« A Licensed Practical Nurse Comes to the Conclusion to Stop Smoking, Quit Drinking, Go on a Diet, and Start Exercising | Home | Have A Fine Era In Health Resort »
Getting Fit
By Spa guru | October 15, 2009
The airwaves are constantly full of the same message: We’re supposed to get back in shape and stay fit. But what if we’re not sure how to do it exactly? We’ve probably all seen people in our neighborhoods trying to walk off extra pounds… but the overwhelming majority of them seem to carry as much extra weight as the rest of us. Magazines with gorgeous people gracing their covers pitch one plan after another to “lose belly fat” or “get six pack abs in six weeks.” Are they all saying the same thing? And, if there’s such a big secret that is so universally available, why isn’t everyone in already back in shape?
All the extra pounds we have been carrying around have been getting a lot of press lately. The most recent study released in late July 2009 revealed that medical spending by obese Americans averages $1400 more per year per person over a non-obese person’s. That equals nearly $150 billion a year in extra medical expenditures that could be avoided if the obesity epidemic was brought under control.
What is anyone supposed to do to learn how to get fit and lose weight without hurting themselves? There always seems to be a magic pill or new exercise machine that promises unbelievable results for little effort or incredibly little time on infomercials late at night and early in the morning. Do any of them work?
As always, one adage will certainly be true: If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.
The basic rule for weight loss is this: You have to burn more energy than you consume in order for your body to begin calling on its own stored fat for energy. Therefore analyzing what you eat every day and your daily physical activity are the next logical steps.
Your diet may contain hidden sources of an abundance of calories. Fast food, soda, pretzels, and snacks generally have way too many calories. It’s virtually impossible to make any noticeable progress when you regularly drink soda and eat fatty burgers on white bread. Besides what is usually too many calories, this is due to the chemical and hormonal responses our bodies have to various kinds of foods. Sugars and simple carbohydrates that quickly break down into simple sugars trigger the release of insulin. As a result our bodies quickly store extra calories as fat if our muscles are not demanding energy due to intense exercise. Besides the obvious, are you aware that plain white rice falls into the simple carbohydrate category? Not that it is bad, but can quickly undermine a good effort by virtue of its high glycemic index, insulin-releasing effect.
Our diet must contain the right mix of low fat proteins, complex carbohydrates, healthy fats, and mountains of vegetables.
Here’s a rule of thumb: When you prepare a meal, make your portions of lean protein and carbs equal in size and half of your meal. Make the other half of your meal all veggies. Eat six small meals like this every day instead of three large ones. This approximation approach will get you on a better path without the feeling of being starved.
Once we have a healthy diet, losing the extra fat we’ve put on over the years still requires some effort.
Low impact cardio like walking will strengthen your heart gradually and is great if you haven’t done much exercising in a long time. Elliptical trainers also are very popular for low-impact cardio. However, if you really want to lose belly fat fast, and this may come as a surprise, you should work on building muscle. And yes, this applies to you women reading this also.
Cardio exercises raise your metabolism while you’re performing the exercise and for a short time after. For some people, this is all they will need to slim down. There are great fringe benefits to walking, running, and biking too, just for some time alone in a very busy world. Getting results via low impact exercise can take longer, though, and there never seems to be enough time. Nothing is more motivating than great progress.
So, why use muscle building workout routines if you really want to lose weight fast? Muscles burn energy. More muscle mass will make it easier to burn calories. Additionally, it takes energy for your body to build and repair muscle, which breaks down during strength exercises.
Therefore, you burn energy during your strength exercise routine, and you continue to burn energy above and beyond your base metabolic rate for a longer period afterward as muscles are repaired. Also, when you force your body to repair and build muscle tissue, it releases its own growth hormone. This may come as a surprise, but growth hormone is the best known fat burner. Really!
There are only two ways to get growth hormone in your blood stream. One is illegal, dangerous, expensive, stupid, and guaranteed to destroy your life eventually. The other is natural, and a result of exercising using the right routines. The only caveat is that you actually have to work hard to see results. This doesn’t mean 12 hours a week in the gym or that you have to run five miles a day. With three workouts a week that may take an hour and a half at most, you can get significant results before you know it.
The growth hormone theory was actually even tested by a blogger at who has been recording his journey getting back in shape lifting weights–and he’s 48! His wife is doing it too, and she dropped three pants sizes in ten weeks. It worked because of the intensity of the workout. The intensity heightens the impact on your body, and that triggers the release of all the right hormones that help burn fat and build muscle.
An intense workout lifting weights doesn’t mean doing 25 sets of exercises for each body part every day! Let’s not confuse intense workouts and overtraining! Remember, too, that intensity depends entirely on your level of physical fitness. What you will perceive as an intense workout will differ greatly from everyone else’s!
The two keys to intensity are compound exercises and supersets.
A compound exercise forces you to use many muscles for each repetition. Think about exercises like bent over rows… All your muscles get involved to execute each repetition. A pushup works similarly: Besides the very obvious chest and triceps at work, leg, abdominal, back and shoulder muscles help hold your position throughout each repetition.
A superset is simply a set of exercises performed back to back with as little rest as possible between exercises. Typically, supersets are only discussed in the context of working one muscle, as in supersets for calves. However, you can work your entire body with only one superset of eight to ten different exercises.
If you have never done a full-body superset, you will be truly surprised at how difficult it becomes after only the first couple of exercises. Repeating the superset three to five times will most definitely spike the intensity level. If you are in better shape, you can shorten the time between exercises and supersets to further jack up the intensity of your workout.
The intensity level your body feels is what triggers the biological mechanisms that force it to adapt to new requirements you just imposed on it. So you don’t have to work body parts to “failure” to experience the natural release of growth hormone and its benefits, but you will feel fatigue!
But what if you want to start getting back in shape at home and can’t buy weights? Get creative to work all your muscles! For example, if you can’t do pushups, try them on a flight of stairs, or pushing off a wall, until you build enough strength to do them normally. Get two one gallon jugs of water to use as your weights for bent-over rows or overhead presses. You get the idea.
Beware of any companies trying to sell you the next magic potion for losing weight with no effort. If you’ve read this far, you are interested in learning about losing weight and getting fit and are on the right track.
Congratulations!
Topics: Best Spa Vacations | No Comments »