How you can lose 3% of body fat in 3 months

In 2023, I decided to be healthier and learnt that your body loses 10% of muscle every 10 years as you age. Being able to properly function as I get older became important to me and so I set out on a journey to increase my strength training and improve my diet, with the result of losing 3% of body fat in 3 months.

About me:

Hi, I am Thomas. About 15 years ago I was diagnosed with multiple slipped discs and most recently with coronary artery calcification. For the longest time I accepted that I needed to live with the consequences of these diagnoses. For example, I had chronic back pain and came close to surgery multiple times. My doctors told me to limit my lifestyle. For instance, they asked me not to run or play soccer to avoid further injury. Today, I run 5k almost every other day and play soccer frequently with my children. I’ve spent years optimizing my health using the right combination of exercise, sleep and nutrition. I am here to share my learnings.

What is Body Fat?

So what is body fat? Body fat is the number of fatty muscles in the body, which represents the total fatty tissue that does not contain any muscle mass, electrolyte, or body fluids. Body fat is the main source of energy. Body fat mass increases with age in both men and women through middle age. Exercise is important and not only decreases the age-associated increase in body fat but, most importantly, it also weakens the increase in abdominal fat. The biggest concern about abdominal fat is for it to be a risk factor for several age-associated problems such as coronary heart disease and type 2 diabetes. Indeed, abdominal fat mass is positively associated with mortality in the elderly. Therefore reducing body fat is crucial for living healthy and long.

How to decrease your body fat

So how do you decrease your body fat? For me it was very simple. I knew I needed to build more muscle. There are mainly three things you need to do:

Strength Training: Due to my busy schedule I knew I would not be able to attend the gym regularly. Instead I bought a few weights and started my strength training program at home. I also avoided getting a coach, and instead used an app called SmartGym. With SmartyGym, the AI suggested strength training exercises to me and over time increased either repetitions or weights.
Eat Protein: There is a lot of information out there on how much protein you need to eat, and it varies between just eating your ordinary healthy meal to having 0.8g per kilogram of body weight. So for someone like me, who weighs 80kg or 176 pounds, I would need to eat 64g protein a day. At some point I used MyFitnessPal to track my food, calories and protein I was taking. I stopped doing that after a while and I think the most I learned from it is that I ate too much sodium. But I do mix some protein powder in some of my meals, like my oatmeal I make.
Avoid junk food: This is a no brainer. If you want to gain muscle and reduce fat, you need to stop eating all the other things that – although they taste good – are super unhealthy for you. I do have a sweat tooth, and it took me a while to get rid of unhealthy food. I actually still continue to perfect what I eat. There is so much to learn about nutrition but that’s for another video.

What I learned

So in summary, to decrease your body fat quickly you need to:

Strength Training
Eat Protein
Avoid Junk Food
Measure: Get yourself a good scale
Stay consistent and motivated. This is the hardest part. If you can’t control yourself for 3 months, you won’t be able to see the gain. Don’t think you can do this in a week and put in some effort and you’ll be able to see and measure the difference!