Five Things not to do When Trying to Lose Weight

There are many confusing and at times contradictory theories about weight loss. Here are five easy to implement steps that will help you melt away the fat.

• Skip Meals: After 6-8 hours of not eating you will most likely over eat at your next meal. This causes a vicious cycle of eating too many calories that your body cannot possibly use. Unfortunately calories not used are stored as fat. On top of that your metabolism actually decreases during a semi fasting period. This makes it even harder to burn off those additional calories. Try eating smaller meals every 2-3 hours, which will increase your metabolism and keep the tendency to stuff your face at a minimum.
• Exercise for extremely long periods: When we’re under physical (intense workouts lasting more than one hour) or emotional stress our bodies consume glucose at an extremely high rate. To keep our blood sugar levels in a homeostasis state the catabolic stress hormone cortisol is released which forces gluconeogenesis ( making glucose from non carbohydrate sources) to be performed on adipose and muscle tissue. When muscle tissue is broken down it releases amino acids into the blood stream. Once in the blood stream the amino acids are shuttled into the liver to synthesize glucose. This ensures that our brain gets a sufficient amount of glucose to keep functioning properly. So unless you want to run the risk of catabolzing your own muscles, shorter workouts are usually a better choice.
• Take weight loss supplements: These products cause extremely harmful side effects including: irregular heartbeat, dependence, nausea, profuse sweating, nervousness, high blood pressure and insomnia. Their claims of inducing a thermogenic environment conducive to burning more adipose tissue have never been clinically proven. The only real scientific method to burn fat is portion controlling your meals and exercise. Weight resistance training will raise your metabolism naturally and at the same time builds stronger muscles that will burn more calories. Cardio vascular training will burn fat as fuel as long as the intensity is kept at a low- med level. Anything higher and glucose will be the main energy source due the fact that fat doesn’t burn as fast as glucose during cardio training.
• Go on a diet: This may same counter productive, but dieting simply doesn’t work and never will. When you follow a restrictive diet, sooner or later you will fall off the diet and gain back the weight you lost. Again portion control and exercise is the best way to tackle weight issues.
• Lifting too much weight: Heavier weights may seem like the right recipe for big gains but the reality is your body prefers to tackle only one training stimulus at a time. Low reps and heavy weights will stimulate muscles mass but not fat loss. The problem is muscle mass can only be achieved if you eat a sufficient amount of calories (eating more than you use). Basically there needs to be a surplus of calories in order for muscles to get bigger. A training protocol that desires weight loss needs the opposite effect, a negative calorie intake(burning more calories than you take in) with higher reps. Lighter weights in the 12-20 range will give your muscles the endurance type training that will ultimately lead to burning more calories.

Enjoy these tips to a leaner you!