefits, while starvation can only create health problems.

So if you eat more (healthy foods) and exercise more, you get a double increase in metabolism. If you eat less and exercise less you get a double decrease in metabolism. That makes complete sense doesn’t it?

The IDEAL exercise program for fat loss has a combination of cardiovascular (aerobic) training and strength training. But ultimately, you’re not likely to stick with exercise long term unless you choose activities you enjoy – so pick something you enjoy, even if it doesn’t follow the guidelines of "traditional" fat loss programs. It’s better to do something than nothing, and all exercise counts.

Some people may have orthopedic problems which limit the type of exercise they can do. But nearly everyone can walk. So if you can walk, then walk. And almost everyone can do some type of strength training. Instead of focusing on what you can’t do or what you don’t like to do, direct your attention to what you CAN do and what you would like to do.

Maybe you don’t like being couped up inside all the time. Maybe you’d prefer hiking or jogging outside. Or maybe boxing or martial arts sounds cool to you. Maybe you like basketball or tennis. Maybe you’d enjoy classes, or yoga or pilates. Your options are nearly unlimited, but you have to do something or your body will begin to deteriorate.

As you increase your lean muscle mass, you’ll also get a permanent increase in your resting metabolic rate. Muscle is what drives your metabolism, keeps you young and makes you look more physically attractive. Others will notice how good you look, and you’ll feel better about yourself too. Yes, you may lose weight from diet alone, but you’re likely to end up a "skinny fat person" with a slow metabolism and very little lean body mass (not to mention, you’ll probably gain back all the fat)

Last, but not least, be careful what you say to yourself over and over because that tends to program your subconscious mind and create your self image. If you’ve been repeating to yourself for years, "I’m not big on exercise" or "I’m not an exercise person", that eventually becomes a part of your identity. You always tend to behave in alignment with your identity in order to stay "true to yourself."

Maybe when you look in the mirror after just a few weeks and see your body start to change you’ll begin to like enjoy exercise a LOT. It can get addictive, you know. The endorphins that are released when you exercise are like opiates. Ever hear of "runners HIGH?" Ever hear of an "exercise addict?" What would YOU rather be hooked on? Forget about popping pills, Your body is the most exquisite pharmacy on the planet. Exercise is a better fat burner, health creator, energy producer and anti-depressant than any man-made drug will EVER be. Exercise can be fun and FEEL GOOD too.

Human beings were meant to move. Bodies don’t lose their function by being used too much and "wearing out", they lose their function by not being used enough and "rusting out." So if the positive benefits of exercise don’t motivate you enough, then just picture yourself 10, 20 years from now and imagine what will happen to you if you DON’T start exercising today.

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I hope this is beneficial to you reaching your goals!

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There is no site specific way of losing fat… the old myth about working your abs to burn belly fat isn’t true. To get rid of love handles, you need to lose overall fat. That happens with exercise and watching your diet. More on that below.

The most effective way to lose fat is aerobic exercise in the "moderate" fat-burning range, ideally first thing in the morning before you eat. When you wake your body is ready to burn fat and your levels of growth hormone are highest at that time. Later in the day it can take up to 30 minutes just to put your body into a fat-burning mode.

Another overlooked way to burn fat is by lifting weights. Skeletal muscle has very high caloric needs… almost twice that of adipose (fat) tissue. Put on a little muscle and you will burn calories all day even at rest. Be aware that skeletal muscle weighs more, so with this approach you may see your weight increasing while your body fat is melting away. Not realizing this often stresses folks who think they should be losing weight as a measure of fitness. Forget the scale, look in the mirror and you will be happy.

To lose a pound of fat, you need to eliminate about 3500 calories. You can do this by burning more with exercise or by modifying your diet to reduce intake. If you do a Google search on say, "swimming calories" you will quickly find a website with tables of calories burned for a given exercise. You can use such lists to estimate how many calories you are burning up with your routine.

For diet, keep a diary for a couple of weeks counting calories, grams of protein, and grams of fat intake. It is easy with online sources of nutritional information (type the name of the food and calories into the Google search engine) and packaging labels. That will let you quickly figure out where the fat is coming from in your diet.

Fat gives you 9 calories per gram. So take the number of grams of fat, multiply by 9, then calculate what percentage the fat calories are of your total daily calories. Restricting the calories from fat to about 20% of your total intake is ideal for a maintenance diet… that isn’t overly restrictive. Of note, you need some fat in your diet. For instance, the body uses fat to produce hormones. Once you have a picture of how to modify your diet, you can drop the diary and just go back to it occasionally if you are wanting to tweek things further.

There is a subset of questions that goes further and asks about "How to get a six-pack?" The answer is the same. Six-packs are 20% abdominal exercise and 80% diet. There is one caveat… abdominal muscles will form in the position that you work them, so be certain to pull them tightly toward your spine while doing crunches, etc. Also, during most lifting, the "core is active" which means that you should be stabilizing with contracted abs then too. Fail to do this and the abs will form, but bulging outward and the result is not attractive.

If you are trying to build muscle as a way to lose fat, then you may need to increase total calories and specifically your protein intake. I target about 0.8 g of protein per pound of body weight each day when actively building. That is far more protein than most people need in their diets.

Aloha
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I believe it is a matter of using the muscles that are there to tone them up.

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