The Easiest Ways to Lose Belly Fat With the Least Effort (bang for the buck)

the old 8020 rule 80% of the things that you do are really giving you 20% of the results 20% of the things that you do are giving you 80% of the results the 8020 rule applies in fat loss it applies in nutrition and I have to fall on the sword and say this channel is usually about getting down into the granular details but that's probably why you're here that you like the details but when it gets to the point where you're just trying to sift through it all and figure out okay well what are the major like five six seven takeaways like what are the small things that I'm doing that are giving me 80% of the results well I've got them for you I dug deep and I thought okay I've talked about that I don't need to go there n that's probably too complex H that's probably too much or that's too little that's not going to give you that much of an impact but I just like it now I've got the real stuff so let's just go ahead and jump into the biggest levers and the first one's going to come as no surprise but please don't click off the video like stick with me through these because they all tie together and even if it's just for the algorithm drop a comment down below hit the Subscribe button and stick with me throughout this video Even if you put it on 2x speed because it's the kind of information that really needs to just sit with you and ruminate a little bit number one forget about counting carbs forget about counting fat focus on your protein and let everything else kind of fall into place that being said there's of course Nuance there as you start getting more into this you probably do want to pay attention to your total carbs your total fat definitely but by and large the biggest lever that you can pull is just getting more protein and having that be the foundation if your protein intake is high it doesn't really matter quite so much if your calories go up or your calories go down because for one if your calories go higher the protein helps those calories be allocated towards muscle mass and your calories go lower the protein protects you from losing the muscle it also gives you a little bit of a buffer when it comes down to nutrient quality the reason is is because if you're not eating enough protein then you're required to get more nutritional value from carbohydrates and fats which is fine but then you have to be more particular whereas if you're just eating protein you're getting a lot of nutrition General especially with things like maybe some ground beef or some ground turkey ground chicken eggs like you're getting that stuff and you don't have to focus on that so it's not that I'm saying that the carbs and the fats don't matter I'm saying that most of the bulk of what you need is there if you go to a continental breakfast at a hotel you say okay well how do I do this how do I eat here if 80% of your plate that's it's a lot but if it's eggs and maybe some I don't know a little bit of ham or something like that it just leaves you less room to go grab the Froot Loops and the other stuff it's also just a matter of just percentage and proportion but also for every one 100 calories of protein that you take in 20 to 30 of those calories are just getting burned in the sheer metabolism of that protein so even if we're just getting down to Bare basic calories in calories out it's going to help you there but I think you and I both know that we're starting to uncover there there's more to it than just what's on the surface with thermodynamics there's a lot going on in the body that makes that mathematical equation hard to take to the bank 100% of the time number two quality fats matter more than quality carbs that sounds awful what does he mean does he mean that like I can go have sugar I can go have whatever because the carb quality doesn't matter no of course carb quality matters right like the glycemic value of a food is it high glycemic is it a spike or blood sugar is it not but we're in the sense of getting basic here and let's put it this way the delta in the difference between a good fat and a bad fat is huge the Delta between a good sugar and a bad sugar or good carbohydrate and a bad carbohydrate is still big but way less than the difference between a good fat and a bad fat the reason that I say that is because at the end of the day carbs are carbs and I know I've done plenty of videos that say like Honey's not the same as sugar and they're not the same there's wild differences between them okay but at the end of the day it is just coming back down to glucose it is just coming back down to a carbohydrate with a fat it's wildly different wildly different because if I have a pecorino Romano cheese that's a nice fatty acid profile with the good saturated fats that I need for cell stability and I compare that to a partially hydrogenated soybean oil there's a ridiculous difference they're not even in the same universe of food so it's just that they respond different they also oxidize different so yes can a certain carbohydrate spike your glucose more than another carbohydrate yes is some going to be devoid of nutrition and some going to have more nutrition sure but fats oxidize fats turn bad sugar is just kind of me it's I mean it's just doing something bad because it's like you're taking in too much of it there's not an inherent like value to it that's necessarily detrimental other than what it does to your blood sugar whereas fats can destabilize they can oxidize they can peroxidize right so it's more important to pay attention to the Quality fats than it is the quality carbs I know but we're getting basic here okay we're not getting down to the granular this is a very important thing so if you're traveling if you're just paying attention to your diet focus more on your fats than you focus on the quality of your carbs number three is very simple minimum 12-hour Gap from dinner to breakfast it's not fasting it's a 12-h hour gap you can do it and that is going to get you so much in the way of metabolic benefit longevity benefit caloric restriction fat oxidation rates in the morning dropping your respiratory quotient at night so you burn more fat at night so yes is it something that it's 20% effort it sure is because how hard is it to really just like not eat for 12 hours after your last meal it's very possible you still get to have your coffee your tea in the morning all you got to do is do that we're not going far we're not doing anything crazy we're not doing anything extreme we're just limitting calories or limiting food for 12 hours your respiratory quotient the amount of fat that you burn overnight your respiratory quotient drops 5 to 10% overnight which means it's you're having a huge shift in the types of fuel that you're using but then as the time goes on like that fat oxidation gets more and more and more the longer you stretch it the more fat you're actually burning so it's an easy lever to pull there's even cool devices now that you can measure when you're burning fast versus burning carbs there's one particular device it measures the alveolar air it measures your breath and it can tell you are you more in a carb oxidation mode or a fat oxidation mode I use it all the time it's called a lumen so this device makes it so that for example if I am going for an extended period of time without food and I want to know when I'm starting to burn more fat because that time will come as I'm deeper into a fast or longer period of time without food that way I can say hey let me breathe in into my Lumin device and it'll tell me okay you're oxidizing mostly fats that's a great time for me to go for a walk and expedite the fat burning it allows me to get smarter and more utilitarian with how I look at things it also gives me an insight into what I call metabolic flexibility which is really important it teaches us how to like know when our body is moving between fats and carbs but also it helps us understand if we are metabolically flexible and how do we respond like when we consume carbohydrates do we start oxidizing carbs and then stop oxidizing them real quick I mean there's no way to tell our own bio-individuality unless you test it so if I Breathe Into the Lumen device and it says I'm burning carbs that's actually a great time for me to go do high-intensity interval training or to go do some weight training to burn through those carbs to get me into a fat burning State faster it teaches us about timing it teaches us about when our body is using different substrates in fact if you look at the issues with metabolic Health most of them are having to do with the inability to switch back and forth between fuels improper substrate utilization improper fuel utilization so let's learn a little bit more about our bodies so that link down below is for Lumen it is a 15% off discount link it's lumen. me Thomas again lumen. me Thomas it fits in your pocket super easy portable device and it serves as sort of a metabolic health coach it even can help you determine what to eat and when to eat if you let it like you can go all the way and it becomes a full personalized coach based upon sort of the timing and what it reads from all the VAR various times that you're measuring your breath highly recommend it and that link is down below underneath this video number four is rather than focusing on Extreme exercise splits and getting nuanced which matters it does matter but focus on your total volume load and also how close to failure you get I've talked about this before but total volume load is what is your sweet spot like how what is the amount of volume that you move if you train chest two times a week and you do 10 sets each time with 100 lb do the math how many pounds did you move that's what I look at because if you're always trying to figure out what's the right amount of volume if I'm going lighter if I'm going lighter I need to do more reps because let me give you simple math if I'm doing dumbbell bench press with a 100 Dum pound dumbbells in each hand and I do 10 reps I moved 2,000 pounds right 100 100 is 200 and I did that for 10 reps that's 2,000 lb let's say I did that for four sets so I moved 8,000 lb that was my total volume load if I did that twice a week that's 16,000 lbs that I moved if I only did 50 lb dumbbells in each hand then I would have done 4,000 lb each workout or 8,000 lb total volume load see how it doesn't sound like that much of a difference when you're talking about the workout oh I did 50 pounds instead of 100 pounds well my total volume load was half right so what I should have done is said okay I'm going to take those 50b dumbbells and I'm going to do 20 reps and that's where your proximity or how close you get to failure matters because that tells you a lot it's not just about reps it's about true proximity to failure but then measuring how much weight you moved over a week with your resistance training it's so simple and if you just log this is how much poundage I moved over the week you know how you're progressing and you know if you're getting enough plain and simple number five is the most important one it is the most important one and when you look around the world and you see who has low BMI who has good longevity who has low body fat who has good metabolic Health it comes down to the people that have a lot of non-exercise activity thermogenesis period you will burn more you will burn more if you prioritize your non-exercise activity thermogenesis and you simply allow exercise to be your stimulus and I've talked about this at nauseum it is better for you to increase your step count to move more throughout the day literally move more doing dishes and things like that than it is to go to the gym that day if you had a choice of walking 15,000 steps and also doing dishes and lifting boxes for half an hour that would be way better than going to the gym for 45 minutes and there's evidence to back it up in fact we've seen in literature that you cannot outwork it's really hard to out work rather being sedentary for eight or 10 hours it's really hard to sort of devalue good non-exercise activity thermogenesis look at Europe for example so For the Love of All Things good the biggest lever that you can pull is going to be focusing more on your non- exercise activity thermogenesis what you burn just in life and increasing your movement number six is going to be optimizing the time you go to sleep it's a big lever you can pull because I can't tell you to just get eight hours of sleep yeah that's a big lever and that would be amazing but if we break down that lever into the biggest lever within that more important than the 8 hours of sleep is consistent bedtime it is better for you to go to bed at the same time and sleep for four or five hours than it is for you to go to bed at a different time and sleep for seven or eight not literally but just figuratively speaking in fact if we wanted to get literally it's more like it's better to go to bed at the same time and get six hours than it is to go to bed at a different time and get eight or nine point is consistent bedtime is the biggest lever you can pull for your sleep and that also is to train your body and if you wake up at 3:00 a.

m. you wake up at 3:00 a. m.

and you're ryed bushy tail is ready to go that's fine at least go to bed at the same time and even on those days where you wake up at 3:00 a. m.