Bye Bye, Body Fat! Conan’s Top Five SIMPLE and EFFECTIVE Fat Loss Methods
Welcome back, Partisans! I figured I’d get back into the health and fitness posting action with a fat loss “cheat sheet” that summarizes what I’ve found to be the five most effective fat loss methods available in my nearly 27 years in the health and fitness world. This will be a relatively short post (for me, at least LOL), but much of what I’ll get into here has been covered in vast detail in previous knowledge series that I’ve posted on American Partisan, so I’ll be linking to these previous posts of mine throughout this post, in case Partisan readers want a deeper dive into background/reference.
The most important thing to remember here is that losing body fat is SIMPLE!!! Complex diet and fat loss fads put out by the so-called “fitness industry” come and go (and trust me… I’ve seen a damn lot in my time), but the methods I’m about to detail below are timeless and don’t require any special purchases or anything exotic. Fake or added complexity of diets/eating lifestyles exists to disempower users and make them dependent on “specialized” products or processes. Well, I’m here to say: fuck all that nonsense! Stick to the simple and effective methods detailed below. All Partisans need to provide is the serious discipline that any sustained undertaking like fat loss requires in order to be successful.
That all being said, let’s do this!
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Conan’s Top Five SIMPLE and EFFECTIVE Fat Loss Methods, #1: Cut Fast-Burning Carbs!
My list of Top 5 Fat Loss Methods is not in any particular order, but I figured I’d place what I consider to be the most powerful method first: CUT CARBS! Just to be 100% clear, “fast-burning carbs (carbohydrates)” specifically refers to fast-burning sugars (click here to learn more about the types and pitfalls of fast-burning sugars), which is the type of carbohydrate prevalent in most Americans’ diets. Fast-burning carbs are present in all the foods we pretty much love: bread; grains/derivatives of all kinds; pasta; cereal; potatoes; corn/corn-based products; snack foods; candy; soda; etc.
The short of it all is that fast-burning carbs are very high in energy and require immediate use by the body due to their fast-burning nature. Ignoring for a moment the disease-promoting damage of eating fast-burning carbs (think: diabetes), most people don’t need anywhere near the amount of immediate energy provided by these foods; the body utilizes any energy it needs (usually, not much), and then shunts the rest of the energy into storage on the body itself, which we know as “love handles” and “big gut”. And, due to its normal metabolic processes (explained in detail here), the body actually stores fast-burning sugar as body fat more readily than it stores fat itself, weird as that may sound!
Again, cutting fast-burning carbs is, hands down, the absolutely most powerful thing anyone can do to cut fat, period. If Partisans seeking to lose fat did nothing but cut carbs, that would do a damn lot by itself! Cutting fast-burning carbs should be done via start-up willpower to make good food selections, and then followed up with effective substitutions and “hacking” the biochemistry behind cravings, as detailed below:
- Willpower – willpower only (as in, simply not eating stuff you want or like; discussed here) – is generally unsustainable and shouldn’t be exclusively relied upon. Still, a person serious about making lifestyle changes does need sufficient start-up willpower (a type of discipline) to make good eating choices when they’re hungry. My American Partisan Nutritional Empowerment Guide details the way forward on good eating choices (in the form of substitutions and “biochemical hacks”) as a sustainable follow-up to tapping into willpower.
- Effective Substitutions – this goes back to making good choices: replace low-quality, fast-burning carbs with either high-quality protein, healthy fats, or both, to satisfy your hunger. Once you’re done eating, your hunger-satisfied self won’t give a damn where the satisfaction came from! Another very effective substitution is to use liquid nutrition instead of solid foods (especially protein smoothies – recipe suggestion here).
- Hacking into and Disabling the Brain’s Craving Biochemistry – This powerful way of reducing that most specific type of hunger, the craving, is another important way of losing fat which works by biochemically blunting the almost irrational drive to eat bad foods, usually sugar- or fat-based, and which I address and provide strategies for here.
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Conan’s Top Five SIMPLE and EFFECTIVE Fat Loss Methods, #2: Skip Breakfast Altogether!
Covered at length in a previous post, I personally take the nearly heretical position of advising people to simply NOT eat breakfast… at all! That’s right. Without getting into too much detail, eating breakfast – typically, a calorie-filled slop fest for most people – is comp