How To Lose Fat When You Have No Time To Workout

by Ed Scow, NSCA-CPT (aka The Fit Dad) - Fitness and Nutrition Expert to the true superheroes - busy Moms and Dads! and Author of Fat Loss To Go

When I meet new clients, I often get the same comment:   “I need to lose fat , but I have so many things going on in my life right now that I don’t have time to workout.”   But is that true?   Is “not having time” a good excuse for not losing that layer of blubber that covers your stomach and hangs over your pants?

Sorry but that’s not a good excuse, not if you know what you’re doing.   And luckily, I can teach you how to fit an effective fat burning workout into your crazy, hectic lifestyle.

The first thing you need to do is sit down with your calendar and see where you can fit 15 minutes, 3 to 6 times per week.   This may be over your lunch hour.   It might be after you put the kids to bed.   Or it might be first thing in the morning before anybody else wakes up.

Just find the time and schedule yourself an appointment to workout in that time.

The next thing you need to figure out is if you can actually make it to the gym for that 15 minutes or if you can do a home workout.

It’s going to be easier to do the workout from home if you are really limited on time. 

Next, do you have the equipment needed?

You don’t need a big home gym to get an effective fast fat loss workout.   All you need are some dumbbells, resistance tubing, a stability ball and/or your own bodyweight.   All of these things can be found cheaply and easily at your local sporting goods store or on the internet.

The next thing you need to do is write out your program.   You need to have a plan in mind if you are going to workout.   You can’t just pick an exercise here and there because you think these exercises work.   I’ve seen that done a lot and what you will end up doing is lots of bicep curls, crunch variations and triceps exercises. 

These yield very little in terms of fat loss…especially if you are limited with the amount of time you have. 

You need to pick exercises that work a lot of muscles/muscle groups.   Exercises like push-ups, squats, lunges, pull-ups, rows, shoulder presses, chest presses, etc.

These exercises ensure you are getting the most bang for your buck in terms of fat loss.   If you want to lose fat, you have to use a lot of muscle and doing bicep curls and triceps kickbacks with soup cans or “pink weights” will not give you any calorie burning.

Next you need to pair the exercises chosen into groups called supersets and tri-sets.   For a superset, all that means is that you do 1 set of 1 exercise, immediately followed by 1 set of another exercise before resting for 30 seconds and repeating a couple more times for a total of 3-4 sets.   And for a tri-set, you group 3 exercises together rather than 2.

The last thing you need to do is decide upon your repetition schedule.   Stick to 6-12 repetitions and make sure the resistance chosen makes those 6-12 reps difficult.   You should feel like you’re working...hard, not like you’re watching television.

Here’s an example of a workout.   1A and 1B are supersets, and 2A, 2B, and 2C are tri-sets:

1A)   Push-Up – 12 repetitions,   immediately followed by:

1B)   Bent Over Dumbbell Row – 10 repetitions   then rest for 30 seconds and repeat 3 more times

2A)   Dumbbell Lunge – 8 reps per leg, immediately followed by:

2B)   Standing Dumbbell Shoulder Press – 8 reps, immediately followed by:

2C)   Mountain Climber – 45 seconds, then rest for 30 seconds and repeat 3 more times

That’s it.   That’s your fast fat loss workout, wrapped neatly and topped off with a bow.   So get to it!   You don’t have much time before life drags you back in to its dirty little fingers!

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The preceding article was written by Ed Scow, aka "The Fit Dad". To learn more about Ed's story, click here.