People that are overweight focus on trying to lose weight.
This is often the wrong way to look at it. When you lose
weight you lose a combination of fat and muscle. Now muscle
is not what you should be losing and you should be doing
everything to hang onto it. You did not get overweight by
having too much muscle, you became overweight because your
body is carrying too much fat, and it is the fat you should
be concentrating on losing.
If you have been trying to lose weight and you step on the
scales after a month to find you have lost 10 pounds, you
might feel pretty good about yourself. The problem is that
at least half of the weight you have lost could be muscle.
Muscle is living active tissue and it needs calories to
stay on your body. Fat however is just dead weight that
sits there as stored energy. When you go on a low calorie
diet, your body will think it is starving. It will then
begin to take the calories from the protein stored in your
muscles to compensate for the calories it is not getting
through food. This will make your muscles smaller and
weaker. Small and weak muscles burn far fewer calories than
bigger and stronger muscle.
In the long term this will affect your abilities to lose
fat. If you look at long distance runners, you will see
that they are very thin and have little muscle tone. This
is because all they do is cardio for long periods of time.
Lets face it not many people will want the body of a long
distance runner. If you look at sprinters you will see that
they have very different physiques. They look lean,
muscular, and strong. This is because they need powerful
muscles to generate the power to run short distances at
great speed. They use training routines which not only stop
them from losing muscle, but increase it. Most of us would
rather have the body of a sprinter than a long distance
runner.
You must include a weight training routine in your weight
loss program. This will not only help you lose weight and
keep muscle, it will also leave you in a situation where
you won't have to cut back on large amounts of calories
from your diet. All you will have to do is to replace the
calories you get from bad food with calories from good
food. This will stop you and your body from feeling
miserable because you are starving yourself.
Many diets call for large reductions in calories. Now while
you may lose some weight in the short term, the muscle loss
will ensure that you don't lose much more weight in the
long term. The reason low calorie diets exist is because
they cater for peoples demands for a quick fix for weight
loss. The truth is that there is no such thing as a quick
fix when it comes to losing weight. If there was, why
aren't all the quick fixes out there working? Why are more
people gaining weight rather than losing it? Why does the
weight loss industry continually bring out new diets or
products, while there are already so many out there
claiming miraculous results?
The answer is simple; they don't work for the vast majority
of the people that want to lose weight. If you really want
to lose weight, you don't need fad diets and pills. All you
need is a sensible approach, with the knowledge that if you
keep doing what you have set out to do over a period of
time, then the results will come. Also the results you get
will be far longer lasting and not just a flash in the pan
which disappear after a month or two.
Look at you diet and figure out what you need to drop from
it. Decide what good foods you are going to add to your
diet. Eat sensibly by never missing breakfast. Eat smaller
meals 4 or 5 times a day instead of 2 or 3 large meals.
Your body is happier with smaller meals because they are
easier to digest and less can be stored as fat. A big meal
is harder to digest and once your body has used what it
needs, what it doesn't gat rid of through waste, it will
store as fat. Sensible eating is not some secret you have
to pay for. You already know what is bad in your diet and
what is good.
As well as cardio you must include a weight training
routine in your exercise program. The more muscle you have
the more calories you will burn, it's that simple. Do you
want a lean, muscular, and healthy body or do you want a
thin, soft, and flabby looking body? Training for muscle
will give you the first; not training for muscle will give
you the second. Remember lose fat not weight.
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