Posted on 30 January 2010 by Admin
Posted on 27 December 2009 by Admin
My friend, Stefan, came to me with a problem.
He had been on a well loved diet for about six months, and he looked pretty excellent. He had dropped 30 pounds and was well on his way to taking off the additional 20 that would bring him to his target weight. But he complained that he was feeling weak much of the time. Carrying heavy boxes or even full bags of groceries from the car to the house taxed his strength in a way it never had before.
Stefan wondered if perhaps there was some critical nutrient he wasn’t getting enough of on the diet. Or, was age simply catching up with him?
I questioned him a few questions, looked him over for a moment or two, and had him perform some simple physical movements.
“I have excellent news and terrible news,” I told him. “Terrible news first: You’ve not only lost stout on this diet, you’ve lost some muscle. It’s not excellent to lose muscle.”
Stefan’s worried frown revealed that this was not something he wanted to hear. He had lost all that weight in order to look excellent, feel healthy and be more energetic. Now here I was telling him that he was, in effect, wasting away as a result of his positive intentions.
“So what’s the excellent news?” he questioned forlornly.
“The excellent news is you can build your muscles back up and still lose all of the weight you want. You just have to re-orient your activities so that you lose stout, not muscle. Better yet, you need to do some things–and I’m talking exercise–that will make your muscles stronger and larger even as you continue to take off stout.”
Stefan didn’t really want to hear about exercise. He had done well losing weight by dieting alone. I could see he was proud that he had been able to shed an average of five pounds a month while enduring no more exercise than an occasional small stroll around the block.
Nevertheless, the news that he was losing muscle was a sufficient shock to get him to agree to let me place him on an exercise program.
You see, many people are like my friend. They have the fake thought that when you diet, your body consumes its stored stout–and only the stout.
The truth is, unless you’re exercising or otherwise being physically quite active, your body on a diet may start feeding on both stout and muscle. The more severe the diet and the quicker the weight loss. the more danger there is of serious muscle loss. This is turn can really make it harder for you to lose weight as time goes by.
Let’s take a somewhat extreme example to illustrate the problem.
It is said there are enough calories in four pounds of body stout to fuel a person for approximately one week. But if you quickest for a week, eating nothing and drinking only water, you would not lose anywhere near four pounds of stout. Your body would instead go into a physiological panic and start breaking down muscle to meet its energy requirements. Not only that, the decrease in muscle mass would reduce your body’s calorie needs, making it harder to lose weight in the future by dieting!
Your real goal in dieting for weight loss is to lose stout while building muscle. You can achieve this through the proper kind of exercise.
Working out with weights is a fantastic way to maintain and build your muscles. You don’t have to fancy yourself a bodybuilder or spend hours upon hours in the gym to gain the benefits of weight training. Nor do you need a lot of expensive equipment. You’ll be amazed what a basic set of dumbbells, used for twenty or thirty minutes a day, three days a week, can do.
One tip: If you are trying to lose pounds, don’t make the mistake of going overboard with the weight lifting in an attempt to quickly build the largest muscles you can. You’ll just end up with the opposite problem of my friend Stefan: lots of muscle, with more pounds! Go for fewer sets of a given exercise than the person who is deliberately building massive muscles. If the budding Mr. Universes would normally do four or five sets, you can stop at one or two.
I’m pleased to report that Stefan today is in better shape than ever. He’s not only reached his target weight, he has the strength and energy to delight in his trim new body. Right, the rate of his weight loss slowed down a bit as he added weight training to his life, but that’s OK. He got where he wanted to go–and didn’t leave his muscles behind in the process.
By: Denny Waldarmo
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Posted on 19 December 2009 by Admin
Visceral stout surrounds your internal organs, mostly in the stomach region, and is the reason so many people have huge bellies. This is the really perilous stout, directly linked to diabetes, heart attack, high blood pressure, stroke and some cancers. It is full of hormones and toxins, which, when released, go directly to the liver or into the bloodstream. The more visceral stout your body carries, the more likely you are to develop any of the above diseases or conditions, all of which can incapacitate or kill you.
The excellent news is that although visceral stout is the simplest stout to place on, it’s also the simplest to take off. Many studies have shown that while losing weight may stop the growth of visceral stout or minimally reduce it, exercise is what really burns it off. A brisk 30-minute walk, six times a week will stave off increases in visceral stout and test subjects who performed intensive aerobic exercise 5 – 6 times per week were able to lose several pounds of visceral stout over a period of six months.
Dieting alone won’t rid your body of visceral stout; it must be burned off through exercise, and in order to keep it off, you must make adequate aerobic exercise a part of your daily life. People who lead sedentary lives have more visceral stout than those who are even moderately active. Weight loss diets unaccompanied by sufficient aerobic and muscle strengthening exercise may cause you to lose weight, but most of the loss is from lean muscle tissue and not from stored stout.
Your body hoards and protects its stout stores like a dragon does the treasure in its cave, and adds to its collection as much as it can. It’s up to you to convince your body that your lean muscle tissue is too precious to sacrifice, so that it will resort to burning stout for its fuel. This can be done only by “showcasing” your muscles by exercising each muscle group in order to bring them to the attention of your body. Brisk walking, swimming, cycling, cardiovascular aerobics and anaerobic exercises such as resistance weight training and Pilates will do this for you by raising your metabolism so that you burn calories and stout more rapidly without losing nearly as much lean muscle. Preserving your lean muscle tissue through exercise also makes you stronger and takes inches off your body through the combination of stout loss and muscle tightening and toning.
Your entire body benefits from the loss of visceral stout. Losing visceral stout decreases your resistance to insulin, which can prevent Type II Diabetes, or if you are already diabetic, increase the efficiency of the insulin your body produces, making it simpler to control your blood glucose levels. Your body won’t have to deal with the toxins that visceral stout releases into your system; if you are hypertensive, your blood pressure may be simpler to control, decreasing your risk for heart attack and stroke. With less weight to carry, your stamina is increased and even small tasks that once tired you out are simpler to accomplish. The more visceral stout you lose, the flatter your stomach becomes, resulting in the ability to wear smaller clothing sizes and have a trimmer figure.
Everyone needs to avoid putting on visceral stout. Diet is an vital part of losing stout, but sufficient exercise guarantees visceral stout loss, and may save your life!
By: Michelle Parker
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