Many fitness experts and enthusiasts promote slow and steady methods for muscle gain and fat loss. While this approach is certainly the best way of achieving and sustaining long-term health and physique benefits it is not always practical.
This is because, for many athletes or recreational exercisers, their deadline for reaching their goals is too short to employ a long-term approach. Whether it is making weight for an approaching competition or an upcoming holiday the timeframe need to lose fat is usually short.
For this reason, a number of methods exist and have been proven in research to encourage rapid fat loss while preserving muscle mass. However, on notable consideration is that, for the vast majority of these methods, hunger is present throughout their use.
With that considered, these six methods are explained below.
1. Use Intermittent Fasting
Intermittent Fasting, where you restrict food intake to only 8-10 hours a day and fast for 14-16 hours a day, has been shown to be an effective method for preserving muscle mass while dropping fat rapidly. For those looking to lose fat fast, Intermittent Fasting should be the primary method of dieting.
2. Increase High Volume, Low-Calorie Foods
Research has shown that high volume, heavy foods that are low in calories, such as watery fruits and vegetables, are the best for reducing hunger and subsequent food intake.
With hunger presenting the biggest threat to any diet, increasing these high volume foods will help decrease food intake to help shed fat quickly.
3. Increase Non-Exercise Activity
Calories burned from recreational activity outside of formal exercise, like active travelling, walking, cycling or even dancing at a bar, can make up over a third of daily energy expenditure and can lead to a substantial caloric deficit, which is essential to burn fat.
With fatigue being a non-issue with this type of exercise, and the significant contribution it can make to energy expenditure adding more walks, cycling or light physical activity should be an essential part of any rapid weight loss plan.
4. Increase Protein Intake
Increasing protein intake can both help with muscle retention, reduce hunger and help prioritize fat loss when in a weight loss program. This is an essential part of any fat loss program whether the goal is long or short-term fat loss, however it is especially useful for rapid fat loss. As a general rule, roughly 1 gram of protein for every pound of bodyweight each day is a sufficient intake to aim for.
5. Increase Resistance Training
When in a caloric deficit to lose weight, maintaining or increasing muscle becomes more difficult, but it is not impossible, with studies showing you can gain a significant amount of muscle while losing fat.
If you are already engaged in training, increase training volume while decreasing intensity to encourage maximum muscle growth and maintenance throughout the diet.
6. Increase Sleep
Sleeping more has been shown to reduce fat storage, decrease levels of hunger hormones in the body, and increase activity levels. When trying to achieve fat loss quickly, adding extra 1-2 hours of sleep per night can help make this plan more effective and easier to carry out.