A
successful approach to help you lose weight fast involves
understanding how your Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR), diet
composition, and exercise work together to burn calories
In this marketplace of
super-hyped weight loss products and testimonials to
lose weight fast, you need to
remember that the fundamental principle of weight
loss is that the number of calories burned MUST
exceed the number of calories consumed. However,
there are many factors that influence how you burn
calories. For example, your resting metabolic rate,
your diet, and your exercise level all contribute to
the overall energy balance in your body. You deposit
energy into your body in the form of food, and then
you use up that energy when you exercise.
Changing your resting
metabolic rate (RMR)
Your RMR is a measurement
of the amount of energy required for automatic
physiological functions such as breathing and heart
beating, PLUS the extra energy required for your
body to be alert and sitting up. Sixty to
seventy-five percent of your energy is accounted for
by your RMR. A high RMR means that you have an
"easier" time losing fat or maintaining your weight.
RMR is also linked to the amount of muscle tissue
you have. The more muscle you have, the higher your
RMR.
Using weight training
techniques to build muscle will help increase the
muscle composition in your body. Muscle simply
requires more energy to sustain than fat, hence a
higher RMR.
Adding
calories instead of
cutting calories can avoid the starvation adaptation
response.
The idea that you may have
to add calories to successfully lose weight instead
of restrict calories seems crazy, but if you go
below 1,200 calories a day if you are a woman, or
1,600 calories a day if you are a man, your risk a
condition called the starvation adaptation response.
The starvation adaptation response causes your RMR
to slow right down. When your body gets too few
calories it shifts into survival mode by storing fat
and and calories, and lowering the RMR so that the
body can live in a threatening situation.
If you've cut down on
calories but don't seem to be losing fat, or you
seem to be gaining weight, try adding calories. Try
adding as little as 100 calories a day to your diet
to see if you can boost your RMR and beat the
starvation adaptation response. Sometimes it's not a
drastic change to your diet.
Low-cal diets can be
dangerous for another reason besides
starvation adaptation. Too few calories also means
that you are likely taking in insufficient nutrients
to keep your body healthy. Low calorie diets make it
difficult to build or maintain muscle, despite
what you may hear about high protein diets being the
best for muscle development and losing weight. If
you don't have enough fuel and your RMR is too low,
your body will turn to burning muscle and storing
fat.
Concentrate on
diet composition
The composition of your
diet—the percentage of protein, carbohydrate and
fats you eat—also greatly affects the success of
your weight loss program. When you eat a meal, your
body's digestive processes generate heat, which
amounts to 10% if the energy or calories you burn
each day. This is called the thermic effect of food
(TEF). If you cut calories too low, you reduce the
TEF too much, which is not what you want to burn
fat.
So, since calories are for
important maintaining a high metabolic rate and
thermic effect of food, make sure that you are
providing your body with the best proportion of
protein, carbohydrates, and fats. Fats, in general,
are troublesome because fats that you eat are more
easily transformed into fat on your body than
proteins and carbohydrates. Your body has to work
hard to break down carbs for fuel. Sugar is also a
culprit and unfortunately these days sugary foods
are easy to come by. Too much sugar, in fact, causes
the body to overproduce insulin, a hormone that
among other things stimulates fat production.
To change your diet
composition, cut down on fatty and sugary foods.
Increase the complex carbohydrates. Aim for 65% of
your daily calories from carbohydrates (even more if
you are doing strength training).
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