The Ultimate Fat Burning Guide: For Beginners

Here’s your Ultimate Fat Burning Guide to finally start cutting stubborn fat and developing the shredded physique you’ve always wanted!

Armed with Instant Knockout, you’ll have a strong base to get started on your weight loss journey and see REAL RESULTS.

Grasp the new you with both hands!

Now is the time to take a look at your lifestyle and start considering ways you can change it to optimize your fat burning.

Here at Instant Knockout, we wanted you to be prepared to take on this new challenge and achieve the best results.

So, we’ve put together our Ultimate Fat Burning Guide to get you started.

Culminating scientific research, our guide will give you a strong basis to kickstart your fat burning – with everything from diet tips to exercise regimes all targeted towards shedding your excess fat.

There are three parts to this guide to combat all aspects of fat burning:

1. Diet
2. Exercise
3. General Lifestyle Changes

Ready to get started?

1.    Diet

Our fat burning guide starts with one of the most important components to successful fat burning – your diet.

The biggest mistake people make when they’re looking to lose weight is drastic cutting.

Whilst cutting out bad foods like refined or processed produce can be positive, many people opt for removing entire food groups like carbs or fats which can actually hinder your weight loss in the long run.

To succeed in obtaining a lean physique, you need to grasp the importance of consistency and balance.

Studies show that carb-cutting, for example, although being a fast way to lose weight, is not sustainable and can actually lead to people putting on more weight in the long term[1].

Check out our top tips to amending your diet properly and understanding how to maximize fat burning in a viable way.

Tailored Calorie Awareness

The most obvious way to lose weight is to reduce your calorie intake. Sounds simple enough but too high a reduction could have a negative impact on your body such as exhaustion, deteriorating brain function and reduced athletic performance. Too low a reduction could have no impact at all on your fat loss.

Research suggests that 3500 calories is equivalent to 1 pound of stored fat, so you need to reduce your weekly calorie intake by that to lose 1 pound every week, 7000 calories for 2 pounds and so on.

But first, you need to find out what your personalized daily calorie intake should be.

Step 1

First work out your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) which is the amount of energy your body needs whilst resting.

One popular way to do this is using the Harris-Benedict formula, which uses weight, height, age and gender:

For Men:

BMR = 66 + (13.7 x weight in kg) + (5 x height in cm) – (6.8 x age in years)

For Women:

BMR = 655 + (9.6 x weight in kg) + (1.8 x height in cm) – (4.7 x age in years)

Step 2

Then you need to apply your activity level to decipher your calories burned for your lifestyle:

• Sedentary. If you get minimal or no exercise, multiply your BMR by 1.2.
• Lightly active. If you exercise lightly one to three days a week, multiply your BMR by 1.375.
• Moderately active. If you exercise moderately three to five days a week, multiply your BMR by 1.55.
• Very active. If you engage in hard exercise six to seven days a week, multiply your BMR by 1.725.
• Extra active. If you engage in very hard exercise six to seven days a week or have a physical job, multiply your BMR by 1.9.

Once you’ve worked out your personalized daily calorie requirements, you can then minus 7000 calories per week to kickstart your weight loss.

Prioritize Protein

One of the most effective ways to optimize your diet is by increasing your protein intake.

This macronutrient is well known for its highly effective qualities when it comes to weight loss[2] because:

• It boosts your metabolism so you burn up to 100 calories extra per day
• Processing protein through digesting and metabolizing actually burns calories through thermogenesis by 20-30% (carbs = 5-10%, fat = 0-3%)
• It can increase your appetite-suppressing hormones like peptide YY and GLP-1, whilst reducing your hunger hormone ghrelin so your calorie intake could drop by 400 calories per day
• High protein consumption encourages muscle growth and burns belly fat

To maximize your fat burning potential, make sure you prioritize protein in your diet and watch how much quicker your weight loss is[3].

We recommend:

• Lean meats like skinless chicken breast, turkey and trimmed pork medallions

• Seafood like seabass, salmon and prawns

• Eggs

• Nuts and seeds like cashews, almonds, walnuts, flax seeds, pumpkin seeds

• Beans like lentils, black beans and peas

• Low fat dairy

Maintain Balance

Following on from the previous point, healthy fat burning is best tackled with a balanced approach. Yes, protein is key to losing weight – but so are the other two macronutrients – carbs and fats.

Depending on your activity level, you’ll have a different requirement of macro amounts.

Carbs, for example, are your body’s preferred source of energy therefore if you exercise a lot, you’ll need a good proportion of carbs to give you that boost you need to smash your workout sessions.

The ideal ratio is: 40% carbs, 40% protein and 20% fat per day[4] .

You can find the number of grams per macro suited to you using a macronutrients calculator online, which takes into account your age, height, weight, goal and activity level – from light to extreme.

This way you can make sure you’re sticking to a balanced diet that will work with your lifestyle to help you burn fat.

Get Organized for Mealtimes

Planning is absolutely key to sticking to a healthy diet. Research shows that people who were better prepared and took a proactive approach to their mealtimes and planning were more successful in losing weight in the long run.

Remember, this isn’t a fad diet.

Hopefully you’re trying to change your whole approach to eating so finding ways to interlink your new healthy lifestyle into your day-to-day routine will make it a whole lot easier to stick to.

Here are some ways to be better prepared:

• Lunch Prep – making sure you stay on top of lunch prep means that you won’t be tempted by unhealthy fast food alternatives if you’re busy at work or at home.
• Do a weekly shop – this encourages you to think in advance about meals and make sure you have everything you need in the house to prepare it so there’s no excuses to opt for a takeaway
• Plan meals in advance – when you’ve had a busy day, it’s all too easy to call in a pizza. Planning your meals in advance reduces the stress of thinking what you’re going to have for dinner after a busy day. Instead, you can look forward to it and are prepared to cook it when you get home.
• Make time to cook – planning when you’re going to do meal prep or making time to prepare meals is key to making sure you actually do it. Scheduling the time to cook is really important as it normalizes it as part of your daily routine.

2.    Exercise

The second part to our fat burning guide walks you through effective exercise tips.

Exercise is a fast-track to optimized fat burning lies. Whilst any movement is better than none, we’ve got a couple of great exercise styles to really kickstart your metabolism and get you in shape quicker.

Lift Weights

Everyone knows cardio is a great way to shift the pounds, but lifting weights could be even more efficient when it comes to overall body development as it has been proven to burn fat whilst enhancing muscle definition too.

It also been linked to increasing your metabolism – even after your gym sesh so you could see even better results quicker with weight training[5].

• Helps you burn up to 140 calories extra per day as it increases your resting metabolism by around 9%
• Reports show that your resting metabolism could be higher by up to 38 hours after working out
• Weights can help define your muscles and promote healthy growth too

Although cardio can help you lose weight quickly, weight training is more effective in the long run if you want reduced body fat with stronger, shredded muscles.

The most effective weightlifting you can do – especially if you’re just starting out – are compound exercises.

These combine several different muscle groups and multiple joints at once so you can maximize muscle building and fat burning in less time.

We recommend:

• Squats
• Plank
• Bench Press
• Deadlifts

HIIT Training

Research has shown that people who cut down their workout time but increase the intensity with HIIT training (high intensity interval training) achieve double their fat burning than working at a steady pace for twice as long[6].

With HIIT training, you can decrease abdominal fat, body weight and maintain muscle mass all at the same time by:

• Cutting hunger potential as the longer you work out, the more likely you’ll feel hungry by the end and ruin your hard work by snacking after. HIIT training doesn’t give you time to get hungry and has been proven to suppress your appetite so you don’t get that ‘feed me now’ impulse.
• Creating more focus and motivation to push yourself harder because you know you’ve only got a short time to achieve, igniting your competitive spark.  
• Using your body’s reserves of energy – even after your workout – which elevates metabolism and calorie burning.
• Enhancing metabolic stress on muscles which increases amounts of human growth hormone, testosterone and insulin for the repair process which gives you bigger muscle gains.

To get the best results, try swapping in HIIT training 2-3 times a week to give your body time to repair.

Studies have shown noticeable cardiovascular and muscular benefits doing HIIT training in only 2 weeks so why not give it a try and reach your body goals quicker!

We recommend for HIIT beginners:

3 x set below
2 mins rest in between set

3.    General Lifestyle Changes

The final section in our fat burning guide deals with other changes you can make to your overall lifestyle.

Aside from ramping up your exercise and cleaning your diet, here are some other simple tips that’ll make it even easier to get that ripped physique.

Get enough sleep

Studies have shown that uneven sleeping patterns and lack of sleep in general has been linked to weight gain as it can slow down your metabolism.

The average adult needs around 7 or more hours sleep each day so make sure you’re hitting that to keep your metabolism ticking over[7].

Stay well hydrated

Drinking more water is key to losing weight and has been proven to increase calorie burning by 24-30% 10 minutes after consumption. It is also linked to curbing your appetite before meals and because it is calorie free, it acts as a great replacement to other drinks so you can easily cut your daily calorie intake.

Health professionals suggest drinking around 2 liters a day for optimum results[8].

Reduce your stress

Everybody has to deal with daily challenges however letting stress get on top of you could have an adverse effect on your weight loss.

Too much exposure of the stress hormone cortisol has been proven to slow your metabolism[9] whilst also stimulating your appetite which could lead to overeating or craving unhealthy food[10] meaning the more stressed you are, the harder it’ll be to lose weight.

Eating healthier, exercising more and getting enough sleep are all great ways to counteract your stress levels. You could also try:

• Getting on top of your daily routine with to-do lists to tick off each task as you go
• Doing more outdoor activities – from hiking to golf or visiting the beach, being outside is a great way to chill out
• Minimizing alcohol to avoid dips in your mood and hangover irritability
• Taking up calming activities like reading, listening to music, yoga or meditation to get some healthy headspace

The bottom line

Using our Ultimate Fat Burning Guide, you can make sure you’re optimizing Instant Knockout to its full potential, pushing your body to superior levels of fat burning so you can achieve that shredded physique even quicker!

We hope you’re now fully equipped and fired up to smash through your excess body fat for good.

Good luck on your journey to a leaner, more sculpted body!

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