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The best way to lose weight and spot reduction are probably two of the biggest misconceptions in diet and exercise history. The truth is that there is no fastest way, there's only one way, diet and exercise. The problem is that a lot of people, especially women, misconstrue diet to mean eating significantly less and starving their body, this is actually counterproductive and I'll briefly explain why.
The reason that you wouldn’t see a noticeable change is because your body wants to be efficient, and to be efficient it ends up consuming muscle before fatty tissue. This occurs for two reasons. First, the process of breaking down muscle tissue provides fuel that the body uses to create the energy that it needs to function, and second it reduces the muscle’s size. This reduction in size is important because every muscle movement requires energy; the larger a muscle is the more energy it requires to move, and so decreasing the size of the muscle reduces the amount of energy that is needed to facilitate this movement.
This means that when the body does use fat as fuel, since the muscles are now smaller and require less energy to move them, the same amount of fat will be able to fuel them for longer than if they were their original size. Another reason that a physical change in size may not be noticeable is because muscle mass has a higher density than fat. If you took the same amount (volume) of muscle and fat and weighed them, the muscle would weigh about 18% more than the fat. So, because the body is consuming muscle tissue first, after weeks of starvation you are only slightly thinner despite weighing less, and you are actually physically weaker due to your body cannibalizing your muscle tissue.
This results in normal movement becoming more strenuous, and combined with the fact that your metabolism is producing just enough energy to keep you functioning, you feel fatigued. This response doesn’t kick in for most people however, onset of starvation is a severe case, but the principles driving it are important for the rest of this article and bare mentioning.
Second, eat natural foods. Put down the sody pop, fries, and candy, the artificial fats and refined sugars that are in these food items are awful for your system on so many levels. Instead start eating fruits and vegetables, grains, lean meats, and instead of pop, drink water. But I can’t eat healthy, you say. Everyone can eat healthy, and just because something is healthy doesn’t mean it has to taste bad. Find natural foods that you enjoy eating, or learn to cook to make your food taste better and you won’t feel like you’re making a sacrifice.
Also, don’t go on a strict natural diet. I mean, if you can then that’s great but most people give up because they feel they can’t do it, to remedy this you can indulge yourself in eating fast foods, fries, drink pop every now and again, just make sure it’s not often; only a few times a month. Don’t however be shocked when eating that burger makes you feel awful because this is a common response. Your body is literally rejecting the food because it’s just a bunch of empty calories and your body is expecting some kind of nutritional value.
Any exercise is always good, “if you’re sweating it’s working,” is what I always say to people who ask me for advice. With that said however, the quality of exercise can differ tremendously, with certain types of exercise being more efficient and yielding much greater benefits than others practiced in the same time frame. It is also important to note that a lot of information has been released in the last few years with respect to training volume, type, and intensity, and analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of different activities. The problem is that some studies provide conflicting results and so there is constant debate about the best way to train. I’ll share with you what I have found.
Most adults will get a gym membership, go 3 to 4 times a week (if they are motivated), and run on a treadmill or elliptical for 30 to 40 minutes at a time trying to maintain a certain target heart rate. Although this will burn excess calories it actually does have some disadvantages that can prove to be detrimental to their progress:
Originally believed that this was training the body’s ability to more efficiently use oxygen, this is a debunked myth. The truth is that genetics determine the body’s ability to use oxygen and thus the resulting improvement in activity is attributable to increases in skill and muscular strength. Think about it this way, if your body finds a more efficient way to run on the treadmill, you’ll actually be doing less work. Having to do less work means that your muscles will be required to burn fewer calories, and thus you’re burning less fat. The fact is that 1 pound of fat can allow for up to 10 hours of continuous activity. Now, is it worth it to run 10 hours continuously to burn 1 pound of fat?
It seems hopeless doesn’t it?
Well there’s good news, there is actually a better way to train. It’s called high-intensity interval training or HIIT for short. It is also sometimes referred to as anaerobic exercise because the intensity triggers the anaerobic metabolism (where you’re burning fuel without oxygen). HIIT entails exactly what it says, high intensity exercise for a short period of time with rest intervals in between. This type of activity stimulates the metabolism and you’ll actually still be burning fat even while resting. In fact this ‘boost’ lasts so long that you’ll continue to burn calories at a faster rate long after you have finished your workout.
The reason that this method of exercise is effective is because when working at a higher intensity the body burns more calories in a shorter period of time. This relationship increases at an increasing rate, so the harder you go the more calories you’re going to burn in the same amount of time; this should be pretty logical. The whole idea behind using exercise to burn fat is creating a caloric deficit so that your body has to end up using its stored fat as fuel, and although all exercise will provide this benefit, certain training methods will do it more efficiently than others.
The best way to gauge when you’re exercising in the anaerobic zone is when your heart rate is above 85% of your maximum heart rate (MHR) which can be determined using online calculators or using the standard MHR formula. A word of caution however, most people who take part in this activity are those who have trained hard so that their body can handle the stress. For this reason, if you would like to exercise in an anaerobic fashion you should work up to it, don’t go beyond your capacity. You don’t want to be working to the point where you feel faint or dizzy and it feels like your heart is going to burst out of your chest. I suggest doing some online research beforehand and perhaps reading a how-to or beginners guide to anaerobic training.
Sound like too much work for you? Well there’s another method that many in the health and fitness community agree is the best approach, strength training. The common argument against HIIT is that it shares several of the pitfalls of standard aerobic training. Some claim that like aerobic training, anaerobic training is generally hard on the joints. This is a common misconception because it all depends on the nature of the exercise you are performing and in fact, strength training is a type of HIIT. HIIT is actually the all-encompassing term, with strength training being a specific sub-set. There are such exercises where this argument does hold true however, like high intensity running.
For such exercise I think it is important to note that posture and lacking the full range of bodily motion can aggravate the situation even further due to pressure being distributed unevenly over the working joints, resulting in a higher risk of injury. Also during certain anaerobic exercises, like aerobic training, your body is consuming some muscle mass as fuel, and based on what I stated earlier – that larger a muscle is the more fuel it requires to function – this is counterproductive.
Strength training is usually based on movement against a load (read: weight) where such movements generate less impact than a lot of other anaerobic activities, like sprinting. This means that they cause less compression of the joints. With that in mind, it is said that there are no bad exercises, there is only bad technique. A whole discussion of good strength training technique is definitely beyond the scope of this particular article. However, I cannot stress its importance enough. The fact is that improper technique is associated with a high risk of injury when dealing with heavy weights. This word of caution is more for men than women, as women generally do not participate in heavy lifting as extensively as men do. However, proper form is still important for women as it ensures you get the best results from the particular exercise.
Now that all the negatives are out of the way, let’s focus on the advantages of strength training, there are two main ones:
There are however two important caveats to building muscle:
First, you don’t want your caloric intake to drop below 50% of your body’s natural requirement. The reason for this is because, as I explained before, your body will go into ‘starvation’ mode. This shouldn’t be a concern though since you’ll naturally become hungry before this happens and hopefully end up eating.
The second may come as a shock initially, but your appetite will increase. Because you’re now packing on muscle and you’re raising your resting metabolic rate (BMR), otherwise known as your basal metabolic rate (BMR), your body will naturally burn calories faster to support the functioning of vital organs and components of the nervous system, one of these components being your muscles.
This is especially important for women who will not want to increase their food intake because they think that eating too much will make them fat. Have you ever seen a petite and fit woman who can just eat and eat and eat without gaining a pound? Chances are it’s because she has a fast metabolism that is supported by regular exercise. In fact, if you exercise regularly, you can actually ‘cheat’ more regarding your diet. That’s why these leaner women can eat more ‘junk food’ without worry. It is important to note however that if you are looking to make significant strength and mass gains, cheating with respect to your diet will definitely hinder your progress, and you should always try to eat healthy. On a completely different note, studies have also shown that aerobic exercise does not increase BMR and this is yet another reason that it’s inefficient for burning fat.
Most of what I have covered in this article applies to both sexes, however there are some implications and misconceptions regarding strength training for women. First of all women don’t want to participate because they feel it’s more of a man’s domain, it’s not. Second, they say that they don’t want to train because they don’t want to ‘get big.’ The truth is that in most cases it’s physically impossible for both men and women to get ‘big,’ and physiologists will verify this.
To actually achieve a size that is beyond your genetic predisposition usually requires steroids. Instead, the muscles of men and women grow in a proportional fashion, what is the result? A leaner ‘toned’ body with more muscle and less fat. But, you said that muscle weighs more than fat, won’t that make me heavier? Yes, but if you look better what’s the problem? The belief that the more you weigh the fatter you are isn’t necessarily true, especially because different people have different total body fat percentages.
Consider two people, both are the same height and weight, now consider one is primarily muscle mass while the other is just average. Because fat is less dense than muscle, and thus weighs less, one pound of fat will take up more space than one pound of muscle. If you’re having trouble visualizing this, think of one pound of feathers vs. one pound of iron. Therefore since a pound of fat takes up more space, the individual with the more muscular physique will appear leaner than the average person with a higher amount of total body fat.
Also, everyone has a natural layer of fat covering their muscle tissue, women will be reducing this layer through exercise, but not enough to make it seem as though they are too defined. Most women want to look ‘firm’ and athletic like the ones you see on the covers of fitness magazines. The thing is that you can actually see the muscle on these women. It’s not too defined, just enough to be sexy. Do you think they build muscle running on a treadmill? Think about it logically given what you know now about fitness, I’m not going to answer this one for you. The bottom line is that ladies, you won’t get ‘big’ or too defined. Achieving a defined muscular look for a woman takes a lot of work and precise dieting to lower your body fat enough to actually see this kind of definition.
Strength training doesn’t mean just grabbing the 2.5 lb dumbbells and doing 8 sets of 20 reps. You have to actively challenge the muscle, you need to work it, you need resistance against it. In fact the key rule for building muscle mass is that you need to apply as much resistance as your muscles can stand for 10 to 15 repetitions. Also, don’t think more is better, try to stay within this 10 to 15 repetition range and do two to three sets for each activity. You’ll also want to include different exercises that target multiple muscles if possible. Just doing curls all day will only benefit your bicep muscles; you need a comprehensive full-body workout routine.
So there you have it, pretty much the basics behind diet and nutrition so go online and find a routine and give it a shot, it’s not a hard as you think. As you get into it, do more research about proper dieting, technique, and how to better structure your routine to get the best results.
As a final little tidbit for the more advanced strength trainer, I would like to mention that, as is the case with steady-state activities like running, your body naturally becomes more efficient at lifting in a certain range of motion. For this reason, you’ll want to vary your routine at least every three months to ensure that you don’t become too skilled at performing a particular exercise. Even just changing the angle of the lift slightly can make it significantly more difficult. Then when another 3 months passes, go back to repeating the original exercise.
Now get out there and enjoy your workout, and good luck, you probably won’t need it.
When you don't eat, your body's metabolism slows down and it goes into a catabolic state normally referred to as 'starvation’ or ‘survival’ mode.
This is a complex issue, so to keep it manageable I'll give you the abridged version. This state is a natural response that occurs when the number of calories your body is receiving falls far below its total caloric requirement, specifically, below half. Its function is to increase survivability when food is not available for an extended period of time. The catch here is that, most people think that the body would first use up fat stores (which are actually its energy reserves) and even though your metabolism is not as active, over time you'd become thinner. It is true that you’d lose weight after starving yourself for a long period of time, however, the change is probably not going to be as noticeable as you’d expect and certainly not worth the health risks that come with it.The reason that you wouldn’t see a noticeable change is because your body wants to be efficient, and to be efficient it ends up consuming muscle before fatty tissue. This occurs for two reasons. First, the process of breaking down muscle tissue provides fuel that the body uses to create the energy that it needs to function, and second it reduces the muscle’s size. This reduction in size is important because every muscle movement requires energy; the larger a muscle is the more energy it requires to move, and so decreasing the size of the muscle reduces the amount of energy that is needed to facilitate this movement.
"Every muscle movement requires energy - the larger a muscle is the more energy it requires to move."
This means that when the body does use fat as fuel, since the muscles are now smaller and require less energy to move them, the same amount of fat will be able to fuel them for longer than if they were their original size. Another reason that a physical change in size may not be noticeable is because muscle mass has a higher density than fat. If you took the same amount (volume) of muscle and fat and weighed them, the muscle would weigh about 18% more than the fat. So, because the body is consuming muscle tissue first, after weeks of starvation you are only slightly thinner despite weighing less, and you are actually physically weaker due to your body cannibalizing your muscle tissue.
This results in normal movement becoming more strenuous, and combined with the fact that your metabolism is producing just enough energy to keep you functioning, you feel fatigued. This response doesn’t kick in for most people however, onset of starvation is a severe case, but the principles driving it are important for the rest of this article and bare mentioning.
So, how do you lose those pounds?
First of all, try eating less during each meal, but eat more frequently during the day. Don’t decrease the amount you eat in total, eat the same amount of food as you normally would in any given day, but just spread it over a greater number of meals. This keeps your metabolism at an optimal rate throughout the day to burn excess calories so they don't turn into fat while you sleep. Eating three static meals a day represent caloric intake spikes, so in the interim your metabolic rate actually decreases until your next meal, and then speeds up again after it. The goal here is to keep a steady metabolic rate throughout the day to burn an optimal amount of calories. Also, eat breakfast, it truly is the most important meal of the day because it's jump-starting you metabolism and you can start burning excess calories immediately."Find natural foods that you enjoy eating, or learn to cook to make your food taste better and you won’t feel like you’re making a sacrifice."
Second, eat natural foods. Put down the sody pop, fries, and candy, the artificial fats and refined sugars that are in these food items are awful for your system on so many levels. Instead start eating fruits and vegetables, grains, lean meats, and instead of pop, drink water. But I can’t eat healthy, you say. Everyone can eat healthy, and just because something is healthy doesn’t mean it has to taste bad. Find natural foods that you enjoy eating, or learn to cook to make your food taste better and you won’t feel like you’re making a sacrifice.
Also, don’t go on a strict natural diet. I mean, if you can then that’s great but most people give up because they feel they can’t do it, to remedy this you can indulge yourself in eating fast foods, fries, drink pop every now and again, just make sure it’s not often; only a few times a month. Don’t however be shocked when eating that burger makes you feel awful because this is a common response. Your body is literally rejecting the food because it’s just a bunch of empty calories and your body is expecting some kind of nutritional value.
What about this whole exercise thing you mentioned what seems like ages ago?
Well, nutrition is the first piece of the puzzle, the second as I mentioned is exercise. Now there’s a lot of information out there about what works best and a lot of it is contradictory so take what I say with a grain of salt. It’s more of an amalgamation of what I have read that in my mind seems to be logical, valid, and popular opinion in the health and fitness community.Any exercise is always good, “if you’re sweating it’s working,” is what I always say to people who ask me for advice. With that said however, the quality of exercise can differ tremendously, with certain types of exercise being more efficient and yielding much greater benefits than others practiced in the same time frame. It is also important to note that a lot of information has been released in the last few years with respect to training volume, type, and intensity, and analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of different activities. The problem is that some studies provide conflicting results and so there is constant debate about the best way to train. I’ll share with you what I have found.
Most adults will get a gym membership, go 3 to 4 times a week (if they are motivated), and run on a treadmill or elliptical for 30 to 40 minutes at a time trying to maintain a certain target heart rate. Although this will burn excess calories it actually does have some disadvantages that can prove to be detrimental to their progress:
- During the exercise your body will burn excess fats, the problem is that over time your body will also naturally adjust for the addition of the exercise and begin to retain more fat stores as a way to be ‘prepared’ for your next session.
- This kind of training is also very hard on your joints and muscles, and extensive activity without adequate mobility and flexibility can lead to injury.
- Because you take part in the exercise regularly, over time you will naturally become more proficient, resulting in greater efficiency while performing it.
Originally believed that this was training the body’s ability to more efficiently use oxygen, this is a debunked myth. The truth is that genetics determine the body’s ability to use oxygen and thus the resulting improvement in activity is attributable to increases in skill and muscular strength. Think about it this way, if your body finds a more efficient way to run on the treadmill, you’ll actually be doing less work. Having to do less work means that your muscles will be required to burn fewer calories, and thus you’re burning less fat. The fact is that 1 pound of fat can allow for up to 10 hours of continuous activity. Now, is it worth it to run 10 hours continuously to burn 1 pound of fat?
It seems hopeless doesn’t it?
"High intensity exercise for a short period of time with rest intervals in between stimulates the metabolism!"
Well there’s good news, there is actually a better way to train. It’s called high-intensity interval training or HIIT for short. It is also sometimes referred to as anaerobic exercise because the intensity triggers the anaerobic metabolism (where you’re burning fuel without oxygen). HIIT entails exactly what it says, high intensity exercise for a short period of time with rest intervals in between. This type of activity stimulates the metabolism and you’ll actually still be burning fat even while resting. In fact this ‘boost’ lasts so long that you’ll continue to burn calories at a faster rate long after you have finished your workout.
The reason that this method of exercise is effective is because when working at a higher intensity the body burns more calories in a shorter period of time. This relationship increases at an increasing rate, so the harder you go the more calories you’re going to burn in the same amount of time; this should be pretty logical. The whole idea behind using exercise to burn fat is creating a caloric deficit so that your body has to end up using its stored fat as fuel, and although all exercise will provide this benefit, certain training methods will do it more efficiently than others.
The best way to gauge when you’re exercising in the anaerobic zone is when your heart rate is above 85% of your maximum heart rate (MHR) which can be determined using online calculators or using the standard MHR formula. A word of caution however, most people who take part in this activity are those who have trained hard so that their body can handle the stress. For this reason, if you would like to exercise in an anaerobic fashion you should work up to it, don’t go beyond your capacity. You don’t want to be working to the point where you feel faint or dizzy and it feels like your heart is going to burst out of your chest. I suggest doing some online research beforehand and perhaps reading a how-to or beginners guide to anaerobic training.
Sound like too much work for you? Well there’s another method that many in the health and fitness community agree is the best approach, strength training. The common argument against HIIT is that it shares several of the pitfalls of standard aerobic training. Some claim that like aerobic training, anaerobic training is generally hard on the joints. This is a common misconception because it all depends on the nature of the exercise you are performing and in fact, strength training is a type of HIIT. HIIT is actually the all-encompassing term, with strength training being a specific sub-set. There are such exercises where this argument does hold true however, like high intensity running.
For such exercise I think it is important to note that posture and lacking the full range of bodily motion can aggravate the situation even further due to pressure being distributed unevenly over the working joints, resulting in a higher risk of injury. Also during certain anaerobic exercises, like aerobic training, your body is consuming some muscle mass as fuel, and based on what I stated earlier – that larger a muscle is the more fuel it requires to function – this is counterproductive.
Strength training is usually based on movement against a load (read: weight) where such movements generate less impact than a lot of other anaerobic activities, like sprinting. This means that they cause less compression of the joints. With that in mind, it is said that there are no bad exercises, there is only bad technique. A whole discussion of good strength training technique is definitely beyond the scope of this particular article. However, I cannot stress its importance enough. The fact is that improper technique is associated with a high risk of injury when dealing with heavy weights. This word of caution is more for men than women, as women generally do not participate in heavy lifting as extensively as men do. However, proper form is still important for women as it ensures you get the best results from the particular exercise.
Now that all the negatives are out of the way, let’s focus on the advantages of strength training, there are two main ones:
- The first arises from the activity itself, and probably won’t surprise you given what you now know about strength training. It stimulates the anaerobic metabolism like HIIT. Obviously! Because it is a type of high intensity training, right? Exactly. Also, continued anaerobic activity boosts the metabolism meaning that your body will consume calories at a faster rate than if you were inactive.
- The second advantage is that development of a high amount of lean muscle literally turns your body into a fat-burning furnace. Here it comes again, larger muscles require more fuel to function, so even when you’re not working out your body needs to burn more calories to facilitate for daily activities and will burn fat if it can’t get these calories from food. In fact, for females an additional pound of muscle requires 75 to 100 calories a day just to sustain it.
There are however two important caveats to building muscle:
First, you don’t want your caloric intake to drop below 50% of your body’s natural requirement. The reason for this is because, as I explained before, your body will go into ‘starvation’ mode. This shouldn’t be a concern though since you’ll naturally become hungry before this happens and hopefully end up eating.
The second may come as a shock initially, but your appetite will increase. Because you’re now packing on muscle and you’re raising your resting metabolic rate (BMR), otherwise known as your basal metabolic rate (BMR), your body will naturally burn calories faster to support the functioning of vital organs and components of the nervous system, one of these components being your muscles.
This is especially important for women who will not want to increase their food intake because they think that eating too much will make them fat. Have you ever seen a petite and fit woman who can just eat and eat and eat without gaining a pound? Chances are it’s because she has a fast metabolism that is supported by regular exercise. In fact, if you exercise regularly, you can actually ‘cheat’ more regarding your diet. That’s why these leaner women can eat more ‘junk food’ without worry. It is important to note however that if you are looking to make significant strength and mass gains, cheating with respect to your diet will definitely hinder your progress, and you should always try to eat healthy. On a completely different note, studies have also shown that aerobic exercise does not increase BMR and this is yet another reason that it’s inefficient for burning fat.
Most of what I have covered in this article applies to both sexes, however there are some implications and misconceptions regarding strength training for women. First of all women don’t want to participate because they feel it’s more of a man’s domain, it’s not. Second, they say that they don’t want to train because they don’t want to ‘get big.’ The truth is that in most cases it’s physically impossible for both men and women to get ‘big,’ and physiologists will verify this.
To actually achieve a size that is beyond your genetic predisposition usually requires steroids. Instead, the muscles of men and women grow in a proportional fashion, what is the result? A leaner ‘toned’ body with more muscle and less fat. But, you said that muscle weighs more than fat, won’t that make me heavier? Yes, but if you look better what’s the problem? The belief that the more you weigh the fatter you are isn’t necessarily true, especially because different people have different total body fat percentages.
Consider two people, both are the same height and weight, now consider one is primarily muscle mass while the other is just average. Because fat is less dense than muscle, and thus weighs less, one pound of fat will take up more space than one pound of muscle. If you’re having trouble visualizing this, think of one pound of feathers vs. one pound of iron. Therefore since a pound of fat takes up more space, the individual with the more muscular physique will appear leaner than the average person with a higher amount of total body fat.
Also, everyone has a natural layer of fat covering their muscle tissue, women will be reducing this layer through exercise, but not enough to make it seem as though they are too defined. Most women want to look ‘firm’ and athletic like the ones you see on the covers of fitness magazines. The thing is that you can actually see the muscle on these women. It’s not too defined, just enough to be sexy. Do you think they build muscle running on a treadmill? Think about it logically given what you know now about fitness, I’m not going to answer this one for you. The bottom line is that ladies, you won’t get ‘big’ or too defined. Achieving a defined muscular look for a woman takes a lot of work and precise dieting to lower your body fat enough to actually see this kind of definition.
"You’ll also want to include different exercises that target multiple muscles if possible."
Strength training doesn’t mean just grabbing the 2.5 lb dumbbells and doing 8 sets of 20 reps. You have to actively challenge the muscle, you need to work it, you need resistance against it. In fact the key rule for building muscle mass is that you need to apply as much resistance as your muscles can stand for 10 to 15 repetitions. Also, don’t think more is better, try to stay within this 10 to 15 repetition range and do two to three sets for each activity. You’ll also want to include different exercises that target multiple muscles if possible. Just doing curls all day will only benefit your bicep muscles; you need a comprehensive full-body workout routine.
So there you have it, pretty much the basics behind diet and nutrition so go online and find a routine and give it a shot, it’s not a hard as you think. As you get into it, do more research about proper dieting, technique, and how to better structure your routine to get the best results.
As a final little tidbit for the more advanced strength trainer, I would like to mention that, as is the case with steady-state activities like running, your body naturally becomes more efficient at lifting in a certain range of motion. For this reason, you’ll want to vary your routine at least every three months to ensure that you don’t become too skilled at performing a particular exercise. Even just changing the angle of the lift slightly can make it significantly more difficult. Then when another 3 months passes, go back to repeating the original exercise.
Now get out there and enjoy your workout, and good luck, you probably won’t need it.
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