Insanity

21 Dec 2009 Leave a Comment

by Memré in Exercise, General Health, Nutrition Tags: diet, fat loss, metabolism, muscle, Nutrition

Albert Einstein said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Think about your life, about all the diets you’ve tried, the things you do to drop that last 5 pounds, and your belief that this somehow works for you. You do an hour on the treadmill every single day, you skip meals and the scale shows a 3 pound drop in 2 days.  A month later, your weight is either back to where you started or may have even gone up. Before you started, your personal trainer told you how to do it the right way, you snubbed your nose at her telling her you now what’s best for your body and went about doing what you have always done. Maybe you did lose 15 pounds in a month by eating grass and doing 2 hours of cardio a day, but next month, when your body begins shutting you down mentally and physically it’s going to pop back on again. You just perpetuate the cycle over and over. Insane isn’t it?!

I have a friend who’s recently been trying to lose weight, who does an hour on the treadmill nearly everyday, but doesn’t eat nearly enough. I believe he has bought into all the wrong dieting advice, and truly believes that if he eats he will get fatter. WRONG. He’s keeping his weight because he doesn’t eat. (I can see your eyes rolling…) I don’t care who you are, but skipping meals is the absolute worst thing you can do to your body, especially if you are trying to lose fat. I’ll break this down scientifically so you can can see exactly what causes this.

• If you want to lose weight, you must build muscle.
• Muscles burn calories for energy. 
• More muscle increases metabolism which increases calories burned.
• Muscles require protein.
• During aerobic exercise, carbohydrates and fats are used first. Increased intensity will increase the amount of carbs used  while fat use is reduced. When the body runs out of carbs for fuel, it will then turn to protein for fuel causing muscle loss.
• Starvation mode sets in causing your body to store more fat.
• Less muscle results in a slower metabolism.
• Less muscle reduces your ability to burn calories.
• Excess calories are stored as fat.

Eat = More muscle = more calories burned = fewer calories stored as fat

OR

Skip meals = less muscle = less calories burned = more calories stored as fat

So, if you hop on that scale after a couple of weeks of a low-calorie diet combined with excessive aerobic activity to see you’ve lost scale weight, then that most likely means you’ve lost muscle which increases your chances to start gaining fat soon.  This sometimes results in that dreaded plateau. All if this can be very frustrating, but beyond that it is terrible for your fat loss efforts. You HAVE to eat to lose fat and keep it off.

You should have a good strength training and cardio regimen combined with  a balanced, healthy diet. I’ve noticed that many people have a hard time believing this, so will decide that more cardio and less food is the answer to all their problems when in fact it is only going to perpetuate the weight gain/loss cycle. When one makes the switch to the correct way, there may be a slight gain as your body gets used to the healthier way. This is usually attributed to a muscle gain, and this is NOT where you immediately quit upon seeing the scale go up. This is a great thing as your body is building the muscle that is going to help you drop the fat! This requires a long term commitment with adjustments being made along the way. This WILL work if you don’t give up. Your doubts are all in your mind because you’ve been conditioned to watch the scale for progress, and have spent many years doing the same thing over and over. Stop doing the insane dieting and switch to a healthier way of eating. Feed your muscle and lose the fat.