Fire up new year fat loss with these tried-and-tested strategies

Feeling like a sack of spuds? The fact it’s January is bad enough, but on top of that you’re sitting there cradling the extra belly weight that’s lingered from too much festive food and booze. Of course, the usual mantra of eat right, move more and subsequently end up in a calorie deficit (the key driver for fat loss) is the number-one solution, but there are ways of reaching that point in an accelerated timeframe...

01 Deliver a deficit

It’s not new, or particularly fun, but the simple fact is that if you want to reduce your body fat you need to ensure you’re in a calorie deficit. Put simply, that means you burn more calories than you consume. However, there are some smart ways to achieve it.

Ari Thiruchelvam is a UK Athletics coach. He says that calorie consumption should be viewed from a wider lens than daily targets. “The process of fat loss doesn’t follow a day-to-day nature,” he says, “but instead works on higher and lower calorie days. This allows you to maximise moments of less hunger, the desire to eat more and socialise, while concurrently allowing you to achieve your body composition goals.”

02 Slow down

As well as what you eat, focus on how you’re eating it. “When you eat too quickly, you don’t notice how full you are and your receptors can’t keep up,” says integrative health coach and nutritionist Arina Kuzmina. “Try slowing down, take a break from running around for ten minutes, sit down and actually enjoy your well-deserved meal.” That also means eating away from the TV, emails or social media.

03 Lift smart

Instead of focusing on isolation exercises – for example, cable work, crunches and biceps curls – make heavy compound lifts the basis of your strength training. Squats, deadlifts, pull-ups – all these lifts recruit more than one joint and muscle group at a time. “When these functional exercises are performed correctly with challenging loads,” says personal trainer Sana Shirvani, “you will burn more calories, as you’re performing a larger volume of work in the same amount of time.”