fatlossandmusclebuilding Blog

A few wise words from fitness legend Jack Lahane…

“If you’ve got a big gut and you start doing sit-ups, you are going to get bigger because you build up the muscle. You’ve got to get rid of that fat! How do you get rid of fat? By changing your diet”

“Remember this: your body is your slave; it works for you!”

“The only way you get that fat off is to eat less and exercise more.”

“Yes, exercise is the catalyst. That’s what makes everything happen: your digestion, your elimination, your sex life, your skin, hair, everything about you depends on circulation. And how do you increase circulation?…Exercise!”

“You can’t get rid of it with exercise alone. You can do the most vigorous exercise and only burn up 300 calories in an hour. If you’ve got fat on your body, the exercise firms and tones the muscles. But when you use that tape measure, what makes it bigger? It’s the fat!”

This legend in the fitness world is 93 years old, he STILL works out, and still looks great! A great example of what exercise can do for your body and health. Definatelty an inspiration to anyone!
 

So many people out there are desperately trying to achieve weight loss, but there are so many different diets and so much different information about weight loss, that unsuprisingly people are still confused on the subject. Something that is still a mystery to so many people is the importance of calories. The popularity of some of the recent ‘fad’ diets, Atkins to mention but one, has confused peoples understanding of calories even further.

Diets such as the Atkins diet promote the idea that calories don’t matter in the slightest, and the controlled intake of certain nutrients, namely carbohydrates in this case, is the deciding factor in weight loss. Although people do achieve some short term success on diets such as Atkins, the fact is that in the long term they are unhealthy and totally unrealistic to follow and stick with. Also alot of the weight loss on these type of diets actually comes from loss of water, and even worse muscle!

The real truth is that if you want to successfully lose weight, calories are the deciding factor. Here is a sentence that you should remember when people are trying to sell you the false idea that calories don’t matter…

TO LOSE WEIGHT YOU MUST BEEN IN A CALORIE DEFICIT!

I’ll explain this a bit further. A calorie is basically a unit of energy, your body needs so many of these energy units to perform all it’s daily functions, this includes maintaining bodyweight. So if you need a certain amount of calories to maintain your body weight, it makes sense that to lose weight you would need to reduce the amount of calories that your body needs (this is your calorie deficit).

The food that you eat contains these calories that your body needs, so one way of losing weight would be to reducing the amount of calories that you consume in your food. You can also create this calorie deficit through exercise. When you exercise the extra work that your body is made to do, causes it to burn off more calories. This can also create the calories deficit.

The most efficient way to create a calorie deficit is by combining a calorie controlled diet, with a suitable exercise routine, unfortunately that’s not where it ends though!

You may be thinking now that you could just cut your calorie intake right down, the more you cut out the calories the better right? Wrong. You have to be careful that you don’t bring down your calories too much, otherwise you will start to lose muscle rather than fat, leaving you looking scrawny and unhealthy looking. You need to do a bit of experimentation with this, first try and find how many calories your body needs to stay at the weight that you currently are. Then from there drop it by about 500 calories and see how you go. Everyone is different, so this really is a case of finding it out for your self. Take weekly measurements of your weight and body fat, so you can work out if you are losing fat or muscle. If you are losing muscle, simply increase your calories! Find the happy medium using experimentation and body monitoring is the key.

So in conclusion. Ignore the latest fad diets, and believe me when I say that calories really do count when it comes to successfully losing fat.

Today we’re talking about negative calorie foods…

So what actually is a negative calorie food? The statement negative calorie food isn’t entirely correct, it is actually impossible for a food to have a negative amount of calories.

A calorie is a unit of energy, all food contains a certain amount of energy. When we talk about negative calorie foods, we don’t actually mean that they have a negative amount of calories. What we mean is that the food has that low of amount of calories, that your body uses up more energy digesting it than the food has in the first place. For example if a piece of celery has 15 calories, and the body uses up 25 calories to digest it. That creates a deficit of 10 calories, therefore that is a negative calorie food. Apples, brocolli, carrots, cucumber, tomatoes and onions are also examples of negative calorie foods.  

Negative calorie foods are not miracle makers when it comes to weight loss, but they can help you out along the way. Filling up your plate with these negative calorie foods is a great way of keeping the amount of calories in your meal down, but still leaving the dinner table feeling satisfied. For example you could have a piece of chicken breast, a small amount of sweet potato, then fill up the rest of your plate with brocolli or a similar negative calorie food.

I found a very interesting article about beating stubborn fat today, definately worth you having a look. It is on Christian Finn’s blog site, who is a well respected trainer. Click on the link to see what he has to say about stubborn fat…

He makes a very good point in his article, which I totally agree with. Basically stubborn fat doesn’t really exist, the reason that people struggle to get rid of that last bit of fat or fat in a certain area on the body, is that they need to tighten up on their diet and exercise. Not that that particular area of fat is ’stubborn fat’. At the end of the day fat is fat when it comes to the body, each person may have a certain area on their body which will be the last place that fat will dissapear from when your losing weight, on women it tends to be around the hips and men round the waist. When you reach the point that you only really have excess fat in those areas, and you are not losing it, that is when you need to tighten up your diet and exercise program.

Hope you find the article on stubborn fat interesting…

Who should train with weights…? In my opinion everyone should!

Weight training used to be shyed away from by everyone except bodybuilders and strongmen. It was thought that anyone else should keep away from lifting around heavy weights, as people associated weight lift with becoming muscle bound. Even professional trainers would keep their athletes clear of weight lifting in there training routines.

As advances in training techniques and more importantly research into weight training was made, the true benefits of training with weights was realised. It was discovered that training your muscles with weights can improve muscle tone, increase muscle size, increase strength, increase body weight and improve endurance. With these benefits being discovered, weight training soon became massively popular outside of  the bodybuilding world and into the main stream, from pro athletes and even the public. 

Now days almost every single athlete in any physical sport will have some sort weight training in their training schedules, in fact it is vital for them to complete at their highest possible levels.

The advanges of weight training should not only be used by athletes/sportsman. As mentioned the advantages of weight training include improved muscle tone, increase in muscle size, increase in strength, increase in body weight and improvement in endurance. If you are trying to improve your body, whether that is by building muscle or losing fat, weight training is essential. When trying to lose weight, or fat to be more specific, weight training will help prevent muscle loss that often occurs when people diet. The advantages of keeping muscle when you are losing weight are numerous. Maintaining and toning muscle whilst you are losing weight will prevent you from getting that scrawny, tired, unhealthy look to you. You often see people who have lost weight fast and look like a bag of bones! Also muscle actually burns calories! Even when you are resting your muscles burn calories, this will help in your fat loss.

Even if you are happy with the way you look and are not interested in altering the look of your body, weight training can still be an important part of your bodies well being. Having a strong musclular system can help reduce the likeliness of problems when you are older, including back problems. Through weight training you can build a strong core, which includes your lower back and abdominal muscles, which supports your whole upper body. This can reduce the chance of injury in every tasks, including mowing the lawn and even getting out of bed, you’d be suprised how many people injure themselves doing simple tasks.

So i’ll ask you again… ”who should train with weights?”…that’s right EVERYONE! Everyone can benefit from weight training, whether you are a professional athlete, a recreational athlete or even a none sporting person who wants to just stay healthy.  

Top Fat Loss Tip of the Day…Eat Naturally!

If you are trying to lose weight, one of the first things that you should always look at is your diet. It is important to your success that you start to cut out some of the masty things you you may put into your body. A good way to start yourself off is to make an effort to start eating naturally produced foods.

By naturally produced foods I mean foods that have been processed as little as possible by man. Foods such as ready meals, white bread, cakes, etc should be on your list of foods to avoid. They are high in refined sugars and hydrogenated fats, which your body can’t digest efficiently and will pile on the body fat very easily.

You should aiming to eat lean meats and poultry, vegetables (especially the green ones!),and fruit (even though fruit contains natural sugars). With bread, pasta and rice, you should be eating the wholegrain or brown versions rather than the white more processed options.

If you make an effort to eat more natural unprocessed foods, you will notice the difference even before you start to reduce you calories. You weight will start to drop, and your overall health will improve.

Start eating natural today and reap the benefits!

If you have been following a fat loss diet and seem to have hit a plateau, carbohydrates could be your problem. Some people are more sensitve to carbohydrates than others, this may depend on your body type and the way you react to carbs. 

If you are following for example a 50-30-20 ratio diet, (That being 50% of your total daily calories from carbs, 30% protein, 20% fat), and your fat loss has slowed or even stopped it is worth trying to reduce your carbs. Try changing to a 40-40-20 ratio diet, 40% of your calories from carbs, 40% from protein and 20% from fat. This reduction in carbohydrates may be what you need to get your fat loss back on track.

The theory behind this is that your body will be slightly short on the amount of carbohydrates that it can use for energy, and hopefully your body will start to burn up your body fat instead. You do need to monitor your results closely, as if you drop you carb intake too low there is also a possibility that your body may turn to your muscles as an energy source, and you don’t want this too happen. If you are starting to lose muscle then just up your carbohydrate intake slightly.

This technique of reducing your carbohydrate intake can be a powerful tool when it comes to fat loss. If you are struggling to get results, or have hit a plateau, it is definately worth a try!

Top Fat Loss Tip of the Day….Control your Meal Portions

If you are trying to burn fat food plays an important role. A key point to dieting is controlling your meal sizes. A good and simple way of doing this is to never eat until you are full. Stop eating when you are just satisfied, not until you are stuffed!Also make sure you eat slowly, if you eat too fast you don’t give yourself enough time to start to digest your food and you give yourself a false feeling of not being full up (until your body catches up and then the fullness really hits you!). If you eat slowly and give your body enough time, you will have a geniune idea of how full you are and can avoid over eating.

Stay tuned for more fat loss tips!   

Top fat loss tip of the day… Learn to Enjoy Exercise!

Exercise is the key to permanent fat loss, incorporate exercise into your life by choosing a hobby that you genuinely enjoy. Try and find a hobby that you really enjoy, and can see yourself sticking to long term, for example join the local tennis club. Although a game of tennis is not as efficient at fat burning as other means, such as jogging for set periods, it does help you along the way.

If you have this hobby that is a pleasure to do, rather than a chore like a treadmill can often turn into, you are more like to stick at it. Something like tennis, cycling or even rock climbing for the more adventurous, has the potential to become a permanent part of your life, especially if it is done in a social setting where you can build a group of like minded friends to enjoy it with.

Give it a try, go out and find yourself an life long exercise hobby and reap the benefits for years to come!

Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle is a fat loss ebook written by fitness author Tom Venuto, has been around on the internet for several years now. It has been a best seller and used by thousands of people around the world. The question is, is it actually any good or just another well marketed ebook?

The author of Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle (BFFM) is Tom Venuto, a life long natural bodybuilder, personal trainer, success coach, nutrition consultant, health club manager and freelance writer. In BFFM Tom explains the science and theory of burning away body fat, this comes from a bodybuilder but applies to any normal person at all. Tom takes this book beyond being just a simple fat lose program, which are available in there thousands, and actually takes you into such detail that you will understand how fat loss actually occurs. There are detailed scientific explainations to every aspect of fat burning, including highly detail sections on nutrition, diet and even mind training.

The diet sections explains how many calories you need for fat loss, how to workout your nutrition ratios (i.e. how much protein, carb’s and fat you should eat). It also tell’s you what to avoid and more importantly why.

The training section focuses and cardio and weight training. Weight training being just as important as the cardio for fat loss, detailed explanations as to why included. He also gives you a number of workout plans, which are two, three four and five days a week depending on your experience and level, and it also gives you the flexibility to make your own.

The fact that this book has been written by a bodybuilder shouldn’t put you off, the information in this book is for everyone and anyone. Some of the advice and techniques revealed in the book, that are used by bodybuilders to achieve extremely low body fat levels, are priceless and rarely seen outside of the bodybuilding world.

Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle is one of the few ebooks available on the internet that I would highly recommend if you are looking to lose fat. It retails at  $39.95 and is definately a worthy addition to your library.