We also saw that by eating less you weren’t capitalising on the process known as the Thermic Effect of Feeding, which depending on the foods consumed can result in a teeny-tiny increase in metabolic rate or if the right foods are chosen can account for a fairly noticeable jump in metabolism; meat sweats, anyone?
One of the biggest problems, which directly ties into both of these components of metabolism, is muscle loss. Without a shadow of doubt, the biggest influence on your metabolism that you have in your control is the amount of muscle you carry and how much activity you ask that muscle to perform. The problem with usual dieting is that they do not emphasise either an increase, or even at a minimum, maintenance of muscle. With usual dieting, yes you’ll lose a little fat (nowhere near as much as you are lead to believe); however a lot of muscle is lost in the process. This is disastrous.
In a famine situation (the body doesn’t know otherwise), your muscle is metabolically very costly, it chews up energy like there’s no tomorrow, and doesn’t provide much energy when it’s broken down. Fat cells on the other hand are very efficient at storing energy and when the fat content is broken down it provides over three times as much energy as glucose*. Which do you think will support life the longest? Exactly, the body gives up muscle in a heartbeat, but aggressively defends its fat stores.
So, absolutely you’ll lose a little weight from the scale, but it’s not the right type of weight.
Going back to Energy Flux again (Remember this is not the fallacious concept of Energy Balance; Calories In vs. Calories Out), which is the flow of energy in and out of your body, the ‘in’ part is generally provided by the food we eat and the ‘out’ part is all the processes in your body which we combine to call metabolism. The largest influence with have over the ‘out’ part is our Physical Activity Level (PAL). And this is where it gets tricky.
Physical activity will of course require energy to be performed, but the body, ever the economist, will try to make that activity as efficient as possible. Some types of activity will promote more efficiency than others, so even though you are more active than before, your body will learn to do it at the lowest investment of energy. This is why some forms of exercise are amazing for certain types of fitness, but is horrendous if your pursuit is fat loss, they make the body extremely efficient, even at rest.
So in some cases, by doing the wrong type of exercise, in combination with reduced energy intake, will actually cause your metabolism to slow down, rather than speed up.
This is not understood by most mainstream programs, which still, regardless of their attempts to seemingly update their system, suggest you can trade off a walk for a cake. This is still, although wrapped up in different clothing, the old and erroneous ‘Energy Balance’ concept; however you want to ‘play’ it.
To learn how to drop the right type of weight (and have verifiable proof that it is fat loss) join us in the Lean for Life Program where you’ll be provided with the knowledge and the tools to create the body you want and deserve. Click on the link to find out more…
http://hpc-uk.net/6.html
* Even though muscle is composed of protein when it’s broken down it produces amino acids which the liver can convert into glucose
No comments:
Post a Comment