If you are trying to lose weight or just wanting to maintain your body weight as you age, increasing your metabolic rate (the amount of energy expended per day) is the key to sustainable weight loss. Many diet and fitness experts will have you believe that the key to weight loss is burning more calories in harder and harder workouts, and/or by imposing drastically reduced caloric diets. Both approaches are flawed and dangerous to your health. Only a sustainable increase in your daily metabolic rate will achieve permanent weight loss. There are many ways to give your metabolism a boost – including exercising at the right intensity, eating right, and putting on more muscle.
“Aerobic exercise” also known as fat burning exercise is low intensity activity that allows your body to combining oxygen with the nutrients in your body to burn fat as fuel. During aerobic exercise you teach your body to burn fat as the primary energy source. Most sedentary people have a carbohydrate dependent metabolism. However, fat is a much more efficient fuel providing more energy than carbohydrates per gram. And who doesn’t want to burn more fat?
STRENGTH TRAINING
Additionally, strength training with weights or other forms of resistance will increase muscle mass. Muscle is more metabolically active than fat; therefore the more lean body mass you have the higher your metabolism will be. Incorporating a sound weight training plan to your routine will significantly speed up the weight loss process….
Options: at the gym with equipment, fit camp using own body weight, at swimming pool with aquafit using resistance bands, at home using dumbbells and resistance bands with the 24 Fit DVDs. Which type of strength training will you still be doing not in 4 weeks time but 4 months? Whatever type of strength training you choose, it’s always important to get the technique right. DVDs can help you get the right “form”.
RESTING METABOLIC RATE
On the nutrition side of weight loss, you will need to learn how many calories your body requires a day to survive and function at its best. This number is derived from a test called the Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR) test. RMR testing provides the number of calories your body burns at rest. A sound nutrition plan should take into account metabolic needs; two people may need drastically different amounts of calories despite similar sizes.
Your metabolism is influenced by your age (metabolism naturally slows with age); your sex (men generally burn more calories at rest than women); and proportion of lean body mass (the more muscle you have, the higher your metabolic rate tends to be).
Once you know the total number of calories your body needs to fuel your life and your workouts, you can create a calorie deficit each day and begin to achieve permanent weight loss. Some people who have been attempting lose weight for a while subsequently reduce calories vastly below what is needed to run their metabolism. This only serves to bring their metabolism to an idle in a protective mode that makes the body hold onto fat. This is one of the main reasons why they do not lose weight.
BALANCED NUTRITION
If you don’t maintain good levels of macro and micro nutrients, you may find you are never satisfied after eating, or still lack energy, making you reach for products such as sugary drinks, biscuits or other unhealthy snacks. Taking a Herbalife Formula 1 Shake for breakfast…is a great place to start. And a Herbalife shake after training accelerates lean muscle growth, which in turn revs your metabolism and burns more fat, and speeds up recovery. Eating soon after your workout not only speeds the recovery process, it also can prevent you from feeling deeply ravenous and overeating later on. If you dont get get enough protein, your muscles aren’t able to repair themselves after a workout. In such a case, strenuous exercise can actually be counterproductive—you aren’t able to rebuild what you tear down, and you actually become less able to burn calories
WELLNESS COACHING
Contact us for a metabolic analysis which includes calculating your resting and active metabolic rates and protein factor. And ask about the new 3 day nutrition trial.