It may not be the ideal situation, but it's happened to just about every triathlete, typically about 3-5 weeks before your big race. You step on the scale and...you're heavy.

Really heavy.

You panic. You're stuck between a rock and a hard place, because you can't just go on a very low calorie diet combined with even more training. Your race plan would suffer, you'd lose lean muscle, and you likely would get sick from a weakened immune system and poor recovery.

So what do you do?

In the fitness world, where I spend quite a bit of time working with people who want to "lose fat but not lose muscle", there are little tricks that I incorporate into the weekly routine that will equal significant gains in weight loss and fat burning, without sacrificing lean muscle mass. Over years of training hundreds of clients and athletes, I've discovered 3 of these key fat burning techniques that achieve the best results.

Here they are:

1) One to two days per week, complete a long, slow cardio session in your fat-burning heart rate zone (about 50-60% intensity). Preferably do this in the morning before breakfast.

During this session, fuel with just 100 calories per hr (small people and females) or 150 calories per hour (large people and males). This session should be 1.5 hour minimum and up to 3 hours maximum. This is because a) the enzymes responsible for burning fat during exercise must be trained to work at a high efficiency, and this only occurs during extended, low-intensity cardio sessions that stimulate the same muscle over and over again; b) too long in an "unfed" or minimally fed state will lead to high cortisol levels and an unhealthy stress response. Do no more than two of these sessions per week, especially if you are building up to a race.

2) At least 2 days/week, complete a high intensity non-aerobic interval training sessions of 30 minutes, that includes at least 10 minutes spent above an 8 on an exertional scale of 1-10.

There is a crucial paradox in exercise and in triathlon training. While exertion at lower intensities will burn primarily fat as a fuel, you actually burn *less* total fat than compared with exercise at higher intensities. Why is this? Because when you exercise at a lower intensity, you burn significantly fewer calories. For example, you may burn 70% fat and 30% carbohydrate during low intensity exercise at 300 calories per hour. That's 210 calories of fat per hour. But at a higher intensity of, say 900 calories per hour, you may burn 30% fat and 70% carbohydrate. That's 270 calories of fat per hour. There are also huge implications with intense workouts, primarily an increase in fat-burning hormones, post-exercise metabolic rate, and lean muscle tissue building. Interval training is the ideal way to achieve these type of sessions and are comprised of hard efforts at a high intensity separated by rest periods at a low intensity. This should fit in well with your race plan. These workouts must be well-fueled and not performed on an empty stomach or with low blood sugar.

3) At least 5 days/week complete 20 minutes of aerobic, fat-burning cardio prior to breakfast.

When you wake up in the morning, your body has burned through a significant portion of the liver's carbohydrate stores. You can activate fat mobilization and burning early in the day by completing a light cardio session when you are in this "fasted" state. More is not better in this case. If you go for a 2 hour run, you'll return completely depleted and in fat-storage mode. Instead, go light and easy for a short period of time, then consume a healthy and complex breakfast that includes good fats, complete proteins, slow digesting carbohydrates, and fiber.

As you employ these three strategies, ensure that you are consuming adequate protein intake to avoid lean muscle mass wasting. For most triathletes leading up to a race, I recommend this amount of protein to be 1.2-1.4 grams per pound of body weight. The ultimate goal is to "treat your body well" by fueling it adequately for the high intensity sessions, then work low intensity, minimally fueled fat burning sessions in throughout the week.

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Good luck!