10 Foods to Avoid If You're Trying to Burn Fat, Says Expert

Can you lose weight fast and keep it off? Yes, says one top health and fitness expert. Jillian Michaels is a fitness expert and star of The Biggest Loser. In a recent video, she reveals that it is possible to lose weight fast. At the start of the clip, Michaels points out that “nobody ever” says, “I want to lose weight slowly.” And there’s nothing wrong with that. “There's a lot of conflicting information about whether it's safe, whether you lose weight too quickly, and whether you will have loose skin. And so here's the deal. You can lose weight quickly, and you can lose weight quickly, safely, depending on how you lose it,” she maintains.

Most People Go About Rapid Weight Loss the Wrong Way

According to Michaels, most people go about rapid weight loss the wrong way. “To lose weight, we have to create a calorie deficit. You've gotta eat less food than your body is burning in a day,” she points out, noting that a pound “is about 3,500 calories,” so if you wanted to lose two pounds a week, you would need to burn a thousand extra calories a day. “This is where diets get dangerous,” she says.

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Starving Yourself Throws Off Your Hormones

She explains that when people diet and do “things like fasts and cleanses or dramatic calorie reduction,” they are usually depriving their body of nutrients. “There's a reason people talk about yo-yo dieting,” she says, explaining that you will lose weight, but gain it all back. “When you starve the body, you're telling your body, ‘Oh my god, food is really scarce’” which then shifts your hormone balance, “to store more fat and I'm going to cannibalize my own healthy tissue because I need fat to insulate my vital organs,” she says.

It “Messes Up” Your Metabolism

“The bottom line is it messes up your metabolism, and when you start eating normally again, if you even go back to normal, because a lot of times with these dramatic diets, there's a huge pendulum swing the other way, you've now damaged your metabolism,” she says. “You're going to put the weight you lost on and then some.” This is yo-yo dieting. “Plus, when we starve ourselves, we've lost lean tissue, lean body mass, which also compromises your metabolism. So it's this really dangerous, bad cycle.”

You Also Won’t Be Able to Exercise

“Plus, how much are you really going to lose? So what are you going to run on 500 calories a day? Well, you're certainly not exercising on 500 calories a day. I mean, and even if you were, what did you burn? 2,000 calories a day?” she points out. This might help you lose three pounds a week, but you will “starve your body and do a ton of damage. Like you can't starve the weight off. It's just not possible,” she says.

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If You Want to Lose Weight Rapidly, You Need to Exercise

The answer to losing weight fast, according to Michaels? “Rapid weight loss comes from exercise,” she says. “If you're maintaining your weight, it's going to be all food. If you don't overeat, you're not going to get any bigger, okay? If you're trying to lose weight, it's like 80% exercise because you can't starve it off,” she says. “It requires more energy to move your body, period,” she adds, noting that “certain fitness techniques” are better than others for energy. They include HIIT, plyometrics, free weights, and metabolic circuits.

Women Should Never Drop Below 1,200 Calories and Men, 1,500

“If you want to lose weight quickly and safely, this is the absolute bottom line for women. Do not go below 1200 calories and you can have unlimited green vegetables. You gotta count the stuff you put on them, but you can eat unlimited greens because the reality is that you're going to get more fiber, more phytonutrients, and it almost requires as much energy for you to break down and metabolize that food than the amount of energy that's actually in the food. As a man, I never would go below, never would go below 1500 would not do it,” she says.

You Can Do 4 to 5 Hours of Higher Intensity Exercise a Week

She explains that you can do four to five hours of higher intensity training a week. “I don't mean four to five hours of the craziest techniques like HIIT and this and that. You can do like a good hour of resistance training in circuits with free weights, multiple muscle group exercises, squat thrusters, things of that nature. Pull ups, pushups that are going to burn more calories. You can work HIIT intervals into those sessions, four to five hours of intensity a week maximum.”

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And, the Rest of Your Exercise Should Be Lower Intensity

“The rest has gotta be low intensity activity,” she says. This includes hiking, walking, biking, swimming, “so that you're not over training, you're not overstressing, you're not putting your body at risk of injury, you're still giving your body enough recovery time,” Michaels continues. “I always call that kind of low intensity cardio, the bread and butter of extreme weight loss.”

If You Want to Lose Weight Fast, Do as Much Lower Intensity Cardio As You Can

“If you want to lose a lot of weight, it's a lot of that low intensity cardio, a lot of it. And that's where it's not realistic, but it is safe. It is okay,” she says. “The extremes, that's where things get dangerous.”

RELATED:I Lost Over 250 Pounds And These Are 11 Habits That Transformed My Body

And, Here Is the Truth About Loose Skin

As for loose skin, “contrary to popular belief, it doesn't matter how quickly you lose weight. If you've got loose skin, you've got loose skin and that's it,” Michaels says. “The skin is an organ. How it rebounds after weight loss has a lot of different factors and components, one of them being genetics.” And if you enjoyed this article, take advantage of these 15 Quick Ways to Lose Body Fat Percentage in a Week.

There are lots of weight loss myths circling about that could be preventing you from losing weight. Jillian Michaels is a fitness expert and star of The Biggest Loser. In one of her viral video she debunks four key weight loss myths. “This video is gonna address a bunch of your questions all under one umbrella. That umbrella being weight loss myths. Now, I can't tackle them all. There are so many of them, but I'm gonna tackle some of the more predominant ones,” she says.

Myth 1: Hot Workouts Are More Efficient for Weight Loss

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The first myth she wants to bust? Hot workouts are more efficient for weight loss. “I know a lot of you guys love this. I'm not trying to take this away from you. If you love it, fantastic. But if we're talking about efficiency and fat metabolism, they're far less effective because the room is so hot,” she explains.

Working Out in Cooler Environments Make You “More Metabolic”

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She explains that “there is a lot of research that shows us a cooler, colder, ambient temperature, makes us more metabolic,” and activates fat in a way that helps you burn more overall fat. “Hot workouts not only don't burn more fat, but in fact they make your workout far less effective because you are stressing the body from the outside in, which can fatigue us. Meaning we engage in less physical exertion where you want that heat to come from the inside out via physical activity and physical exertion.”

The More Hydrated You Are, the More You Will Detox

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She also explains that “the better hydrated you are, the better those organs can do their job of detoxifying you. So dehydration is also counterintuitive to fat metabolism, detoxification, hydration and cooler temperatures are going to be far more effective.”

Myth 2: Fasted Cardio Burns More Fat

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There are lots of weight loss myths circling about that could be preventing you from losing weight. Jillian Michaels is a fitness expert and star of The Biggest Loser. In one of her viral video she debunks four key weight loss myths. “This video is gonna address a bunch of your questions all under one umbrella. That umbrella being weight loss myths. Now, I can't tackle them all. There are so many of them, but I'm gonna tackle some of the more predominant ones,” she says.

Here Are the Workouts That Burn the Most Calories

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She adds that “the fitness techniques that burn more fat are not actually steady state cardio at all,” and instead are resistance training, HIIT training, plyometric training, all of which “burns more calories, more calories when you're doing it, more calories when the workouts are over,” she explains. “Burning fat is a matter of burning through energy stored in the fat cells, so we wanna use more overall energy. We just do, period.”

Myth 3: Carbs and Fat Make You Fat”

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Her next on the “myths and fallacies” list? “That carbs make us fat. Fat makes us fat. This isn't true,” she says. “Now, it is well known that processed junk food can make us fat because it leads to overeating. It has no nutrient content. And yes, it can throw off your biochemistry, your metabolism because it's releasing a ton of insulin and just screwing up your metabolism, which is connected to, in large part, based upon your hormone balance. So these foods throw your hormone balance out of whack.”

Instead, Eating in a Calorie Surplus Makes You Fat

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“Overall calories determine your weight. And as I've said, many times, health and weight don't inherently intersect. We want them to,” she says. For example, an avocado has lots of healthy fat, “micronutrients, the vitamins in the minerals, it's really healthy food. It's also a calorie dense food, an energy rich food. If you eat too many avocados, no matter how many nutrients they have, you'll store the excess energy in them as fat,” she points out.

Avoid Diets But Cut Out Processed Foods

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“The ultimate goal of weight loss, having nothing to do with counting macros, having nothing to do with going carb free, having nothing to do with cutting out fats,” she says. “Do I want you eating great quality food? Of course I do. I want you to cut out the processed flour, those refined grains, the white sugar.”

Myth 4: Food Timing

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Lastly she tackles food timing. “I'm sure you guys have heard, ‘Don't eat at night. Don't eat in the morning. Eat small meals all day. Eat one meal a day. OMAD fast.’ It just, it doesn't stop, right? Food timing and weight loss, it's not connected. It isn't, it's not connected.”

She Eats for 12 Hours and Fasts for 12

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The only way timing is really related to weight loss is “if you skip meals,” she says. “It can cause overeating. So the food timing impacts your calorie consumption. That is the only relation, the only one to food timing really.” She herself eats every three and a half hours, usually fasting for 12.