What are the best foods to reduce body fat?

Hello Christine,

Good question. The first thing I would say is that foods as such don't burn fat, the idea of diet when it comes to losing body fat is to in fact encourage your body to burn fat. So fat loss is all to do with diet and exercise.

Lets focus on diet. Its very difficult to be ultra lean ALL of the time, and probably not all that healthy. Its much better to have times and occasions in mind when you want to look your best. This is similar to say a bodybuilder preparing for a competition or a fitness model preparing for a photo shoot. Depending on your current size and shape would dictate how far in advance you started your fat loss diet and exercise program.

I always give myself 12 weeks to go from been in good shape with a body fat of about 10-12% to a body fat as I am today of 5%. My daily eating pattern is that I eat at least 6 meals a day, consuming the majority of my carbohydrates early in the day and reducing them as the day progresses. So my diet looks something like this:

Meal 1 - 50g protein, 40g carbohydrates, 15g fat
Meal 2 - 40g protein, 30g carbohydrates, 20g fat
Meal 3 - 40g protein, 30g carbohydrates, 10g fat
Pre-workout - 24g protein
Meal 4/Post-workout - 20g protein, 50g carbohydrates
Meal 5 - 40g protein, 10g fat
Meal 6 - 40g protein, 10g fat

I also add more fats by snacking on nuts, so I probably take over 100g fat a day. I also don't count vegetables as carbohydrates or fats, so I eat plenty of green beans, broccoli, asparagus, mange-tout etc.

My first meal is normally a protein shake. Whey protein mixed with Innocent fruit smoothie (any of the purple flavours), and to that I add creatine and flaxseed oil. I also take all my other morning supplements.

My second meal would be 6 egg whites with 2 full eggs, and porridge made with water (mixed with cinnamon and maybe some cocoa powder). I sometimes add an egg white to my porridge.

Then through the rest of the day, I will predominantly eat white meat and white fish as my protein source, brown rice or sweet potato as my carbohydrate source, and healthy oils or nuts as my fat source. As I mentioned before, vegetables in most of my meals.

A few times a week I will eat red meat, and at least 3 servings of oily fish a week. I also will have 1 reward meal a week which would typically be meal 5 and would be at least 1500Kcal in that 1 meal.

I drink at least 5 litres of water a day, and this increases to 10 litres in the latter stages of my dieting.

I drink green tea mixed with peppermint which has fat burning properties and also helps with digestion.

40g of protein would be one and half chicken breasts. 30g of carbohydrates would be a small sweet potato. 10g of fat would be a small handful of peanuts or a teaspoon of olive oil, just to give you an idea.

I'm guessing you are probably 5 stone lighter than me, so you would want to be halving the quantities that I eat for example. But remember this does not include the supplements I use.