Questions Asked…Questions Answered!
Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all — the apathy of human beings.- – Helen Keller
It’s been a few weeks since I last had an “Ask the Expert” article. But you people have been keeping me busy by answering your questions.
Here are three that I thought I’d share with you. Hopefully they will enspire, educate and enlighten you to how to improve your own health related results.
If you have a question that you would like me to answer in an upcoming blog, please feel free to submit your comments at the bottom of this post and I will do my best to respond to them.
Q. What can I do when it becomes noticeable that I’m not losing any more weight?
A. DO NOT PANIC. There could be a number of factors that go the inability to lose body weight as quickly as you once did. This is a normal occurrence that happens to many people.
The best way to make it less noticeable is to throw out your scale, or stick your head in the sand, or just cover your eyes as you weigh yourself.
Stepping on an off a scale to weigh oneself on a constant basis is a losing battle in so many ways. And it’s totally a waste of time.
When you initially began an exercise program there is usually that “beginner’s”period where you will see yourself losing several pounds in a relatively short period. Yet, the more your body builds lean muscle tissue, the less quickly you will see your “scale weight” change.
Stop Focusing On The Number
If you dislike the weight you are at, ask yourself if it is because of the number of pounds it indicates that you weigh? Or is it because of the amount of body fat you have? Or is it because of the lack of lean muscle tissue that is on your frame?
The number you see does not tell you much. It only gives you an indication of how much you weight against gravity. It doesn’t tell you how much body fat you have…It doesn’t tell you how much water weight you are retaining and it definitely does not tell you how much ever-so-important lean muscle mass you have.
If you continue to watch what you eat and exercise regularly and STILL see no noticeable change, then you have to look at your workout routine. Many times all it takes is a different exercise of the same muscle group to stimulate new growth.
Something as simple as doing push-ups instead of the same bench press you had been doing for an extended period of time will make the body work harder again. In order to increase your metabolism, you will need to increase the intensity, change the number or repetitions, mixed up the order of the exercises, extend your workout session or just replace an overly repeated exercise with a similar movement.
Don’t give up and become dejected. You have most likely reached a plateau and by “tricking” the body into thinking it will have to do something different might be the answer to seeing more noticeable changes on the horizon.
Q – In your experience, what, if anything, did you discover that really made you say, “Wow, this will change the way I train”?
A. Like many people, I began exercising because of society’s obsession of judging peoply by how good they will look if they were walking on the beach in very revealing clothing. I wanted to look good, feel great, and have people notice! Most people have similar reasons for working out.
So I did what any other novice would do…look in all the wrong places, allow myself to be misguided by misinformation, and set totally unrealistic goals based on the premise that I should be training like a bodybuilder.
The problem was, and still is, I don’t have the discipline to train that way. I will never have the money to spend on the extreme amount of high quality foods that would be needed each day. And most importantly, I don’t want to turn my life around by spending each and every day for the large number of hours at the gym. Because unless you are incredibly genetically gifted and you put enormous amounts of hours at the gym, you won’t ever look like one of those models in the magazine.
So, I started examining why people exercise…how people exercise…and for what reasons they have been told to exercise. Then I started to see the problem.
People, for the most part, have no idea what-so-ever how to get the results they are after! They don’t have a clue!
After many years of studying the trends, examining the options and looking over all the scientific data, I’ve found that training in a more “functional” manner has changed the way I train my clients. It has also changed the way results have occurred.
Sitting on a machine and cranking out a few hundred reps will not help a stock clerk pick up heavy boxes and place them on the shelves. Sitting on a machine doing isolated muscle exercises will not help a young mother help push her baby up a steep incline. Sitting on a machine will not help a fireman climb a ladder.
For the most part, we do things each day standing on our two feet.
So, why should a person train like a bodybuilder if their occupation isn’t even remotely similar? Why should a person exercise in a seated fashion at all? The easiest way to become injured on the job, in the home or out enjoying your favorite leisure activity is not to train for it.
So, if you have an occupation that requires you to be on your feet for long periods of time, pushing and pulling objects, then you should train that way.
If you are an office worker who is gaining too much weight thanks in part to being totally inactive by sitting at a desk all day, the last thing you need to do is come to a gym and sit down.
Someone once told me that “You Can’t Dance Sitting On Your Pants”. So, if you want real results, grab a set of dumbbells, and start training using the movements that you do every day. Leave the machines for the uninformed.
Q. It seems like every time I go off my diet I get even fatter than before. Why?
A. The first problem I see in that statement is and the first question I would ask is…WHY ARE YOU DIETING in the first place?
The word “Diet” means to deprive oneself of something. When you deprive your body of food, it craves it more. Being the weak creatures that we are, it is very difficult to stay away from foods that we have been accustomed to have.
People who are “yo-yo” dieters and do not exercise on a regular basis have a tendency to gain more fat every time they go off their “diet” and then back on their diet and then back off of it again.
Our bodies are born with a certain number of fat cells. They never disappear when you lose fat, they just shrink. They are still there so when you go off you diet these fat cells expand and new fat cells are created. Then when you go on and off you diet the next time, your fat cells expand again and even more fat cells are created.
The less time a person spends dieting and focuses more on having nutritious meals through the day, exercising on a regular basis and doing moderate amounts of aerobic exercise, the less likely they will get fatter than they were before. Over time it will become apparent that by doing this your metabolism will increase and it will be very easy to keep your weight under control.
© 2009 BCFitness, Inc. All Rights Reserved
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