![]() Why weight loss requires strength training, even in women and seniors. Did you know that strength training is crucial for successfully losing weight and keeping it off? I'm talking about weight- bearing exercise. It doesn't have to be a huge, hulking workout where you're trying to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime, it just has to be some basic strength training. Because a lot of people try to starve themselves into weight loss. They think it's all about controlling calories. ![]() ![]() Unfortunately, a lot of dieticians and nutritionists don't really understand strength training, and they also think that it's just about calories. Calories in, calories out. If you have a calorie deficit, you're going to lose weight, if you consume extra calories, you'll gain body fat. While that's true, it's only part of the picture. Sure, you need a calorie deficit to lose weight, but how does your body actually use calories? It's your lean body mass, that muscle mass underneath your body fat, that burns calories 2. I used to be in that situation; I know what it feels like. Underneath that body fat you actually have a very strong skeleton and strong muscles. Your body has built up those muscles in order to carry all of that extra body fat when you move your body. ![]() Just the very act of standing up, walking across a parking lot, going up a flight of stairs or lifting your arms requires more effort when you're overweight, especially if you're obese. So the heavier you are, the stronger your muscles have to be just to allow you to do basic, everyday things. But if you starve yourself, you're going to lose all the muscle resources you already have. It's a mistake a lot of people make. Why would the body get rid of muscle mass? Because, frankly, it doesn't need it. It will adapt to whatever loads you place on it.
So if you are a heavier person and you're carrying around body fat, then your body will adapt by creating stronger muscles to lift your body. It's almost like doing a leg press every time you get up out of the chair. If you weigh 3. 00 lbs you're doing a 3. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Now if you were to drop 1. It would eliminate those leg muscles through catabolic action. Remember, it's the lean body mass that's burning calories day in and day out, even when you're doing nothing. If you reduce that muscle mass by allowing it to go away (by not challenging your muscles), then your metabolism is going to slow. A lot of people end up at a place where they've lost the body fat and they're lighter, but it's suddenly so much easier to put on body fat. Did you know that strength training is crucial for successfully losing weight and keeping it off? I'm talking about weight-bearing exercise. It doesn't have to be a. TOPIC: What Is The Best 12-Week Fat Loss Transformation Workout For Men? Twelve weeks is a good time frame to set some short-term fitness goals. To keep the pounds at bay, cut back on cardio for a few weeks to focus on strength training exercises that increase metabolism and build lean muscle. ![]() If you do this, then you will be able to maintain the muscle mass that you already have underneath your body fat while you are in the process of losing the fat. This will leave you with a greater proportion of lean body mass to body fat, meaning that you will be slimmer, yet you'll have the muscles that you had when you were overweight. If you're a woman, don't worry. You're never going to bulk up. A lot of women are mistakenly afraid of strength training. They think that if they pump a few weights they're going to turn into Lou Ferrigno overnight. They think they're going to have this competition muscle- bound body from lifting a couple of weights. Believe me, that is not the case at all. Most of those bodybuilding women are using steroids, and they've trained for years, even decades, just to produce that kind of muscle mass. Women are not built to puts on lots of muscle mass, so don't be afraid that you'll bulk up. Women who are afraid of exercising because they think it's going to make them look bigger have it all wrong. Let's say you're a woman and you have more body fat than you want. You're trying to decide, . It's sort of like the marbling of beef from a cow. If you slice a muscle from a cow, there's some fat inside the muscle - - that is the same kind of fat that's in our muscles when we have a high percentage of body fat. When you start losing body fat, even if you're engaged in strength training, that intramuscular fat will begin to vanish. So even if your muscle mass begins to grow - - which, again, is very difficult for women to accomplish - - your overall muscle size is probably going to be smaller when you're at a lower percentage of body fat. The net change in your muscle size is going to be almost nothing, unless you really start to do strength training on a regular basis for a period of a year or two, and then you might actually begin to put on a little bit more muscle. Now here's why this is so important. It's very easy for your body to shed useless muscle. So if you're not using a muscle, your body will get rid of it over a few months. But to gain that muscle back - - now that takes some effort! That could take months or years of strength training. It is much harder for your body to engage in anabolic reactions (to build muscle mass) than it is for your body to catabolize and get rid of muscles. So, if you decide you're going to starve yourself while you lose weight and get down to the minimum weight possible, and afterwards you engage in strength training, then you're going to find that it's a much more difficult process to gain lean body mass than it was to slim away what you had to begin with. Building lean body mass is a huge challenge. They mean they want to lose body fat; they don't want to just lose weight. A limb amputation will cause you to lose weight, but that's not what people have in mind! People want to lose body fat. So be careful what you wish for - - and don't use that bathroom scale as a measure of your progress. There are a number of reasons why. But you've done yourself no good whatsoever, because now you've actually lowered your metabolism. You lost another three pounds! You want to lose maybe 2. But to do that, you've got to challenge your muscular system through some weight bearing exercise. Glycogen is basically a fuel stored in your body. It stores sugars together with water and locks them up in the tissues and organs of your body like an energy battery, ready for you to use at a future time. That water weighs a lot. So when you start restricting your calories, the first thing your body burns is this extra storage of energy, this extra glycogen. And the glycogen causes you, as it's burned, to shed water. You might look at the scale and think, gee, I lost 5 lbs, but you really lost no body fat whatsoever. It was just water, because your body released glycogen. What usually happens to people when their glycogen store has reached zero is they get really hungry, they think they're in a starvation panic, and then they overeat. Their glycogen stores fill right back up, they gain the 5 lbs back, and usually they overate to such an extent that they store another half a pound of body fat or so. Now they're half a pound heavier than when they began and they lost no body fat whatsoever. It was just a game of glycogen and water storage they saw reflected on the bathroom scale. It is not useful for telling you how successful you are in losing body fat. I don't use one at all. The only measure you should use is a . A caliper is the best way to measure body fat. Body fat calipers measure the thickness of body fat in key locations around your body. For men, one location is on the upper pectoral area, another is the midsection and the third is on the top of the quadriceps of the leg. For women it's the back of the arm, the midsection and along the hip. I just mention it as a tool for people who are really serious about losing fat. People who use bathroom scales to figure out how much weight they've lost are just playing a silly game of deception - - the bathroom scale is useless. I mean, you could lose bone mass and you'd still look like you were having lots of progress on the bathroom scale. Easy: you stop engaging in exercise, stop walking, stop running. If you do all that (which I'm not recommending, by the way), then you would start to lose bone mineral density, and that would be reflected as weight loss. When you say you want to lose weight, be careful what you ask for. Your body has a number of ways to lose weight that have nothing whatsoever to do with losing body fat or enhancing your overall state of health. So far, I hope I've explained the idea that underneath your body fat you have a strong musculoskeletal system. There's a lot of muscle mass and good, strong bones underneath all of that body fat. If you find a strategy to conserve that, even while you're losing body fat, then you can have a much more successful weight loss experience and end up with a strong skeleton and strong muscles at the end of your regimen as well. And it turns out that you don't have to go crazy on this. I am not suggesting that you go to the gym and start pumping iron on the bench press, 5. It turns out that you don't even need to stress your body very much to maintain the current muscle mass that you have. The best thing is that it takes very little time. How much time am I talking about? You'll be amazed to hear this, but literally, it's true: 1. Only 1. 5 seconds per muscle. If you engage that muscle for 1. It needs to keep it around. And your body decides NOT to let that muscle go. It just keeps it, because it figures you need it. The body wants to get rid of muscles it doesn't need, and in order to keep those muscles, you have to prove to your body that you need them. Now the thing is, your body doesn't know why you need them. It could be that you're engaged in some kind of competition, it could be that you need to lift heavy things to survive. Your body doesn't really know the reason why. You can essentially fool your body by engaging in strength training, giving it the message that it needs to hold on to those muscles in order to survive. So in as little as 1. That's a 1. 5 second bicep curl, for example, or a 1. It gives you the lowdown on how to do this. It's positioned at bodybuilders, but it's actually the underground secret book of strength training for people who are 5. Senior citizens benefit from this tremendously.
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