Did you know that strength training is crucial for successfully
losing weight and keeping it off? I'm talking about weight-bearing
exercise. It doesn't have to be a huge, hulking workout
where you're trying to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger in
his prime, it just has to be some basic strength training.
Why is strength training important for losing weight? Strength
training is important because many people try to starve
themselves into weight loss. They think it's all about controlling
calories. Unfortunately, a lot of dieticians and nutritionists
don't really understand strength training, and they also
think that it's just about calories: Calories in, and calories
out. You consume extra calories, you'll gain body fat. If
you have a calorie deficit, you're going to lose weight.
While this may be true, this approach is only part of the
picture. Sure, you need a calorie deficit to lose weight,
but how does your body actually use calories?
It's your lean body mass - that muscle mass underneath
your body fat - that burns calories 24/7, allowing you to
actually eat more calories without gaining weight.
Let's say you happen to be quite obese and you have a high
percentage of body fat. I used to be in that situation;
I know what it feels like. Underneath that body fat you
actually have a very strong skeleton and strong muscles.
Your body has built up those muscles in order to carry all
of that extra body fat when you move your body. Just the
very act of standing up, walking across a parking lot, going
up a flight of stairs or lifting your arms requires more
effort when you're overweight, especially if you're obese.
So the heavier you are, the stronger your muscles have to
be just to allow you to do basic, everyday things.
Now this can actually work to your advantage - if you manage
to keep all of that muscle mass and bone density in place
while you are losing body fat, then you can maintain the
high metabolism that's associated with that lean body mass
even while you are dropping body fat. But if you starve
yourself, you're going to lose all the muscle resources
you already have. It's a mistake a lot of people make. They
try to lose body fat by starving themselves, and as the
body fat vanishes from their body, their muscle mass also
disappears. Why would the body get rid of muscle mass? Because,
frankly, it doesn't need it.
Your body adapts to the need. You see, the body is an adaptive
system. It will adapt to whatever loads you place on it.
So if you are a heavier person and you're carrying around
body fat, then your body will adapt by creating stronger
muscles to lift your body. It's almost like doing a leg
press every time you get up out of the chair. If you weigh
300 lbs., you're doing a 300 lb. leg press, you see? Now
if you were to drop 150 lbs. of body fat, and end up at
150 lbs., your body wouldn't need the same amount of leg
muscle to lift you. It would eliminate those leg muscles
through catabolic action.
While it is eliminating this muscle mass, your metabolism
begins to slow. Remember, it's the lean body mass that's
burning calories day in and day out, even when you're doing
nothing. If you reduce that muscle mass by allowing it to
go away (by not challenging your muscles), then your metabolism
is going to slow. A lot of people end up at a place where
they've lost the body fat and they're lighter, but it's
suddenly so much easier to put on body fat. They don't have
the muscle mass they once did, they're not automatically
burning calories, and if they overeat just a little bit,
they'll start packing on the body fat again.
|
Strength Training Exercise
Strength train while losing weight. The solution to all
of this - the strategy I want to focus on here - is to engage
in strength training while you are losing body fat. If you
do this, then you will be able to maintain the muscle mass
that you already have underneath your body fat while you
are in the process of losing the fat. This will leave you
with a greater proportion of lean body mass to body fat,
meaning that you will be slimmer, yet you'll have the muscles
that you had when you were overweight.
If you get rid of enough body fat in this way, then those
muscles may begin to show - if you're a man. If you're a
woman, don't worry. You're never going to bulk up. A lot
of women are mistakenly afraid of strength training. They
think that if they pump a few weights they're going to turn
into Lou Ferrigno overnight. They think they're going to
have this competition muscle-bound body from lifting a couple
of weights. Believe me, that is not the case at all. Most
bodybuilding women have trained for years, even decades,
just to produce that kind of muscle mass. Women are not
built to puts on lots of muscle mass, so don't be afraid
that you'll bulk up. Women who are afraid of exercising
because they think it's going to make them look bigger have
it all wrong.
Women need strength training, too. Let's take a moment
to cover that myth here. Let's say you're a woman and you
have more body fat than you want. You're trying to decide,
"Should I engage in strength training as part of my
weight loss program?" Some women say, "No, because
I'll bulk up and it'll make me look fatter." That's
a complete myth; it's totally false.
When you have a high percentage of body fat, that body
fat is stored not only in the tissues that are obvious -
such as your hips and your midsection, your arms and legs
and so on - it's also stored intramuscularly, which means
it's stored within the muscles of your body. It's sort of
like the marbling of beef from a cow. If you slice a muscle
from a cow, there's some fat inside the muscle… that
is the same kind of fat that's in our muscles when we have
a high percentage of body fat.
That fat takes up a lot of space in the muscle, so it actually
makes the muscle look bigger, because there's fat inside.
When you start losing body fat, even if you're engaged in
strength training, that intramuscular fat will begin to
vanish. So even if your muscle mass begins to grow - which,
again, is very difficult for women to accomplish - your
overall muscle size is probably going to be smaller when
you're at a lower percentage of body fat. The net change
in your muscle size is going to be almost nothing, unless
you really start to do strength training on a regular basis
for a period of a year or two, and then you might actually
begin to put on a little bit more muscle.
Don't lose the muscle you've already built. So with that
crazy myth covered, let's get back to the main point, which
is that engaging in strength training will conserve the
muscle mass you have now. Now here's why this is so important:
It's very easy for your body to shed useless muscle. So
if you're not using a muscle, your body will get rid of
it over a few months. It's gone. But to gain that muscle
back - now that takes some effort! That could take months
or years of strength training.
It is much harder for your body to engage in anabolic reactions
(to build muscle mass) than it is for your body to catabolize
and get rid of muscles. So, if you decide you're going to
starve yourself while you lose weight and get down to the
minimum weight possible, and afterwards you engage in strength
training, then you're going to find that it's a much more
difficult process to gain lean body mass than it was to
slim away what you had to begin with. Building lean body
mass is a huge challenge.
Weight Loss
It's also important to note that when people talk about
weight loss, they throw that term around without really
understanding what it means. Everybody says "I want
to lose weight," but they don't really mean that. They
mean they want to lose body fat; they don't want to just
lose weight. A limb amputation will cause you to lose weight,
but that's not what people have in mind! People want to
lose body fat. So be careful what you wish for - and don't
use that bathroom scale as a measure of your progress. There
are a number of reasons why.
One is if you just starve yourself and you start losing
lean body mass, then that counts as weight loss. But you've
done yourself no good whatsoever, because now you've actually
lowered your metabolism. The scale says, "Hey! You
lost another three pounds!" But it could be 2 lbs.
of fat and 1 lb. of muscle, and that's not a good situation
to be in. You want to lose maybe 2.9 lbs. of fat and 0.1
lbs. of muscle, or maybe 3 lbs. of fat and no muscle. But
to do that, you've got to challenge your muscular system
through some weight bearing exercise.
Don't forget the glycogen fuel stored in your body. The
other thing to keep in mind when you're using the bathroom
scale is that when you first start limiting your calories,
your body is going to start burning through its glycogen
stores. Glycogen is basically a fuel stored in your body.
It stores sugars together with water and locks them up in
the tissues and organs of your body like an energy battery,
ready for you to use at a future time.
There's water locked in with those calories. That water
weighs a lot. So when you start restricting your calories,
the first thing your body burns is this extra storage of
energy, this extra glycogen. And the glycogen causes you,
as it's burned, to shed water. You might look at the scale
and think, gee, I lost 5 lbs., but you really lost no body
fat whatsoever. It was just water, because your body released
glycogen. What usually happens to people when their glycogen
store has reached zero is they get really hungry, they think
they're in a starvation panic, and then they overeat. Their
glycogen stores fill right back up, they gain the 5 lbs.
back, and usually they over ate to such an extent that they
store another half a pound of body fat or so. Now they're
half a pound heavier than when they began and they lost
no body fat whatsoever. It was just a game of glycogen and
water storage they saw reflected on the bathroom scale.
Bathroom scales are useless. So ignore the bathroom scale.
It is not useful for telling you how successful you are
in losing body fat. I don't use one at all. The only measure
you should use is a "fat scale" or a caliper.
A caliper is the best way to measure body fat. Body fat
calipers measure the thickness of body fat in key locations
around your body. For men, one location is on the upper
pectoral area, another is the midsection and the third is
on the top of the quadriceps of the leg. For women, it's
the back of the arm, the midsection and along the hip.
However, you've got to learn how to use a caliper correctly
if you want it to be an accurate indicator of fat loss success.
I just mention it as a tool for people who are really serious
about losing fat. People who use bathroom scales to figure
out how much weight they've lost are just playing a silly
game of deception - the bathroom scale is useless. I mean,
you could lose bone mass and you'd still look like you were
having lots of progress on the bathroom scale.
How do you lose bone mass? Easy: you stop engaging in exercise,
stop walking, and stop running. If you do all that (which
I'm not recommending, by the way), then you would start
to lose bone mineral density, and that would be reflected
as weight loss. When you say you want to lose weight, be
careful what you ask for. Your body has a number of ways
to lose weight that have nothing whatsoever to do with losing
body fat or enhancing your overall state of health.
>> Click here for Pete Sisco's Maximum Strength Training program
>>
Click here for Tom's Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle program
|
