The world Famous
Formula
We hear it all the time. It’s the simple formula that televisions,
radio, magazines, and fitness celebrities tell us day in a day out:
Burn more calories than you take
in and you will lose weight. Mathematically, it makes
perfect sense. In order for the body to lose weight, it has use up
more calories than are taken in per day. This allows the body to tap
into storage energy supplies (such as fat) to continue to energize
the body for its on-going tasks.
Fueled with this new knowledge, you give it a try; you take a
glimpse at your current diet, you may even count up an average of
the calories. You then try eating one or two fewer things a day to
drop you calories down a little lower. But then after a few weeks
you realize that not only do you have less energy, but you’re
also not losing any bodyfat. Why is
this? In order to understand what is happening here, we need to
first understand how the body works.
Enter the Resting
Metabolic Rate
Each of our bodies uses a different amount of energy each day to
accomplish our daily tasks, including just breathing. Our metabolism
(or rate at which burn calories) is based on how efficiently we burn
these calories that we have taken in.
Here’s the trick: Our bodies need a certain amount of calories each
day for us to just to be alive; no activity included. Yes… that
means our bodies actually need food just to wake up and sit there
for a 24 hour period! Since each of us have a different Resting
Metabolic Rate, this caloric range that we burn daily needs to be
calculated out. Once this number is attained, however, it can allow
us to find the perfect caloric range that our bodies need to take in
for facilitating a fat burning zone in our bodies.
The Problem we see
Every Day
Unfortunately, sometimes life gets in the way of life. With the
hectic jobs we have and frantic world we live in, there often is not
much time left over to eat a meal. Usually in our daily lives we
only have time for are the three basic meals: breakfast, lunch, and
dinner. This, however, leads to an unseen problem…
Let’s take for example the average times we eat lunch and dinner. A
common lunch time is between 12 to 1 o’clock. Then we go back to
work and don’t see dinner until around 6 or 7 o’clock. What wrong
with this? That’s up to 6 hours without an ounce of food! Sure, we
might not get all that hungry, because we know that once we get
home, we will eat. Our bodies, on the other hand, do not grasp this
concept. The body’s internal checks and balances system recognizes
that it has not eating for over 5 hours. It then begins to worry for
its survival because it does not know when the next meal is coming.
Although you know that food is readily available and that you can
eat whenever you need to, you’re body’s metabolism thinks it’s
starving and therefore begins to take action to ensure its own
survival. So what happens now? The body actually SLOWS DOWN ITS OWN
METABOLISM to compensate for the lack of calories. That’s right,
you’re body will store energy and fat when you don’t eat enough. So
imagine what happens when you don’t eat breakfast! That could be
over 12 hours without food! Now we can understand the importance of
eating breakfast to speed up our metabolism.
To reverse this fat storing process, we need to ensure that we eat
frequently and turn our metabolism into a fueling system. When the
body sees that it is getting adequate nutrition, it realizes that it
does not to hold on to those calories and burns them as fuel!
So once I know my
RMR, I just have to eat less than that to burn fat right?
Negative. Although that seems like the ration thing, there’s
actually a very highly overlooked matter that many of us
forget… Our RMR is the resting
metabolic rate…but in today’s world, when are we
ever resting? What must
be taken into consideration is amount of additional calories that we
burn everyday from resistance and cardiovascular training. This
means that our activity level will be relatively to moderately high,
regardless of what we are doing aside of training.
So what do I do?
Now what we know what the RMR is and we have taken into
consideration how many additional calories must be taken in to
account for our daily activity levels, we can figure out what range
of calories we need to efficiently burn fat in our bodies.
How can I learn
what my RMR is?
Talk to a qualified ( not only certified)
Personal Trainer and find out exactly what you’re RMR is and what
caloric range you should be aiming for each day. Be sure to ask your
trainer any questions that come to mind about your diet and daily
lifestyle.
Things to Remember
-Not all calories are created equal and that you must ensure that
the proper kinds of calories, not just amount, is consumed.
-Remember the body’s need for water; not only does it flush out our
system but it also increases thermogenesis…aka…
fat burning!
-Diet alone will not change the shape of your body. Cardiovascular
and resistance training is mandatory to see results! We must
remember to follow these simple guidelines.
Dave Parise C.P.T
Claudio Boni C.P.T
