Hey folks, bodyweight coach Adam Steer is back on the blog, and today we’re talking about dieting for fat loss, the minimal equipment you need for a great workout, and so much more. Check out the interview below:

Parth: Hey Adam, welcome to the blog once again. My readers are familiar with your work, and they want to know it straight: What is the biggest mistake people make which keeps them from losing fat?

Adam Steer: Food. You can’t exercise yourself out of a diet that gives you a surplus of calories.

The quality of food you eat is important. The macronutrients are important (the “categories” of food that you eat) are important. But eating the perfect proportions of all the right foods will STILL make you fat if you eat too much of them.

The simple truth is, you have to create a caloric deficit to lose fat. Once that’s taken care of, only THEN can you start manipulating carbs, protein and food quality in order to dramatically INCREASE the speed of fat loss and overall body re-composition.

Parth: There are so many bodyweight workouts out there that say that they provide “no-equipment,” yet they require resistance bands and/or pullup bars. Is it really possible to get a great workout without any equipment at all?

Adam Steer: Yes and no. You can definitely get a badass workout without ANY equipment at all. But if you want to have an OPTIMAL approach to fitness and physique of the long haul, you’d be well advised to add in some form of equipment that allows you to do pulling exercises.

A pull up bar, suspension training gear or resistance bands are all great options. Usually, we suggest resistance bands since they are the most affordable option and have the easiest set-up.

Parth: What can a trainee do in order to maximize the potential of their bodyweight workouts?

Adam Steer: Since you can’t increase weight, you need to play with other variables like frequency, density, duration, volume and exercise sophistication.

So, over time, you can train more often—frequency. You can do longer workouts—duration. You can do the same volume of work but in a shorter amount of time—density. You can do more sets and reps—volume. And you can work with more and more technically challenging exercises—sophistication.

The main thing is to ALWAYS progress one or more of the variables with every workout. There is no such thing as maintenance. You’re always either getting better or getting worse.

Parth: What is your opinion on cardio? Where do you stand on the interval cardio vs. steady state cardio debate?

Adam Steer: I see cardio on a spectrum. For fat loss, my priority is high-intensity interval work, then metabolic-muscle workouts. If I’ve got any time left over in my training schedule, I’ll add steady state cardio.

Interval cardio rocks because it jacks up your metabolism for up to 38 hours after you’re done working out. But it’s also taxing on the system, and most people can’t do it every day. Steady state cardio steps in and fills the gap. It allows you to burn some extra calories, tap directly into fat stores as the preferred source of fuel during the workout, and can even speed up recovery for the next high intensity session.

Parth: I love carbs. I struggle with cutting carbs. Can you still lose fat while eating carbs? If so, how?

Adam Steer: Yeah, I can relate. I’m a total carb addict and have to be really careful about how I use them.

I think it’s silly to vilify and totally remove an entire food group from your diet. So yes, you can definitely lose fat while eating carbs. You just have to be careful about two very important points: quality and timing.

Eating crappy and highly processed carbs is pretty much always a bad idea. You can certainly get away with it from time to time—I do it myself and so do my clients. But 99% of the time you should choose high quality whole food carbs that aren’t full of chemicals and that haven’t been stripped of all their nutritional value. These types of carbs play havoc with your metabolism and make it harder to lose fat.

So choose things like sweet potatoes, rice, potatoes, quinoa and sprouted grain products instead of highly processed foods like white bread and commercially produced sweets.

But you also have to be careful about WHEN you eat your carbs. To make it simple, we like to split things up according to the type of training you’re doing on any given day. If your workout focuses more on developing your metabolic-muscle mass, I suggest higher carb content for that day. If you’re focusing on full-on fat loss workouts that day, I suggest you go low carb or maybe even do a 24 hour fast on that day. The secret is to match up the training type with the right types and quantities of carbs.

Parth: I get emails every day about people who yo-yo with their weight. They lose a lot of weight when they diet strict, but then gain it all back and more once they’re off their diets. What advice do you have for my readers who are looking for permanent weight loss?

Adam Steer: The thing most people get wrong is the timeline. You can’t expect to set a deadline three weeks from now. You might lose all the weight you want. But you’ll be so miserable in the process, and your metabolism will be so crashed, that as soon as you “hit your goal,” you’ll unleash your inner Kraken and gain all the weight back and more.

Instead, set a more realistic timeline for yourself. And get it into your head that you are absolutely FINE in the body you’re living in today. You’re not in a hurry, because you know that chipping away over the long term is going to give you an even BETTER body in 12 or 16 weeks than you could ever hope for on 3 or 4 week crash diets.

Incredible stuff! If you want to take advantage of bodyweight training for fat loss, then check out Adam Steer’s Bodyweight Burn! Click here for more information.