Everyone wants to lose weight; aspiring athletes, business folks, and regular Joes and Janes.  People usually go about the process in a less-effective manner, which result in frustration, disappointment, and bitterness.  Cardio is NOT the answer!  This post should orient you in the right direction. I promise that if you go about your weight loss plan with the below strategy you will be MUCH more likely to be successful.  Please do it, and send me the results! In order to get fit AND stay fit, you must change who you are biologically. This is the best way to lose fat, get fit,  ripped or tone, and stay that way.  Cardio, fad diets, and traditional weight lifting is a very SLOW road to fitness, and it will be hard to sustain. Don’t be discouraged. You’ll be happier (more endorphins WOOHOO!), smarter, sexier (to you and your loved one), more confident, less prone to depression, more illness resistant, you’ll live longer, blah blah blah… but seriously it’s true.  Science knows it, and you’ll experience it.  It’s an honor to me if I can help anyone who might happen upon this post.  

You need to know a few things before we get started:

 

FIRST: BODY COMPOSITION IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN “LOSING WEIGHT.”

Don’t think about losing weight, think about improving fitness levels and your body composition.  You want to lose FAT not weight, muscle is your friend and it’s kinda heavy stuff. Correct training will increase lean muscle mass, and decrease fat stores, AND because 1 square inch of muscle is heavier than 1 square inch of fat, you may not weigh that much less.  In many cases you can lose fat, gain muscle, and weigh more!     NOTE TO WOMEN: Girls reading this are thinking I don’t want to be buff, I want to be slim and sexy!  Muscles ARE slim and sexy.  Women have considerably less muscle fiber than men, and it is VERY difficult for the average woman to become “bulky.”  Truth is men like a fit and tone woman more than just a skinny woman.    

SECOND: THE CALORIE BALANCE IS UNAVOIDABLE TRUTH.

  We consume calories through food, and our bodies expend them to live, move, think, or do anything.  When we consume more calories than we expend, we must store the extra calories as fat.  In a nutshell gaining or losing fat is that simple.  We’ll get clever about this a bit later, but for now know that there is not way to gain fat unless you consume more than you expend.  Read on… We eat calories.  Protein, fat, carbs, and everything else we eat contains calories. FYI – One pound of fat contains about 3500 calories. 1 gram of protein contains 4 calories.  1 gram of carbohydrate contains 4 calories.  1 gram of alcohol contains 7 calories.  1 gram of fat contains 9 calories.  The wonderful ice cream cone I just ate had 485 calories (it was huge, delicious, and fatty). Calories are used by the body as energy. According to MET research if you weigh 160 pounds and walk at 3 MPH, you will “burn’” 85 calories per hour.  So it will take me nearly 6 hours to walk that off!  (Don’t get frustrated: walking, and cardio in genera,l is one of the worst ways to attack “weight loss.”)  Sleep burns about 550 calories for a good nights rest, if you weight 160 pounds. The excess calories you consume is your “caloric deficit.” So basically if you are eating 250 more calories than you use each day (about a regular sized ice cream cone), you will gain one pound every 2 weeks of fat.  This means that to simply maintain your weight you must burn or stop eating 250 calories.  Read on…  Don’t be discouraged by this.  As I said before you need to change biologically to get the best results.  

THIRD: METABOLISM IS (CAN BE) YOUR FRIEND

  Your body’s metabolism (determined by activity, biology, and body composition) burns calories simply to maintain your life.  Your metabolism at rest is called your “resting metabolic rate” or RMR. If you have a high metabolism you burn more fat doing nothing!  Good news eh?  But what’s the problem?  How do we raise our metabolic rate?

Metabolic rate is determined mostly by ACTIVITY LEVELS and BODY COMPOSITION.

Muscle requires more calories to sustain itself than fat does.  A conservative estimate would say muscle burns 3X more calories than fat does.  That’s great news but don’t get carried away.  Muscle may burn 3X more fat, but muscle still doesn’t burn astounding amounts of calories.  1 pound of muscle burns about 6 calories in 24 hours, and one pound of fat burns about 2 calories. So think about this if you gain 5 pounds of muscle (see above picture) you will burn an extra 210 calories per week doing nothing.  Gain ten pounds of lean muscle and you’re now burning an additional 420 calories per week doing nothing. Being active throughout your day will stimulate your metabolism.  If you are sedentary during the day your metabolism will lower and you will burn less calories at a resting state.  

PRETTY SIMPLE RIGHT?

  Ok so our strategy stems from the above knowledge and a few smart strategies to come:

a. Eating more calories than you expend causes fat storage. b. Metabolism determines your caloric burn at a resting state, and can be improved with body composition and daily activity. c. Exercise and activities also burn calories- however, “casual” cardio burns an amazingly LOW amount of calories.

Here’s my cheesy analogy!

Think of a sink with a plugged drain.  It’s overflowing with water (calories) the water is still running (calorie consumption).  What’s the fastest way to empty the sink and keep it from overflowing? a. You can reduce the power of the water faucet (diet: take in less calories). b. You can unplug the drain so the water goes down the drain (metabolism: burn more calories at a resting state). c. You can scoop out the water with a cup or bucket (exercise and activity: burn additional calories). OR, you can be smart and do all 3, which will get the job done faster than ever, and avoid future overflows with much less work.  One main point here is to UNPLUG THE DRAIN, and so the sink stops filling up so easily.  It’s the difference between treating symptoms and providing a real solution to the problem.  By attacking the fitness from multiple angles you’ll be able to get the job done quicker and with less effort and stress.  In fact once you learn the truth about how to get fit, and try it for yourself, you’ll surely conclude any other method to be a waste of effort.

  Proper exercise and weight management methods are like investing into your fitness.  It’s like placing money into a stock which will eventually pay you, whereas many popular and more traditional methods are will always give you the same result… like an hourly wage that never goes up.  1 hour of cardio will continue to give you your 120 – 200 burned calories, and keep you at about the same level of fitness.  The smart training I speak of will not only increase your metabolism over time, but the same 15 – 45 minutes of exercise will burn increasingly more calories each session, AND you will eventually become “ultra-fit”.  Some studies have even shown a 10 fold increase in caloric burn as opposed to traditional methods.  Do you want to be 10 times more effective?  (Dumb question…) Seriously if you train smart, with moderate time constraints (15 – 45 minutes every other day), and moderate alterations to your diet (part 2) ANYONE CAN BECOME ULTRA FIT.  I’m talking the kind of fitness people secretly envy, and the kind of fitness that prompts people to state you have perfect genetics etc… The kind of fitness levels that make you feel GREAT about yourself. These are big statements, but we’ll get down to the nitty gritty in part 2. In part 2, we’ll get down to the fun stuff. What is the fastest and most effective way to work out?  What is an effective and painless approach to dieting?  How long will this take?  What kind of exercise will help me reach my goals fast?  I’ll release part 2 later this week.