How To Maximize Weight Loss With Crossfit
Crossfit is a great fitness program for extensive society members, it helps many achieve their fitness, weight, and health goals. As Crossfit is a group training program many find it helpful and draw energy from it to achieve a healthier life. Thus, weight loss in specific using Crossfit could be maximized by only a few simple steps.
The steps to maximize weight loss while doing Crossfit are all lifestyle choices that basically make training much more efficient. The steps are – clean and healthy diet, keep training regularly, allow proper recovery, be mindful regarding the process, learn to read your body, and lastly keep things interesting. These steps will maximize your efforts to lose weight with Crossfit.
We elaborate and explain how each of these healthy changes should be achieved and its impact on your training regime.
Healthy balanced nutrition is 80% of the effort
It all starts with the quality of what you eat. Losing weight lyes upon the combination of training and food, but not just any kind of what is called food these days, but rather a higher quality nutritional fresh food in your daily diet will contribute more in effective weight loss.
By now researchers are very conclusive as to what type of food you should be consuming in order to be healthy and in optimum weight for you specifically. Harvard researchers have shown that calories do matter, however, the quality of the food you eat is far more important to weight loss.
Here are some steps one should take to improve the quality of their diet.
First, toss away all processed food in your current diet. It means no more microwave dinners, no more pasta and bread of some kinds, all the industrialized “snacks” are out of the way as well, and lastly no adding of white processed sugar.
However, once you have stabled your diet and keep persistence clean eating for at least 30 days you can start having a “cheat meal” once every week or two if wishes.
Drink water. This is probably the most efficient tip of all as many people tend to have a soft drink with their lunch, which is full of white sugar and in general don’t drink enough water. Water helps in losing weight in aspects of metabolism processes and in feeling full up by eating less.
Avoiding processed food and cooking homemade fresh food will help you control what goes into your body and as a result, lose weight faster.
Second, choose the right food to benefit your body with the proper proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. This can be achieved by diversifying your diet and learning about the best sources for each building block.
For example, sweet potato is far better than a regular potato, as its glycemic index is lower. Choosing the right food is not so hard once you start testing new foods and in time you will realize what makes you feel better and stronger. Read more about foods that can make you healthier on our post.
In addition, when and if possible get protein from meat and animal products as its compound is more accessible for human body absorption and use as building blocks. If you choose to get protein only from plant based nutrition then you should be mindful of the right food combinations for proper nutrients absorption in order to gain what is needed. Please note it is more complicated and challenging in terms of essential protein needed.
Third, as mentioned above, keep hydrating at all times. I know that during wintertime people tend to forget the importance of water drinking mainly due to lack of thirst, but make no mistake, water is a crucial factor for many processes inside our body and amongst – weight loss.
Moreover, for those who train in Crossfit or any other high intensity training method, the amount of water our body loses while training and recovering is higher than normal. If you do not drink enough it might be hard for you to properly lose weight as your body will be out of balance let alone the risks in dehydration.
And yes, once again – drinking soft drinks is not equal to water, on the contrary – sugared beverages will most likely lead to dehydration. As when there’s high sugar levels in our blood we urinate more in order to get rid of the sugar and with this wise process of one’s body mechanism one loses a great amount of water which can lead to drying out.
Good and healthy hydration can be achieved by drinking water. If you must drink something else every once in a while then get a cup of tea or coffee, but do not count them as equal to water, as they might induce a higher rate of urinating as well.
If you feel like reading about the benefits of proper hydration and sports feel free to try our post.
Train regularly every week
A regular training regime is a key to maximizing weight loss, as routine is what our body needs in order to develop healthy processes.
In addition, researchers have shown that changing your diet can help with weight loss, but the best results show that a combination of training and a healthy diet will induce significant weight loss.
As the recommendations for physical activity time for losing weight are 200-400 minutes per week, it is crucial to train regularly if one wishes to achieve this weekly recommended task.
With Crossfit, it is recommended to start with 2-3 days a week, preferably the same days every week. This routine should be changed according to your personal feeling by adding or subtracting training sessions as needed.
Moreover, if for any reason you are unable to exercise on a certain day either train at home if possible or train on a different day. The most important thing is that you keep training regularly and get that time recommended every week.
The main reason that regular training is important is due to the fact that it makes us burn more calories. As faster weight loss is the goal than keeping that exercise regime will maximize the wished results.
Apart from that your happiness and stress levels are highly improved after training, which keeps the body on a positive treadmill and makes us wait for the next training session. Motivation is also very important in this process.
One thing worth mentioning regarding regular training is that this routine will make your sleeping patterns much better. As mentioned above this regime puts order into the body processes, among them is sleep patterns that get better thanks to training and healthy eating. And good sleeping patterns aside from multiple advantages also contribute to a more efficient long run weight loss.
Lastly, on that matter, as we talked about home training I wish to emphasize that it can be done without any of the Crossfit training equipment. Though it is true that exercising in your box can be superior to home training, keeping the routine alive is and should be a top priority. So yes, train also at home in a home-adjusted train format, and check out this post on the matter.
Allow your body to recover properly
While keeping a training routine is important for keeping a high muscle mass while losing weight, recovery time in between sessions must be part of this routine. Maximizing weight loss results is highly affected by the ability to rest enough and give the body proper time to adjust before another exercise session.
“Rest day” as many crossfitters know is a day in which no exercise should be performed. As the body needs time to rebuild muscles and skeletal tissues. For the majority of us for each training day, it is recommended having a rest day, however, this could be changed over time as your body learns and adapts to the training routine.
In a nutshell, rest days give our body the possibility to recover, build muscles and bones, and prepare for the coming training session.
Moreover, active recovery is recommended every once in a while, as long as one feels good enough the day after training. If the body feels really stiff then avoid active recovery or take it really slow by taking a short walk to pump the blood around.
If your body feels ok it is possible to add a swimming session, light running or a short bicycle ride. These activities provided they kept at low intensity can release stagnation and help cycle toxins out of the body.
Researchers have long known that recovery is an essential part of training and in some cases even more important than the training itself.
The last recovery recommendation for a better weight loss process is sleep patterns. These days many of us fight fatigue with the wrong tools when all we have to do is to improve our sleep.
Having a certain schedule for sleeping hours is important for our body as it can fine-tune all related and unrelated sleep processes to maximize its benefits. Among those benefits is the after training burn which in Crossfit happens almost every workout, as it is a high-intensity workout and will increase fat burn during night time.
If you really wish to increase the benefits of Crossfit training try and rest properly as it will play a positive role in your journey.
If you wish to know more about why rest days are important, try our post on this matter, and our post on exercise and sleep.
Ask questions and be realistic about your goals
Asking questions is what we humans are known for as it serves our desire for knowledge. Just as you read this post and learn how your body functions when working out and eating healthy regarding weight loss, you should try and find information about other matters.
When encountering new exercise ask what is it good for? this way you will expand your knowledge and will be able to fine-tune everything to your specific needs.
Crossfit is a very wide training method with many different approaches for it. It is true that many of us will start with group training, but after some time diversification could become handy.
In many Crossfit boxes you can find stretching lessons, running groups, and even endurance training. Try all of these lessons so you could see how each of them impact your weight loss.
After you gain more knowledge, the weight loss process will become more reasonable and you will be able to pinpoint what’s holding you back from achieving your goals faster.
Moreover, if you will understand how each exercise impacts the body the workout might make sense to you and greater understanding builds better workout results.
Stay calm and train, you can’t give 100% every day
Both our body and mind are the sum of our physical performance. As many researchers have been proven time and time again, sports activity can and will improve your mental and physical state.
However, it is hard to be at 100 percent all the time, which points to the fact that not every training session will be as fun as others. Though this might be hard to be consistent with a low mental state, the people who can push through will benefit from it.
Physical activity of any type can boost happiness, reduce stress and anxiety, and as a result support weight loss goals. Crossfit even goes one step further as it is performed in groups, which have been shown to have a boosting effect on our will to train.
Crossfit is one of the best forms of training in the sense that you always have new goals to achieve while getting support from the community, both physical and online communities.
As we are more active in this community it feels easier to get to the gym and train with friends, even if your legs are still sore from the previous training session.
With that said, you will feel pain, you will be tired sometimes, but the thing is to be consistent and to do what you can each day to improve your physical state which will improve your mental state. This will create a circle of good processes inside the body that will support long term weight loss.
Lastly, love yourself, love what you are doing, and keep evolving into a better entity each day. Don’t be too harsh about thyself, accept you on that specific day of low energy, do the best you can and move on to the next day with your chin up as not quitting is far better than not doing.
And remember,train consistently, eat healthy and un-processed food, make sure to sleep at night, and understand that things take time but consistency will prevail as long as you believe in yourself. We believe in you.
See you soon on HIS SIDE