Fitness Solutions for You blog

1.) “Tone can be acquired by lifting a lower weight at high repetitions.”

This statement has been the bane of trainers for years. Simply stated, you cannot “tone” or “bulk” muscles depending on your lifting scheme. Muscles either grow or they don’t. Muscle “tone” or “definition” is acquired by having some level of muscle mass while simultaneously having low body fat. There are only 3 goals related to fitness. One can either… increase muscle, decrease fat, or increase performance.

Take a look around: every muscular individual who has highly defined muscles will also very likely have a fairly flat stomach. On the other hand, every muscular individual who has big and bulky muscles without very much definition will also likely have a less than flat stomach. While this is not a perfect science, it is a good starting point. Muscle definition is also partially determined by genetics, as some people store a majority of their body fat in one part of their body or another; however, in essence, muscle definition, or “tone” as it is commonly referred to, is a combination of having muscles while having minimal body fat.

That said, using a low weight and doing a high number of repetitions can politely be referred to as “not using your time optimally.” In other sections I will talk about optimal weight and repetition combinations depending on your goals. There are different types of weight and repetition combinations that will achieve different results, but simply doing a lighter weight than you can handle for the sake of doing dozens of repetitions is not optimal. If it were, all of the fraternity guys would look like Brat Pitt from Fight Club after all of their 12-oz. curls.

2.) “I’ll do hundreds of sit-ups every day and lose my gut in no time!”

Losing fat in a particular section of your body (spot reduction) is essentially not possible. If it were, all of the abdominal schemes that are aired on infomercials would sell like hotcakes. I’m fairly sure that it is a profitable industry, otherwise there would not be nearly as many varieties. Nevertheless, these products that claim “5 minutes per day, you’ll have sleek looking abdominal muscles in no time!” are not worth your time or money. They will work your abdominal muscles, but no more than other exercises that you could do yourself without their equipment and will put you no closer to visible abdominal muscles because of the minimal effort required to do these movements.

Such accomplished writers and bodybuilders as Arnold Schwarzenegger have written about evidence that shows that working a muscle group will increase blood flow to that section of the muscle and some evidence has shown that fat loss will increase on a cellular level, but it is on such a small scale that it might as well not be there.

In other sections I will talk about optimal ways to lose the fat required to have sleek and visible abdominal muscles, but doing hundreds of sit-ups every day is another action that can politely be referred to as “not using your time optimally.”

3.) “I can’t lose (or gain) weight!”

Save medical conditions such as thyroid conditions that cause rapid weight loss and users of prescription medications that assist or inhibit fat loss, as long as calories ingested are less than calories expended, you will lose fat, and vice versa.

I have sat down with people who have sworn their undying commitment towards the fact that they could not lose weight. At the time of this writing, the most recent person I discussed this with attacked my person and said that his genetics were inferior to mine and that I had an advantage. I went through his daily activities and intake of food. We sat there and compared my actions with his actions and in the end he was very surprised at all of the negative actions that he was participating in.

I pointed out that he was drinking soda while I was drinking water, he was playing video games while I was in the gym, he bought from the vending machine for lunch while I made my own, he skipped meals while I had small meals throughout the day to keep my metabolism going. At the beginning of the session we sat down and he started out very defensive with rationalizations such as “well, that shouldn’t matter, that’s the only bad thing I do, that can’t be the reason for my being overweight?” until we got to the end and he had used many variations of the same excuse. Then I showed him the list of comparisons (that I didn’t even list half of earlier in this paragraph) and he was taken aback.

As stated earlier, some people have a genetic predisposition to a different body type (mesomorph, ectomorph, endomorph), but generally if calories expended exceed calories taken in you will lose weight and vice versa, the proportions of that weight lost or gain (muscle, fat, or water) will depend on your physical activity, diet, and water intake.

In other sections I will go into extensive detail concerning optimal intake of food and exercise regimen depending on your goals.

4.) “Lifting weights will make you bulky; I just want to be lean and defined.”

This one always gets me. Is it really plausible to think that you’ll turn into Mr. Olympia by stepping into the weight room? Particularly with females; females do not have the testosterone required to get big and bulky, so unless you plan on supplementing testosterone (anabolic or androgenic steroids), it is all but impossible for you to get “big and bulky.”

The truth is quite the opposite in the case of this fallacy. Lifting weights is a very important part of any fitness regimen, no matter what your goals are. There are countless benefits to lifting weights; as with any healthy life choice, the benefits reach far beyond what is immediately observable. Lifting weights will make you look leaner than you really are with the introduction of newer lean body mass below any layer of fat you may have.

5.) “It is better to work out in the morning.”

There is no firm rule what time of day you should work out. You should work out whenever it is comfortable and convenient for you. Personally, I cannot stand to work out when I first wake up. I perform worse in the morning because I am not fully awake and my attention is not all there yet. Another thing to consider is that many people intake caffeine first thing in the morning. While caffeine is a stimulant, albeit a mild one, it can cause some people to feel funny or uncomfortable while pushing the limits of their cardiovascular ability with multiple activities (the intake of caffeine paired with weight lifting or running) taxing the heart.

6.) “This new workout program must be awesome. I lost 10 pounds last week!”

The human body is roughly 60% water, and a gallon of water weighs eight pounds. Professionals recommend that you drink about a gallon of water per day depending on your size and physical activity. That said, at the beginning of any weight loss regimen, most of the weight you will lose immediately is water weight. Simply said, those first pounds you lost are not really lost at all and will “come back” as soon as you start eating normally and drinking as much water as you should. Weight fluctuations of that scale on that sort of time frame are generally just water and should not get you excited unless you see some changes in the mirror.

Even changes in the mirror can throw you off because if you are dehydrated you will look leaner than you really are. Significant weight fluctuations can even happen overnight. Weighing yourself in the morning can be somewhat deceiving; if you think about it you probably will not have eaten or consumed any liquids for about eight hours, so you’ll probably be slightly dehydrated, and your stomach will be empty.

Another item that should be noted is the level of weight loss that is unhealthy. Simply not eating is one of the worst things you can do for yourself, because your body needs vitamins and nutrients to do normal functions vital to your survival. If you stop eating completely, your body will shut down certain systems as a survival mechanism, and once you start eating again it will store the food you eat and potentially put you further away from your goal than you were before starving yourself. The next step, less extreme than starvation, is eating far below your maintenance level of calories.

In another section I will explain how to calculate your maintenance level of calories, but as a general rule of thumb you should try to cut 500 calories below that maintenance level for optimal fat loss. A pound of fat contains 3500 calories, so if you succeed in cutting 500 calories below maintenance every day you can lose a pound of fat every week. If you cut more than that you are essentially starving yourself and you are just making it harder on yourself. As counterintuitive as it may sound, you must eat to lose weight.

Further, cutting more than 500 calories below your maintenance level can also put you at risk to not only starve yourself and make losing fat harder on yourself, but lose precious lean body mass and further decrease your metabolic rate. Such exceptions include individuals who are obese and users of anabolic steroids. Individuals who are obese can healthily lose fat at a faster rate than a pound per week. Users of steroids and other harsh drugs can help you lose fat at a faster rate and maintain muscle (Clenbuterol and Winstrol come to mind), but the negative health effects of improper steroid use generally outweigh the benefits.

7.) “Doing cardiovascular exercise in a sweat suit can help you lose weight.”

Actually, it is a good way to lose weight–it’s also a good way to dehydrate yourself. I use the word “weight” in the previous sentence as just that–”weight”–in this case, water weight. It will, however, not aid you in losing fat. Working out in a sweat suit is validated by some people as a way to keep you warmed up and “sweat the fat out.” First of all, fat doesn’t go through the skin; it doesn’t work that way. Second, the only thing you’ll sweat out is water and you’ll dehydrate yourself, which will likely lead to premature fatigue and prevent you from reaching your potential, placing you further from your goals.

8.) “Dieting alone is enough to lose weight.”

This couldn’t be further from the truth. In the short term, yes, but most people just gain it right back once they go back to their previous eating habits and insufficient physical activity (the lifestyle that put you in the need to lose weight to begin with). Some people who simply lost commitment to their healthy lifestyle for a short time can diet to get back to the weight they want to be and resume their lifestyle at that point to keep the weight off. Staying at a healthy weight is a lifestyle decision and commitment to maintain those decisions; simply dieting for a period of time and going back to what you were doing before will not maintain your healthy weight.

9.) “Running is the best way to lose weight.”

Simply not true. Unless your long-term goal is to be a great long distance runner, weight training is a very important part of any fitness regimen. Weight training will increase your lean body mass and, as a result, increase your metabolic rate, enabling you to lose fat while sedentary. Most people sleep 7-8 hours per day, so consider the benefits of losing more fat while you’re doing nothing, every night! The benefits of weight training are far reaching, much beyond just gaining lean body mass. In another section I will talk extensively about the benefits of weight training.

10.) “Machines are better than free-weights because you have perfect form every time.”

Using machines rather than free-weights robs you of the involvement of your stabilizer muscles that you get when you use free-weights. It also robs you of the real world applicable and transferable benefits of weight training. Such movements as squats are very applicable towards the real world as they emulate daily activity. The only exception to this fallacy that comes to mind are kickbacks done with free-weights (see the section entitled “Exercises you should never do”), which are a poor substitute for cable pushdowns done on a machine. Doing exercises on machines can not only rob you of the involvement of your stabilizer muscles but some can even be bad for you, particularly leg extensions, squats in the Smith Machine, and any machine that involves shoulder presses behind the neck (see the section entitled “Exercises you should never do”).

Tags: fat, fitness, muscle, weight loss, weightlifting

This entry was posted on Monday, May 5th, 2008 at 11:56 am and is filed under dieting, weight loss, weightlifting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.