In order to lose weight, your body must burn more calories than it takes in,
but keep in mind that your body needs calories for energy and when you exercise
your body needs even more calories. Before I talk about energy, the first thing
you must understand is that losing weight and losing fat is not the same thing.
Just because you lose weight, does not mean you lose fat, and just because you
lose fat, does not mean you lose weight. When people talk about losing weight,
what the really want to do is lose the excess fat on their body and obtain an
attractive figure.
When you eat, the body uses most of the calories for energy. If you eat more
calories than the body uses, it will get stored as fat. If you do not consume
enough calories per day you will lose weight, but you will also lose energy.
When you do not consume enough energy (calories) for your body, it will start
using up your energy stores to make up for the energy deficiency.
Unfortunately, the energy stores used is not your stored fat, but instead it's
protein and carbohydrates (carbs) that will supply most of the energy (stored
fat makes up a very small percentage).
Your body will take the protein and
carbohydrates from your muscle cells; causing your muscle mass to reduce (say
goodby to that toned attractive look) which forces your metabolism to decrease
(a low metabolism = slow or no fat burning). When this happens your body
requires less energy to maintain its new lower body weight (remember the body
weight is lower because you loss muscle), which is why your body conserves
energy by slowing down the metabolism. In other words, the body has adapted to
the new lower energy (calorie) intake which means that you will no longer
continue to lose weight.
Keep in mind that the weight you had lost in the first place was mostly
water weight and you will eventually gain it back in the form of fat, not
muscle (in order to get your muscle mass back to the way it was before, you
have to work on rebuilding it). When carbohydrates and protein that are already
in your body are used as the energy source, your body will lose water weight
because both carbohydrates and protein hold water in the cells. In essence, you
are dehydrating yourself to lose weight. So yes the scale will go down, but
approximately 75% (if not more) of it is water instead of fat. And just so you
know, exercising while consuming a small calorie intake just makes the
situation worse.
This is because when you exercise, you start burning off more
energy and the more you workout, the more energy your body needs. I already
told you above where the energy comes from, and if you do not give your body
the energy it needs, it will just feed on your muscles even quicker now that
you are exercising. So eat more food! In addition to this, when you cut down too
much on your calorie intake, your body will start storing calories because it
doesn't know when you will eat again. The calories that are stored will be
stored as fat. So in other words, when your body is storing energy, it's
basically storing more fat.
To summarize my point: Not eating enough calories results in muscle loss,
dehydration, slower fat burning, and your body will always adapt to a lower
calorie intake. Bottom Line: if you can't maintain that lower calorie intake for the rest of
your life, you will gain your weight back when you get tired of starving
yourself!
To lose weight properly (burning fat) you must increase your metabolism
(weight training) and your need for oxygen (aerobics) while eating enough
calories each day (nutritious diet) to give you energy and maintain the protein
in your muscles because protein helps build muscles, which indirectly burns
fat.
This brings up another good point: When you build muscle your weight will
increase because your muscles are made up of mostly water, but your body fat
percentage will decrease because building muscles increase your metabolism (in
other words, muscles way more than fat, but take up less space than fat). So
keep in mind that losing body fat can't be measured by a scale; use a measuring
tape and also look at yourself in the mirror, and then you will see the true
results. One of the best ways to know if you are losing more body fat than
water is by using a body fat analyzer.
Make sure that you focus on fat loss not weight loss. Your goal should be to
lose weight by burning fat, not losing water from your muscles. Remember this
when you choose your weight loss program.
No comments:
Post a Comment