How To Lose Body Fat Men: Key Ways To Reduce Body Fat For Men In 2024

Understanding how to lose fat can be a challenging and sometimes frustrating task. Men may encounter unique weight loss obstacles based on common misconceptions about the best workouts for men.

Men hesitate to do enough cardio as many fear doing too much cardio will lead to muscle loss. Or they may feel they’ll lose muscle if they don’t keep lifting heavy.

If you’re wondering how to lose body fat: men need to vary their workouts, keep challenging themselves, and keep calories in check. Let’s learn how to do this so you can excel at dropping that body fat!

Ways To Lose Body Fat For Men

The following are six great ways to lose body fat in men. They cover the more obvious points around exercise and nutrition and dive into the details of being intentional with your calorie targeting and balancing the nutrients you take in.

Ambitious Strength Training

Lean muscle mass burns^[1] fat. With more muscle, you can enjoy a higher metabolism. This higher metabolism assists in weight loss and a higher calorie burn. 

If you’re familiar with strength training, you are likely already performing compound lifts as part of your strength routine. These are largely barbell- and dumbbell-based exercises that include the back squat, deadlift, overhead press, bent row, and chest press. 

However, it is important to be deliberate with these exercises and increase the intensity to maximize your results. Your resistance should consistently push you close to muscle failure by the time you get to your target reps each set. 

Also, it’s essential to employ the right amount of sets and establish rest periods between them to gain muscle. 

Diversify Your Exercise 

Many men focus solely on lifting weights, neglecting other ways to burn body fat that are at their disposal. Many men worry they will lose muscle if they do cardio and don’t do it enough because of it. 

The truth is that cardiovascular training^[2] is a great way to burn large amounts of body fat over much longer time durations than are possible with weight lifting. Furthermore, cardio will not deplete your muscles unless you overdo it and do not properly refuel in terms of protein.

As a man, infusing some cardio in your routine is better to maximize fat loss. It’s also vital to push yourself during cardio sessions to attack that belly fat in the best way possible.  

Be Calorie Conscious 

It is easy to out-eat a good workout. For example, a 60-minute workout at a moderate to high intensity typically burns a few hundred to 500 calories at most. 

In addition, men’s average daily calorie requirements are between 25 and 35 calories per kilogram of body weight. Depending on your weight, this can be between 1,700 and over 2,200 calories per day.^[3] 

While this is the general recommendation, many men consume more than this if they’re not paying close attention.

Either way, one hour-long challenging workout has the power only to burn maybe 40% of your calorie intake each day, if that. Understanding how many calories you’re taking in and maintaining a healthy diet is imperative to create a calorie deficit^[4] needed to burn body fat. 

Being in a calorie deficit ensures you’re not taking in more calories than you need. 

Know Your Calories In vs. Calories Out

To lose body fat, you must burn more calories than you’re taking in. To confirm this is happening, track your calories regularly. This will help you understand how many calories you take in versus how much you burn from exercise.

Reading the nutrition label, practicing portion control, and measuring your food can help you track your calorie intake more accurately. You can also calculate your daily calorie burn using a fitness tracker, watch, or app. Techniques such as these can allow for more rapid and effective weight loss.  

Steer Clear Of Carb Fear

Many men fear carbohydrates will make them gain weight and therefore restrict them. While eating too many carbs may increase body fat, overeating anything will have the same effect. 

Carbohydrates, in particular, are essential to fuel your fat-burning workouts. Carbs are the body’s primary energy source, and restricting them will lead to workout fatigue and poor results.

Employ Supplementation Effectively

The right supplements may improve training performance and accelerate physical results. Possibly the most popular are fat-burning supplements, which can effectively complement your training regimen to burn fat and gain muscle mass. 

Always use supplements as directed and as a supportive agent for diet and exercise. Additionally, consult a medical professional before starting supplements to determine what is best for you. 

Fat In Men: Why Fat Loss Matters

Many men have a goal to lose fat. While many men may want to burn fat for aesthetic purposes, losing excess body fat can also improve overall health.

Excess body fat is associated with an increased risk of hypertension, diabetes, heart and lung issues, illness, cancer, respiratory concerns, and more. Conversely, having a lower percentage of body fat^[5] is associated with longer life expectancies, lower incidence of illness, lower cancer risk, a healthier heart, and better respiratory function.

Weighing less and having a leaner body composition can facilitate easier movement with more power, speed, and endurance. And the good news is as you lose body fat, you can simultaneously gain muscle mass and the motivation to keep at it!

Simple And Effective Tips For Men To Reduce Fat

Here are a few key tips to effectively burn fat as a man.

Don’t Underestimate The Quantity Of Your Food Intake

One of the most common mistakes when trying to burn belly fat men is overeating. Many men tend to underestimate the calories they’re taking in, which is why tracking your food intake is essential. 

Often, individuals have been disappointed or discouraged with how unproductive the results seem to be weekly relative to how hard they are working on their training routine. This typically happens when they unknowingly cancel their calorie burn with excess daily calories taken in. 

You need to take in 3,500 calories less over a week to lose one pound weekly. If we break this down to a simpler picture, that is a 500-calorie deficit per day requirement to lose one pound over a week. 

Be Conscious Of Your Macronutrient Ratios

Carbs, proteins, and healthy fats all make up your essential macros and are all needed for a balanced diet. A general guideline to follow is 50% of your daily caloric requirement from carbs, 30% from protein, and 20% from healthy fats.

Each macronutrient has its own purpose and value in assisting the body’s internal operations and makes for the most effective fat loss. To list just a few, carbs provide energy for training, protein promotes lean body composition and muscle health, and healthy fats assist with various aspects of the internal processes the body undergoes to operate efficiently.   

Ignore The Cardio Myth

Cardio and power strength training do not lead to muscle loss. Conversely, you can easily maintain muscle, cardio, and power movements push intensity levels, and create more fat-burning during a session to add to the strength training methods you perform. 

Try incorporating more speed, intervals, and reps during cardio and strength sessions. Try higher intensity workouts versus slow grind weight lifting as a powerful fat loss tool. 

Diversify Chest Day

Many men will develop body fat around the chest area as it is in the general region of the torso. To target fat loss in the chest, you can prioritize a specific set of chest fat workouts in your weight training routine. 

To add diversity, look to challenge your chest with a larger variety of exercise stimuli. Techniques such as increased time under tension per repetition or pairing lighter, faster movements with slower ones of higher resistance. Venture to be creative here.

Targeted workouts like these will help you effectively isolate this area of concern to maximize your results.

Embrace Carbohydrates

Carbohydrates are your body’s primary source of sustained energy^[6] and should not be feared.  There is a reason why general guidelines recommend carbs to comprise 50% of your diet – they are a necessary macronutrient. 

Carbohydrates are important for much of the body’s functions, not the least of which is the endurance levels and recovery abilities necessary to undergo the long-term physical activities necessary for fat loss.   

Carbohydrates should be approached as fuel, not an enemy. You must think to support the body with sufficient amounts of energy. 

Physically, the body will register challenging exercise and a calorie deficit as a form of stress that it must manage. So, food becomes a supportive agent that it looks for to handle all the internal tasks brought on by your training and diet efforts.  

Enjoy complex carbs like whole grain bread, brown rice, and oats, as they provide the fuel necessary to maximize your weight training and help you burn more calories.

Your body will be much more willing to let go of body fat when it is satiated with the energy it needs to push through those tough workouts.  

Summary

Men tend to have faster metabolisms than women due to a higher percentage of lean mass, but there are still plenty of struggles out there. How to get rid of belly fat men is possible with a combination of a balanced diet, challenging exercise, and varying workouts. 

First, remember that you cannot outburn a bad diet, so limiting your calories enough while maintaining the proper balance of carbs, protein, and fat can help you get the most out of those tough workouts. 

On the workout front, it goes a long way to understanding that just exercising without appropriate exercise selection and challenging intensities can significantly hamper your success. The foundation for change is appropriate stress. 

The relationship between exercise training and the body’s response to it can be described by the acronym S.A.I.D, or specific adaptation to imposed demands. Bodily improvements such as fat loss need to be provoked by exercises and intensities that the body needs to adapt to. 

When you perform exercises and routines that push your cardiovascular and muscular systems, the body adapts. This adaptation is made through increased strength, stamina, and calorie-burning capability. 

Nobody said it’d be easy, but if you’re determined to know how to lose fat men, it is possible with the right strategy. You must vary your workout routine, follow a healthy diet, and step outside that comfort zone!