What is the best method to burn fat

One of the most common promises on the Internet is the foolproof method to burn fat. There are so many that, in the end, it is expected that you end up confused with what you have or do not have to do because these methods that you can find on the Internet can promise the same thing but say just the opposite.

Fat burning process

You will find recommendations such as eating 7 times a day in small portions, consuming the least amount of fat possible, and even taking pills and supplements to stimulate burning fat.

The problem with all these recommendations is that they don’t attack the problem:

👉 Your body is not effective at using its fat stores.

The solution is simple:

👉 You need a strategy for your body to use its fat.

Therefore, in this article, I want to introduce you to the unification of the different strategies and justify them scientifically.

And after reading this article, you will have in your hands the best method to burn fat.

What should you know before trying to burn fat?

First, minor in biology will be critical to understanding a complex human body process.

Therefore, we will focus on the two primary energy substrates of the human body:

Glucose and fat

In modern times, where we have constant access to food. Do you even remember the last time you went 24 hours without eating? The conditions are created, so the body only uses glucose as its primary fuel.

As we already told you in our ketogenic diet article, the problem with glucose is that you must use all the energy it provides because our stores are limited, and the surplus is transformed into fat.

When this happens, if we use glucose for energy production, we do not burn our reserves, and, added to this, the fat we eat is stored.

And not only that, but when your body runs out of energy from glucose and it’s time to use up your fat stores, it’s time to eat again, and you give your body more glucose.

👉 I mean, you don’t give your body a chance to burn fat.

This problem is what I encounter every day with my patients.

The 4 conditions of the best method to burn fat

• And how do we go about using those reserves, then? 
• How will we burn fat?

The answer is that different conditions provide the perfect setting for the body to use fat for fuel.

Presence of oxygen

There is an oven in the body to burn fat, and it is the only one that can do so. This furnace is a cellular organelle called a mitochondrion.

The important thing here is that these ovens require oxygen to function.

👉 That is, fat burning occurs aerobically.

Indeed this word sounds familiar to you: aerobic.

This is because aerobic exercise refers to a physical activity requiring a more significant amount of oxygen. The same happens with the use of energy in the body. It is carried out mainly in oxygen because the power obtained is quantitatively much higher than doing it without oxygen.

A fat molecule produces between 140 and 154 ATP of energy, while the point obtained anaerobically by glucose is only 2 ATP and aerobically about 32 ATP.

The difference is that the burning of fat, as explained in this article, is one that produces minor residue and preserves our antioxidant defenses.

So, we know that when we are at rest or a low-intensity training (such as strength training), it is the window through which our body can use fat.

However, as we increase the training intensity, your heart begins to pump faster to carry oxygen to the cells for energy. It will transition towards the use of glucose aerobically. And if the intensity increases more, this process is not enough. It begins to produce energy in an anaerobic way, a less efficient process but necessary not to run out of energy until your glycogen reserves are depleted.

👉 Bottom Line: You will need oxygen to burn fat.

Low carbohydrate metabolic context

The body’s consumption of carbohydrates reduces them to a more straightforward unit: glucose.

When the body’s sensors sense that blood glucose levels are rising, it produces insulin hormone.

This hormone fulfills many bodily functions, but the ones that interest us the most are:

Facilitate the entry of glucose into specific body tissues

Block the mobilization and combustion of fat.

When the body identifies the entry of glucose, it prefers to burn this and store fat. This is because we have a minimum glucose storage capacity, while that of fat is almost infinite.

This is why people who follow a ketogenic diet in which carbohydrates are reduced tend to stimulate their mechanisms to use fat very effectively. If you want to know more about this diet, you can access this free course to learn the most important things about the ketogenic diet.

👉 Bottom Line: You need a few carbohydrates to burn fat.

Increased basal metabolism

Basal metabolism is the minimum energy your cells need to maintain their essential functions. That is, how much energy it takes for your body to stay alive and keep your body in good condition at rest.

If you increase your basal metabolism, even sitting on the couch, your body will require more energy to survive. That energy will generally be used to oxidize fats.

There are different ways to stimulate the acceleration of metabolism. The best known are high-intensity exercises and body temperature regulation.

Yes, I have told you that you will burn glucose anaerobically and not fat with high intensity. However, once your body has been exposed to high intensity, it requires time to recover at a chemical level despite completing the activity. To recover from the effort produced and having depleted your glucose reserves. This allows the body to produce energy anaerobically. Your body will use its fat stores.

This is known as the afterburn effect or EPOC, and we have an article that explains it in detail.

This is one of the strategies to increase your basal metabolism temporarily. You can find others in our guide to speed up your metabolism.

👉 Conclusion: To use your fat reserves, you must increase your basal metabolism

Know the aerobic threshold

In the first point, we already saw that your body tends to use fat for energy under a certain amount of intensity in physical activity.

But if you cross that intensity, your body will stop using fat as its primary fuel. It is what we experts know as zone 2 of activity.

In zone 2, the mitochondria generate the maximum production of ATP (unit of energy used by cells) exclusively aerobically, and possibly this is when your body burns fatter.

The most practical way to stay in this zone is to perform your exercises at an intensity where you don’t feel short of breath.

👉 Conclusion: On aerobic training days, when you do your exercises, remember to control the intensity, not to feel agitated, and not cross the aerobic threshold.

The best method to burn fat

Once these 4 factors are explained, it is much easier to understand the protocol that combines all these physiological mechanisms to maximize fat burning.

Mainly because in each of the factors, I have already given you some clues of actions that you are going to apply to stimulate the mechanisms that your body needs to burn fat, and we will also divide them into 4 points:

Improves oxygen transport

For this, we will use two essential tools:

High-intensity training

The body is a brilliant machine. When you have a hard time doing something, you learn very quickly to optimize your resources so that it is much easier to do it the next time.

In high-intensity training, which is demanding, the body obtains the most energy aerobically. Once the effort is over, the body interprets that it needs to improve oxygen transport. So, the next time you receive a similar stimulus, you can respond better and maintain aerobic metabolism.

Wim Hof’s ​​method of breaths

This type of respiratory methodology increases the oxygen-carrying capacity of red blood cells.

This method to burn fat is super effective, and the team at Mammoth Hunters has tried it many times with incredible results.

Metabolic context

Given the excess carbohydrates in your regular diet, your body may understand that it should never use its reserves.

This starts with a simple idea. Your body does not want to spend its savings if it is not necessary. If you give it fuel constantly in the form of glucose and its savings are in fat, possibly when it needs energy, it asks you to provide it with more glucose, and thus its reserves remain untouchable.

This method helped us survive as a species during the seasons of food scarcity because, in bad times, we could draw reserves so as not to die. However, in modern times you are more likely to die from overeating than from not eating.

There are two ways to activate these survival systems simulating a situation of scarcity.

👉 Eating nothing (known as intermittent fasting)

👉 the other, which is more effective and is not necessary to stop eating or starve, is known as the ketogenic diet.

This eating protocol stimulates your body to enter ketosis, a metabolic state in which your body uses fat as its primary fuel before reducing carbohydrates to a maximum of 30 grams per day.

In this context, the lack of carbohydrates forces your body to turn on the fat-burning furnaces. It has had off so long that your mechanisms to burn fat are no longer atrophied and forgotten in the trunk to become a significant energy production system.

There is a slight drawback here. The ketogenic diet may seem challenging to understand. Many people do not get into ketosis because they do not follow a proper initiation protocol.

Increased basal metabolism

To achieve a higher basal metabolism, two strategies will be beneficial:

HIIT (High-Intensity Interval Training)

As I explained before, once you finish a high-intensity exercise. Despite having recovered your breath, your body needs time to recover on a chemical level:

• Muscles must replenish their phosphocreatine stores
• Muscles need to return to their PH and temperature levels
• Adequate hydration and oxygenation are necessary
• And for all of this, you require energy. Your body continues to burn more calories and use more oxygen than usual for a time after training.

Baths with cold water

Well, it has the most interesting scientific justification.

Humans must maintain a stable temperature all the time. A prolonged change in body temperature could harm the body (such as fever, for example).

However, when we suddenly receive a cold stimulus, the body must respond by generating rapid heat, that is, by burning calories, to stabilize body temperature.

This is a simple but highly effective strategy to increase basal caloric expenditure.

Physical activity in zone 2

One of the most critical aspects.

High-intensity exercise is one of the most effective methods to burn fat. It allows for post-workout fat burning and increases your metabolism.

But if you want to burn fat simultaneously as you train, maintaining the aerobic threshold in zone 2 puts you all the time of activity in the fat max state, that is, when you will be burning the fattest.

The practical way to get into zone 2 without calculating is to train hard enough, so you don’t get short of breath.

However, there is a classic method to calculate it by following this formula:

👉 Maximum heart rate = 180 – Your age

If you have a device to track your heart rate, you must stay in a lower range than the result of the formula if you are not an athlete.

In being an athlete, this formula can leave you at an intensity that is too low for your level because you have a better administration of oxygen during the activity.

So I recommend doing an activity at an intensity where you can still speak but feel that you can no longer continue saying if you increase the power a little.

Bottom Line

This is the list of activities that I recommend for this week so that you can see results in the shortest time possible thanks to this method to burn fat:

• Follow the ketogenic diet and intermittent fasting
• Finish all your showers with cold water
• Do 2-3 high-intensity sessions per week
• Perform 2-3 aerobic training sessions in your zone 2
• Do 2-3 sessions of Wim Hof ​​breaths a week.

👉 Try it, and after doing these five activities, you will have results very soon.