How to Lose Fat at Home

Body Fat vs. Body Weight

People often get weight and fat confused, and it’s not hard to learn the difference. Body weight is weight from your bones, fat, muscles, and anything that weighs you down. Body fat is weight that only includes fat. For example, if your weight is 150 pounds (68 kgs), 5'5" tall (1.65 meters), and your BMI is 24, you will have a body weight of 150 pounds (68 kgs) and body fat of 36 pounds (16.3 kgs) on average.

The average body weight will be composed of the following:

• Muscle: 30 to 55 percent
• Fat: 10 to 30 percent
• Water: 10 to 25 percent
• Bone: 15 percent
• Other: 10 to 15 percent

BMI

BMI (Body Mass Index) is an estimate of how much fat you have. To know what your personal BMI is you should divide your body fat by height.

The BMI system could be inaccurate because it does not account for larger muscle masses. If a person with a lot of fat uses this, he could have an "overweight BMI," but if someone who is very muscular the BMI system could confuse muscle with fat weight and still result in "overweight."

Water Weight

Since people are 50 to 65 percent water, it will account for a lot of weight. If you need to lose a lot of weight for the short-term, you can dehydrate yourself—although this could be extremely unhealthy and very bad for long-term fat loss. If you want to lose some water weight naturally then you need to reduce the salt in your diet so you can release more water from your body. Another surprising way to lose more water weight is to drink more water. If dehydrated, your body naturally decides to hold on to water to prevent major dehydration, so drinking more water can actually release more water. Another benefit from drinking more water is that it can refill your kidneys and release more water. Exercise can also be one of the best ways to lose water weight. Excessive sweating can remove the water from your body in a short amount of time.

Mistakes While Losing Weight

There are many mistakes people make while trying to lose weight. Here are some of them.

Many people stay up way later then they need to. You need to get at least nine hours of sleep in order to feel good and start losing some weight. The two hormones needed to support fat loss are ghrelin and leptin. Ghrelin is the hormone that makes us hungry, and leptin is the hormone that makes us feel full. When we don’t have enough sleep these hormones change and make us eat more.

Another obvious thing that people know, but don’t do that much, is eating less sugar. If you consume too much sports drink or junk foods you might not lose weight, but you may even gain weight.

When people think of protein, they think about building huge muscles, but what most people don’t think about is that it could help you lose fat faster. If you tend to snack on unhealthy things, drinking a protein shake or bar might help you because they include energy and you’ll feel more full and not have the temptation to snack.

There is one more tip you need to know about losing fat: Never give up. You can only lose so many pounds in a week. It can even take five weeks to see and feel a difference.

Caloric Deficit

A caloric deficit is when someone burns more calories than they eat. How a caloric Deficit works is that if you eat less calories than you burn, then your body is forced to pull out the stored energy (fat) and use it, causing that fat to be lost. There are three things you need to keep in mind while attempting to do a caloric deficit: Maximizing fat loss, minimizing muscle loss, and doing it all in a sustainable state. Doing things like cardio or eating low calories can help you get into a caloric deficit.

Eating different amounts of calories can vary between people. If you're active and in shape, you might need to eat 2,500 calories per day to not lose any muscles, but if you are an inactive person, 2,000 calories should be sustainable for you. So, for example, if you need 2,000 calories per day and you eat 2,000 calories, you will not lose, but will also not gain any weight. If you consume 2,200 calories then your body will need to store 200 calories into fat. If you consume 1,800 calories then your body will take out 200 calories and lose some fat. If you’re trying to lose weight, eating 1,800 calories or less while exercising can help you lose a big number of calories. Be careful, however, because you do not want to become malnourished.

Home Remedies

As we discussed earlier, water weight can make you weigh more than you think. Dandelion tea can help with water weight. This tea can make you urinate more frequently, removing a lot of harmful toxins from your body.

Another tea that can help you lose weight is green tea. Green tea helps with loads of nutrients to treat your body, it can make you lose more fat, and green tea even strengthens your brain.

If you're a fan of spicy food this one's for you. Hot foods, especially peppers, can boost up your metabolism and can make you lose fat faster. The capsaicin (the non-toxic chemical that makes food spicy) is the key to losing fat by spicy food—the spicier the better!

Lemon water is a really good remedy, and it taste good, too! Lemon water cleans your liver, helps boost your metabolism, and helps to avoid putting fat on your belly.

Another important thing you should always keep in mind is that not enough water can cause weight gain. As stated earlier, your body holds onto water weight if you don’t drink enough water. You should drink at least two liters of water per day if you want to lose water weight.

What to Eat

The first step to losing fat at home is to know how much calories you eat and how much calories you're burning. I use the free version of Lose It on the app store to track my daily caloric intake. On Lose It you can set a goal amount of calories per day and track your weight progress.

If you’re like most Americans, you eat more salt than you need to. Saltier foods can be unhealthy on your heart and they might cause high blood pressure. Salt can also bloat you so you’ll be even more uncomfortable while doing any physical exercise.

You can eat more greens if your trying to cut calories. Vegetables have high fiber and nutrients, while also being very low in calories. The fiber can help you feel more full, and it will even help you lose more weight with cleaner bowel movements.

You also need to remove any unhealthy temptations from your household. These include chips, candies, and any high calorie snacks. Studies have shown to only eat on a plate because if you want to just get one chip from the bag then you will end up eating more than you wanted to.

Home Exercises

If you keep doing something everyday then you will start to grow a habit, and this includes exercising. If you start to go to the gym, or even a walk around your neighborhood, you can support your fat loss. If you are busy in the morning, but still want to workout, then you can do it at any time in the day. For example, if you're watching TV, you can still do some light workouts such as push ups or walking on your treadmill at home.

If you are looking to build muscle, along with losing weight, you can invest in some free weights. Free weights will provide you with muscle building for most muscles. The more muscle mass you have, the faster calories will burn. Free weights include dumbbells, barbells, and plates.

If you are having trouble with picking out free weights you can refer to my other article: Everything You Need to Know About Dumbbells.

If you want to lose fat without spending money, you can do some exercises using your own body weight. Remember, the more pounds that you weigh, the more efficient your workout will be. Some of the best body weight workouts are crunches, pushups, lunges, planks, and swimming.

Tips for Fat Loss

These are some tips for losing those extra pounds.

If you prefer a steady 5 mph on the treadmill or go in intervals, you should always combine them for best performance. A steady stream will burn fat directly, but interval training will slowly burn fat hours after the workout. If you want to try to combine this, try using intervals first for about five hills then move to a steady stream. If you do this you will continue to lose fat because of your intervals and lose direct fat at the same time.

Do one full body workout per week. The full body workout will boost your metabolism because of the amount of muscle mass you hit. You do not have to do this in one day. You can split it up into two days, upper body on day one and lower body on day two.

You should do at least one of the home remedies daily, but I especially suggest green tea. Green tea boosts your metabolism and helps you lose more fat. Even the slight caffeine intake from green tea can also make your exercising that much easier.

Increase your protein. The more protein you have, the more your body will break down fat. 15 to 20 percent of a higher protein intake will be most efficient. Every 100 calories eaten, your body will break down 20 to 30 percent of it, and higher protein intake will rise this percentage, too.

Drinking one glass of water before eating a meal is very efficient for fat loss for many reasons. Any amount of water can be helpful, but even slight dehydration can slow down your metabolism. Another reason why water is helpful is that it can help you be more full, causing you to consume less calories. This can also help you stop craving food.

If you have learned something or think I did a good job, tips are greatly valued. Thank you.