Generally when we say we want to lose weight what we really mean is we want to lose fat, the loose fleshy stuff hanging from arms and thighs or spilling over into a muffin top. Be honest can you pinch some? If not, why read on you’re already a god or goddess. For everyone else, that doughy stuff between your fingers are the glad bags of the body. That’s right, fat is essentially stored energy in the form of fatty acids that can also contain fat soluble chemicals some even toxic.
Basically human fat comes in two kinds, visceral fat (the stuff around your organs) and subcutaneous fat (the stuff you’re pinching). Now let me just say in fats defense, that not all fat is bad. It’s necessary for insulation, protecting the body from shock, cell membrane integrity, and that previously mentioned stored energy; you know, incase you get stranded with no food. So, unless you’re planning on getting stranded for a really long, long time, maybe we should lose some of it.
To burn off fat safely, effectively and with long term results we should tackle it three ways, 1) diet (that’s obvious), 2)cardio ( burn it now) and 3) resistance exercise ( that’s right weight training). If you lose weight alone from diet as much as 25% of weight loss can come from lean body mass; that’s a significant hit to your metabolism. That means it would take less calories to gain the weight back and when you do the majority will come back as fat, meaning you’d be fatter even at the same weight. Conversely, weight training can increase lean body mass, increasing bone density (that’s good), strengthen connective tissue (also good), and building muscle mass. Now consider that muscle is 20% denser than fat. So if you lost 5 lbs. of fat and gained 5 lbs. of muscle though you’d weigh the same, you would look smaller and all with no jiggle.
A pound of muscle burns about 50 calories a day in metabolism, though it doesn’t sound like much, add 2 pounds of it and that muscle would burn off 10 pounds of fat in a year. Not too shabby now is it? Best of all maintain that muscle and that newly svelte body you got from that great diet and cardio work will be much easier to maintain…at last no yo-yoing.
Resistance exercise should be performed 3 times per week for at least 30 minutes per session.
