Basically I keep reading into fitness, working out, losing weight and muscle gain and all this stuff and now I am SO confused. I thought if you ate healthy foods and exercised regularly you would be fit and healthy. However if you want a certain body type, i.e tighter stomach and more toned arms it seems there are so many complications to it over fat, protein and glycogen because you can burn muscle over fat which means you don't build muscle. Then i get someone saying muscle, fat and glycogen are all burned but the muscle is restored and after weight training muscle is added and cardio targets fat and all this confusing stuff!!! Like differences between runners, long distance runners, body builders etc etc. I'm a normal kid, wanting to lose body fat and gain muscle (or have a nice body - flat or six packed stomach, nice chest, good arms etc etc..) but it seems if you do the slightest thing wrong it can mess everything up and you'll burn something you want to keep and store something you want to burn!!!!
And things like if you want to lose weight, if you burn like 1000 kcals at high intensity you'll lose more weight but not more fat because you're burning muscle. However if you do low intensity you'll burn less fat but keep more muscle but overall lose less weight.
I just want to get rid of my fat and have a nice body (i'm 16 btw) and i thought by eating healthily and exercising this would happen in months and by a year it would defo be great then i'd just have to keep it up if i wanted to keep the look but it seems there are so many complications. I look somewhere it tells me to drink milk, someone tells me not to drink milk becuz it is fattening. I am so confused!!!
Will i get the body i desire by eating healthily and working out (cardio and weights) and if i want a six pack but i have lots of belly fat should i do sit ups before i burn the fat away or weight till the fat is burnt away then do sit ups?
Posted by Holloway Pt
Hi There
Sounds like you are very confused. Now the body works best with change and to get your desired results you will need to go through a few stages of training.
Firstly 'base conditioning phase.' You need to strip down the fat before building up too much. A workout regime a mixture of cardio and weights is what you need. Weights should be done for 3 sets of each exercise with between 12-15 reps for each set. Doing this will start to grow your muscles a little but will also get your blood flow to your muscles increased. This is key as this will help your Basic Metabolic Rate (BMR) which is the amount of calories you will burn when you are not doing anything, and when you think that the majority of time you are not training to increase this will help alot.
Cardio wise a mixture of both steady state exercise and cardiovascular exercise will help your fitness levels as well as burn a good amout of fat. What you talk about in your question above the loss of muscle mass due to cardiovascular exercise (atrophy) is alot harder than you think, so do not waste anymore time thinking about this. You are only 16 therefore haven't got alot of muscles you have spent years building up, therefore cardio will actually help with the weights to increase your muscle size not the other way round.
Diet wise it is as simple as if you consume less than you burn on a daily basis you will lose weight. Glycogen is the bodies primary energy source and will always be used first when training, so i would do your weights regime first after your warm up. After this the next energy source you use are your fat stores. These are good and the prefered energy source for the body when doing sustained exercise (cardio) so that is what will be burned. The body using protein for energy is a last resort as it finds it so hard to break down, so unless you are running marathons for cardwouldn'tuldnt worry about that either.
Limit your carbohydrate intake and try not to eat them after 5pm. You should find that this will make a large difference.
FYI I am a Personal Trainer, Sports Therapist, and nutritional advisor.
Good Luck
Orignal From: Health/fitness/workout question?
No comments:
Post a Comment