by Lloyd Shaw
Companies use marketing lines to people in an attempt to catch those who have no idea how the human body actually works. In other words the “dead ignorant”. That may sound harsh, but there’s no way anyone who walks around in today’s free information society should not at least know the basics, unless they choose not to know. So it is plain ignorance. However, this is what marketers live for, soft targets which equals easy money.
The below is a short list of things that are based on science, please note that no matter how hard you wish, pray, or swear they will not change.
You Can’t Target Fat Loss
Doing sit ups does not necessarily burn fat off of your stomach. Why? Because the energy used by the muscles in your abdominal region to do sit-ups comes from your blood, which circulates around the entire body pulling whatever it needs out of fat cells throughout your body. This is done at locations based on things like increased/decreased circulation to a particular area and your genetic instructions. This is why sometimes you can work-out hard and lose fat from an area you don’t want to lose fat from. i.e. Lots of woman lose size on their breasts when exercising, because mammary glands are 80% body fat.
However, this fat reduction is not random and can be estimated based on what order the fat went on in. If the first place it went on is your gut, then sorry, the last place its going to come off is your gut. If it went on your thighs first, then its coming off of there last. In effect you just get to rewind the movie, you don’t get to change the order of the events. If you want someone to blame for this injustice, blame your parents, its ALL their fault.
Massage can increase circulation to an area and make it easier to let the fat cells be accessed for energy. This was the idea behind those massage belts they used to use years ago, the problem with that is without exercise its completely useless.
A RULE TO REMEMBER… The larger the muscle the more energy it burns when activated. Why is this important to understand? Well think about this, how much muscle is in your abs? Not much, how much is in your legs, arms, and chest? Get it? One squat or push-up is worth 20 crunches.
Note: A lot of woman underestimate the fat burning potential of their arms and because they are not naturally strong in that area they shy away from exercises that target them.
You Can’t Turn Fat Into Muscle or Muscle Into Fat
Fat cells and muscle cells are two completely different tissues and they NEVER decide to swap roles. Protein is stored in muscle cells, fat is stored in fat cells. If someone goes from being toned and fit to being fat, they just lost their muscle and gained more fat. It’s that simple.
You Don’t Actually Ever Lose Fat Cells
We use the word lose because it’s an easy term and a basic explanation, but the fact is the amount of fat cells you have does not really change after puberty, in some cases people can still produce more into adulthood, but this usually takes extreme overeating. What changes is how full the fat cells are. You have to think of them as small balloons, they are either deflated and empty sitting flat against the skin, in which case they are actually transparent, or they are full of milky looking fat that is just stored energy waiting to be used up. The pressure in and around these bunched up cells can then cause other issues like poor circulation. This in turn gives them less chance of ever being used for energy. Kind of a vicious cycle.
However, Your muscle cells are the opposite, they are always fluxing in numbers and never remain static. They can break down, repair, or build entirely new ones in only 3 days. This is a good cycle that is induced by some exercise and burns huge amounts of energy for days after the resistance training or Vibration Training session is over.
You Have To Get Your Heart Rate Up To Burn Fat
The truth is not all people find aerobic activity (getting your heart rate up for 20 minutes +) an effective fat loss tool. True its good for your heart but your genetics play a big part in how much fat it will burn.
During aerobic activity you only burn fat while your heart rate is up which may sound good but the flipside is once it comes back down it stops. So doing cardio for 1 Hr a day might sound impressive, but you didn’t burn fat for 23 hrs of that day. What a kick in the pants, huh? On top of that as soon as you stop your body tries to put it back on. That’s why mixing up training methods (as above) has always been the preferred method for long term effective fat burning. Any trainer worth their weight in protein powder will tell you, “NO EXERCISE IS AN ISLAND”.
So why doesn’t my aerobics instructor tell me this?
If they told the whole truth, which is they got to look the way they did by mixing things up, your gym would have to purchase a lot more weight training equipment. It’s much cheaper to sell you just a square meter of floor space and play some music while yelling at you. Imagine if your instructor actually told the truth and said after your class “now ladies off to the weights room to complete your workout”. The weights room would get flooded with 50 woman at one time and they would get fired, so they compromise the truth to keep their jobs.
When Trying To Tone Up and Reduce Body Fat Percent, The Scales Mean Nothing
Gaining muscle cells to harden them up makes them heavy for their size and burning up body fat makes you lighter, so in reality “toning up ” is a roller coaster ride in actual weight terms on the scales to a point where they become useless and misleading. In some cases causing people to give up following a program.
i.e. Most people put ON weight in the first few weeks of a resistance training program making then freak out and stop, but here is the silver lining, they may have dropped a clothing size.
So how do you measure the results? Well, it’s even cheaper than a set of scales. LOOK AT YOURSELF NUDE IN THE MIRROR FIRST THING IN THE MORNING.
True it may not be the best way to start the day and the shock may help you save on coffee, but it’s the “truth” and will allow you to keep track of your body shape as it changes. Why the morning? You are not bloated with the days food yet and things like wheat intolerance will have settled down.
Closing note: I will be going deeper into the above points and others in the future, but for now that should give you a basic understanding of how the only thing you truly own in life, your body, really works. You are now no longer a “soft target”.
