Showing posts with label calories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label calories. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Overcome the Weight Loss Plateau

You have been to the gym, started a new weight loss program and have seen some pounds drop! Two months later you find yourself stagnant, working harder and losing less weight. Well, you've hit a plateau. A weight loss plateau usually occurs within about a month or two of starting a reduced-calorie diet, and/or fitness program and may reoccur from time to time thereafter. During such a plateau, weight reduction stops completely or slows down to almost nothing. Your body's reaction is to maintain a state of homeostasis, regulating its internal environment to maintain a stable condition. This doesn't mean that you will never lose the weight you want or look the way you would like, but it does show that your body occasionally will provide some resistance. Your body, in response to this new stimulus you have created with your health and fitness program, has adjusted. It is getting used to the increased activity and changes in the calorie intake level and the natural instinct to conserve. Your body has become more efficient and doesn't need to use as many calories as it had in prior workouts.

In terms of food, here are some reasons you may hit the weight loss plateau. A plateau may occur because your body simply wants a "rest" to cope with your calorie-reduction; or your calorie-intake is in balance with your calorie expenditure; or you have reduced your calorie-intake too low. If you find a plateau occurring in your workouts, your routine may be stale and repetitive. Or you could possibly be overtraining and not allowing your body to get sufficient rest.

Here are tips for busting through a plateau and moving forward with getting great results.

Try to be patient. Your weight loss plateau will disappear, I promise. But it typically takes anything between 1-4 weeks.

Rest. If you are experiencing signs of overtraining or seem to be in a rut, take sometime off. Maybe take a few days or even a week. You may find your body rejuvenated and ready to respond to your fitness program. Change your routine. If you have become comfortable in your workouts, change them.

Don't do the same thing every week. Change the exercise sequence by mixing up the order during a workout. Change the variables by shortening your rest time between sets or adding more reps (if you normally do 10 reps, lighten the weight and do 15-20 reps) for a week. Or change the equipment. Move from the treadmill to the stairmaster or move from dumbbells to resistance tubing.

Don't be afraid to increase the intensity. Its easy to become comfortable with our intensity level. Don't be afraid to add more weight, or increase the speed during your cardio workout.

Your body will adapt to the stimulus you place on it. If you find yourself comfortable with your fitness program, you may find a plateau right around the corner. When this happens, take to time to rest and re-evaluate what you are doing, and make some adjustments. You should then be back on the road to great fitness results.


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Thursday, March 13, 2008

Why Metabolism is Important

Read through any diet success story and you will see the true secret to that person's success. At some point, the person always integrated exercise into their plan. The same holds true the other way around. How many times have you heard someone say that they work out all the time, but just can't seem to lose those last ten or fifteen pounds?

The truth is, in order to achieve lifelong results, nutrition and fitness need to go hand in hand to optimize your metabolism.

What is Metabolism? Metabolism is the process your body uses to break down the food that you eat, convert it to energy, or store it. Your metabolism is based on several cues that you give your body by the way that you eat and the energy you use in your daily routines.

To achieve lifelong fitness, you need to raise your activity level to start burning more calories, while feeding your body the right amount of food to sustain itself. That means eating enough throughout the day to let your body know that there will be plenty of food around to sustain a higher caloric burn. Once your body acclimates to both of those signals, your metabolism will start to change. You will be burning more calories by increasing your activity level, but you will also increase the amount of calories you burn when you are not working out - while you work, watch television, and even when you're sleeping.

Understanding your metabolism is the reason that low calorie diets don't work. When you feed your metabolism your body burns more calories. A great example of this is on a weight loss network tv show that the people who won't follow their eating plan and kept eating less calories actually gain weight. Your body will burn fat as your main source of energy if you eat 5 small meals during the day balanced with the proper calorie range.

One thing to keep in mind is that the faster your metabolism gets and the more fat you burn the more you need to eat. This concept is one of the hardest for people to understand which is evidence why 60% of Americans are overweight or obese. Without increasing your calories as your metabolism increases you burn away your new muscle tissue for energy which keeps you staying at the same results no matter how hard you workout.


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