Saturday, November 8, 2008

How to Lose Fat and Gain Muscle!

By Carl Juneau

Daily resting metabolic rate Daily physical activity = DCE

To sum it up, the caloric balance equation is: DCI(food) - DCE(resting metabolic rate physical activity) = Caloric Balance Or, put simply: IN - OUT = BALANCE

The 3 Balances

POSITIVE - WEIGHT GAIN When your IN is greater than your OUT, you are gaining weight. IN greater than OUT = Weight Gain That is, when your daily intake of energy (from food) is greater than your daily expense of energy (from resting metabolic rate and physical activity), your weight is going up.

NEGATIVE - WEIGHT LOSS When your OUT in greater than your IN, your are losing weight OUT greater than IN = Weight Loss In this case, your daily expense of energy (from resting metabolic rate and physical activity) is greater than your daily intake of energy (from food): your weight is going down.

NEUTRAL = NO CHANGE IN WEIGHT When the calories you get from eating food are all used up, no calories are left over and your body isn't in need of anymore either. The input and demand for calories are pretty much equal, so there's no surplus (weight gain) nor deficit (weight loss). This results in no change in weight. IN ≈ OUT = NO LOSS, NO GAIN The total equation equals 0, so that is the change in weight.

Importance of exercise The outcomes can be very different with exercise. See below for the different results.

Positive balance = Weight Gain, as we saw before. Positive balance exercise = Weight Gain, but this gain is in MUSCLE MASS! Negative balance = Weight loss again, but Negative balance exercise = Weight loss, but this is a loss of FAT MASS Neutral balance = Stable Weight, but with exercise Neutral balance exercise = Stable overall weight, with some MUSCLE GAIN, AND some FAT LOSS.

Remember that exercise increases your caloric usage, so if you start exercising and have the same caloric intake (eating the same amount of food) your balance will become more negative as you exercise more. To keep a neutral balance, you would have to slightly increase your caloric intake (people naturally become hungrier than normal when they first begin to exercise) to make up for the extra calories you are burning for physical activity.

No exercise Just as there are many benefits to exercising, there are some consequences to not exercising. Positive balance = weight gain in FAT MASS Negative balance = weight loss IN MUSCLE MASS

This point needs to be underlined. Most fad diets that promote huge weight loss in a short period of time do so by severely restricting caloric intake, sometimes without having you exercise. That will actually make you lose mostly muscle as well as a bit of fat. Why is this bad? Because, in the long run, a loss of muscle mass means a lower resting metabolic rate, which in turn reduces your daily caloric expense. A few of these diets and you have substantially reduced your resting metabolic rate, which means that if you eat the same amount of food you did before the diet (same IN), you will actually gain weight because your lowered OUT (lower resting metabolic rate) leads to a more positive caloric balance. How do you reverse that situation? First, you stop following fad diets that severely restrict caloric intake. Second, you exercise, since exercise will increase your resting metabolic rate over time.

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