If you remember from my last newsletter, I said I would expand in the future on body composition parameters like lean muscle mass, fat mass and how much water your body contains. Well, I recently did a DEXA scan and felt compelled to go down the road of body fat percentage today.

I’m not going into great detail about my personal body fat percentage. But I will divulge that I was in the normal range for my age. In fact, I was in the top percentile. However, I would still feel better if I dropped about 3 percent. So I decided to make this fun and give you three smoking gun tips to do the same if it happens to tickle your fancy.

1. Stop eating late at night.

Do you know what one of THE biggest contributors to weight gain and ill health is? You guessed it, eating late at night. I know, calories in vs calories out, right? As long as you burn more calories every day then you consume, you will lose weight… Sorry, but it’s not that simple.

When you eat late at night, you disturb your Circadian Rhythm. This simply means that your body and all of its organs function differently at different times of the day. Your pancreas does not like to work late at night. When you ask it to release insulin after say, 7 pm, it throws a fit. It doesn’t want to be disturbed and it has a harder time stabilizing blood sugar levels.

Couple that with the fact that your metabolism naturally slows down at night and you have a recipe for weight gain. In turn, your body goes into fat-storage mode, regardless of how clean the food is.

Plus, you prevent your body’s natural mechanisms from taking place, like recovering from hard workouts. The result of that is from human growth hormone (HGH) going down.

Simply put, eating late causes your hormones to be out of whack, which creates a favorable environment for weight gain. The best-case scenario is to finish no later than 7 pm, but the earlier, the better.

2. Fit additional activity into your day.

Any additional movement you get into your daily life will pay big dividends when it comes to cutting your body fat percentage down by a few points. Take a power walk at lunchtime, get up 10 minutes early and do some bodyweight drills or join a recreational sport league in your town.

Just find something you like to do and add it to your calendar. Even 5-to-10-minute bouts of activity sprinkled in through the day will help you lean out faster.

3. Don’t follow a fad diet.

There is no shortage of fad diet plans to follow out there. If you decide to give up all forms of carbs and follow the caveman diet, for example, you run the risk of falling off the wagon because it’s so restrictive and not sustainable over the long-haul.

Even if you did shave 3% body fat off your body, you run the risk of gaining it all back with interest the day you decide you’re craving a slice of pizza and give in. Your diet should be sustainable and balanced with quality sources of protein, carbs and fat.

If you want to do anything at all, simply eliminate liquid calories. That, in conjunction with more daily activity alone will send your body fat spiraling downward.

Take-home Message

In reality, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel or get super extreme to lose a few pounds and get back on track. As long as you stick with basic principles and display even the slightest bit of discipline, you can easily trim a few percentage points of fat off your body.