The essential
What do you have to do to lose weight? For most of the people who answer that question, the answer is quick and without thinking too much: diet and exercise. And if asked more about the type of exercise they had in mind, “aerobic” is the typical answer. While those are simple answers to simple questions, the real answer for successful weight loss is somewhat more complicated, however, the good news is that there is an answer!
The proliferation of fad diets and infomercials has confused many Americans into believing that there is some supplement or macronutrient elimination diet that will solve our weight loss problems. To make matters worse, we’ve all been told for years that aerobic exercise is the answer to burning fat. You’ve seen the “fat burning zone” on cardio equipment. Just another example of misleading marketing designed to sell weight loss solutions in the billion dollar weight loss industry.
So, forget about all that misinformation. Let me clear up the confusion and give you the three essential elements that clients who have successfully transformed their bodies have found so effective.
The answers to what is wrong with aerobic exercise and how to master weight loss are: synergistic implementation of resistance training (weight training), moderate aerobic exercise and proper nutrition, or what we call The Essentials.
It almost seems like common sense, yet very few people effectively implement all three components when pursuing their weight loss goals. Significant fat loss can be achieved and the common fat loss plateau avoided by incorporating a balanced effort of resistance training and moderate aerobic exercise supported by proper nutrition. Too often, fat loss efforts rely solely on aerobic exercise and diet. This approach will only lead to a small weight loss, a slower metabolism, and the frustration of regaining the weight.
Diets usually don’t work. Diets are unrealistic and are often short-lived. One of the most popular diets actually asks you to virtually eliminate an essential macronutrient. In reality, the answer to your nutritional program lies in educating yourself about balanced nutrition and eating behavior modifications, not in nutrient elimination or severe calorie deprivation.
Severe calorie deprivation diets will only slow down your metabolism by lowering metabolically active muscle tissue and putting your body in a natural defense mechanism that we commonly call starvation mode. Releasing a weight-regulating hormone and enzyme (lipoprotein lipase) will slow down your body’s metabolism when it interprets your diet as starvation.
Plus, an hour of cardio won’t give you the long-term weight loss you want. If you want to change your body, you must decrease the importance of aerobic exercise and dedicate some of your efforts to implementing resistance training. Resistance training is essential if you want to take control of your metabolism. An increase in muscle (and I don’t mean bulking up) will increase your metabolism.
For example, a pound of muscle requires 40 to 50 calories a day just to maintain it. Think what an additional five pounds does to your body’s caloric needs in one day, in one week! Not to mention, 48 hours after resistance training, your metabolism will remain elevated to aid muscle recovery. That’s the key to long-term permanent fat loss. It’s not just what you do 5 percent of your day (exercise), it’s what your body does the other 95 percent of the day.
Let’s face it, most people don’t really enjoy the boredom of prolonged cardio. Don’t get me wrong, cardio is an important component of Essentials, but in moderation. Excessive aerobic exercise will undo your toning efforts by decreasing lean muscle mass. If your body is not getting the proper nutrition and resistance training to increase or at least maintain your body muscles, your body will break down muscle protein for energy and you now know how important muscle is to your metabolism.
The synergy of the three components is essential. If your nutrition does not provide adequate “fuel” for your resistance training efforts, you will not increase your muscle tone and therefore increase your metabolism. What’s more, poor nutrition will not help optimize fat utilization during moderate aerobic exercise. You see, with proper nutrition you can decrease the amount of cardio you have to do, this reduction will allow optimal maintenance of muscle tissue and effectively turn your body into a fat burning machine.
Let me give you one more way to look at it. If you look at the graph on this page, all three components have equal percentages of the pie chart (33.33 percent), and all the essential elements have been perfectly executed making a perfectly round wheel. Now imagine that resistance training stays at 33 percent of the table, aerobic exercise is 20 percent, and nutrition is 10 percent. It is no longer a perfectly round wheel. So which wheel do you think would allow your car to run more efficiently?
As you can see, an equal concentration on all three Essentials components will eliminate frustration, make your search enjoyable, and reward your self-confidence with a successful body transformation.
