Weight Loss VS Fat Loss the often misunderstood concept

Hi, My name is Andrew and I have done 2 years of Sports Science and nearly finished my Personal Training License as well as my University degree in business communications majoring in public relations.

Ever wondered why the Olympic sprinters look so ripped and jacked? and ever wondered why the Olympic long distance runners and marathon runners look like bamboo sticks with skins attached to them?

what is your idea of a good physique? the marathon runner? or the sprinter?

the answer is simple, difference in training

understanding how the body consumes energy

Case Study For Everyone To Learn And Understand How Their Body Works!

The Human Body uses 3 primary sources as energy to consume when you start exercising and they consume in this order

1. Proteins ( your muscle )
2. Carbohydrates (sugar reserves)
3. Lipids (commonly known as fats)

when engaging in low intensity cardio (e.g walking or casual cycling on the stationery bike)

unless done on a empty stomach, your body will recognize that activity and start burning your proteins away! yes its scary !
your tread mill / stationery bike with the fancy LED screens telling you that your are burning calories (is in-fact lying to you)

your body enters a state known as "catabolism of proteins" where in order to power the long strenuous cardio exercises
your body just eats away your muscles, the longer this goes on you enter phase 2

Phase 2:

Your body starts consuming the glycogen reserves in your muscles (commonly known as sugar reserves) as these are burning away so is your water levels in your body (resulting in dehydration ... can be fixed by water)

this is not what you want to do and then you finally enter phase 3

Phase 3:

by the time your about to finish your long strenuous cardio on the treadmill or step machine you enter this phase when your body finally starts burning the fat and then it stops because you exited the machine and your heart rate drops back to normal....and you get what is called "the bounce back" effect.

so the result is you burn away your muscle, you burn away your sugar reserves and you burn minimal fat

sure you do this for 2-3 weeks and you hop on the scales and see a loss in weight, then you look at the mirror and wonder

"why do I still look so fat?"

simple

muscle weighs much more than fat, you burn away your muscle as fuel (protein catabolism) and burn away minimal fat

OMG what do I do? This is a disaster!

Case Study Part 2: Metabolism and Muscle Mass

Ever wondered why when your growing up going through different phases of school and no matter what you eat you just won't get fat? you can eat KFC, Burger King, Mc Donalds.... Denny's as much as you like and then suddenly you get to age 19 and early 20's you do university ALL OF THE SUDDEN .... DOM DOM DOM!

Anything you eat goes straight to your belly and your butt

that is because when we are young and growing up through our teens in highschool, it is compulsary to do sports and physical education classes, our metabolic rate during puberty and post puberty are all accomodated by the amount of activity output we are engaged in during that period of your lives.

a rough estimate figure of (4000 to 6000 calories a day) that is why we can eat anything we want and not get fat

HOWEVER

when we reach university what do we do every day? we sit in packed lecture theaters and study at the library and gym is optional, all of the the sudden our output level drops to the floor, putting our body in a state of survival mode where the hormones just want to do nothing but store more and more fats.

How do we fix this?

simple.... return your body to the state it was in when your in highschool e.g get your metabolic rate back up to say...2000 calories? mine is 2250 calories / day at the moment, if I can do it, so can you!

Uncle Ho! but I don't have that much time to exercise during the week! what do I do !!!??

well quantity does not equal quality..... if you just hop on the treadmill for 3 hours reading a magazine and texting your significant other, your doing poor form and a bad exercise which will burn 200 calories at most after your 3 hours is done.

Uncle Ho! then what exercise do I do? I do not want to be in the gym the whole day!

There is a saying called "work smarter not harder" it is very true, you can achieve much much more with shorter exercises...I discovered this when I was learning sports science at the institute of technologies....

you can do what is called "High Intensity Interval Training" or H.I.I.T for short, you can google it

H.I.I.T is the secret for efficient training and maximum fat burning without going into a state of Protein Catabolism

because the nature of the exercises you do in H.I.I.T is often full body workout at high intensity for short bursts with minimal rest

this tricks your body into a state where instead of using muscle and sugars as primary energy for consumption, it instead switches to Fats + Sugar + Water as the source of energy to consume

therefore when you hop on the scales after 3 weeks of High Intensity Interval Training, not only do you see a loss in weight, but when you look at the mirror you will see VISIBLE results.

Case Study Part 3: The Psychology of Men and Women

Men and women that are out of shape generally have lower self esteem as shown in many studies, Men quite often measure his image by looking at the mirror.......women on the other hand measure themselves by the scale.

quite often these 2 occurrences will result in constantly looking at the mirror or jumping on the scales and sometimes women will freak out and say "oh noes I gained 2 pounds" and get temporarily depressed.

Men will look at the mirror and then turn on T.V and see some UFC going on and be like "man I wish I could look like Randy Couture or George St. Pierre"

The Solution:

well, you can but first of all to the women...... "stop looking at the scales" alot of the time if you go and do those long strenuous cardio and burn away the muscle that is required for your body to generate metabolism, you just burned away your V8 that can guzzle atl that gas away.

what is more important? less numbers on the scale ? or looking like a fitness model on the cover of the magazine?

you be the judge.

For men, stop looking at the mirror, sometimes the angle of lighting will distort your perception of how you look in the mirror and demotivate you, what you should do is get a tape measure to measure your waist, arms and chest

use accurate measures to measure your results as you start working out at the gym. That way you are more focussed at the tasks at hand rather than worry about the superficial aspects in the mirror.

Conclusion:

weight loss is the end goal, but losing fat is the primary objective, never forget that by having a BMI of over 20, it means those fats not only visually make you look and feel bad, but think about what it is doing inside your body, it's wrapping around your vital organs and risking you to various diseases.

cut the fats, use workouts that target the burning of fats directly..... (high intensity interval training) is key because you only need 20 minutes a day everyday, and you can then do whatever you want and your body (thoughout the day) will continue burning.

and burn more as you sleep.

Good Luck, Hope it Helps