When you are working hard and you can feel yourself getting stronger but the body fat just isn’t coming off, there are a couple of things that are going on.
First of all you are trading muscle for fat. You do not usually trade them pound for pound though. Man I would be a beast if I could have done that. Now there are many thoughts as to how fast you can put muscle on. This depends on many factors. Your age, intensity of your workouts, and of course your hormone levels. Everyone is different. When you first start working out you may find the muscle size and your strength increase quickly. As you get more lean and stronger you will hit plateaus. This means it is time, to change things up. Confuse the muscle and I am sure you have heard all about muscle confusion from all the infomercials out there. Since most of you that come here are mainly looking to lose body fat and get fit, one of the main pieces of exercise equipment you will need is a measuring tape. This will make it easy to see the changes in your body and help you stay motivated through those plateaus.
Secondly, in terms of losing the fat. Your body will go through set points where it feels “OK this is where I want my fat percent to stay and I do not want to let it go.” Again you will need to tweak you diet here to get things rolling again. Hopefully you have been tracking your meals in one of the free online meal trackers I have mentioned before. If you are exercising regularly the first place to look may be your calories. Are you getting enough to fuel the body while not starving it? It is funny, when I was first started losing the fat I had put on I didn’t pay much attention to the amount of food I ate. I ate when I was hungry and just made sure I was not exceeding my carbohydrate levels. The weight came off and I felt great. Now when I have a meet coming up, I tend to fall into old bad habits of not eating enough. Which could be detrimental to the muscle I have put on. I need and so do you to remember to fuel the body to lose the fat. Eat 6 small meals a day and your metabolism will bump up. Track your carbohydrates, fats, and proteins, and don’t forget to track your alcohol. Also if you are a carb counter like me you might have to increase those carbs just a little at a time to get things rolling again as well. Watch what foods you eat and how they affect you. I know for myself that Macadamia Nuts can be a downfall for me, mainly because I tend to eat the whole jar when I have them. Now when I open a can the first thing I do is walk around the office and share them.
That is it for today, now go hit the gym or your home gym which ever it may be.
Have a great workout!
Tip:
Track you meals! I know you do not always have a computer with you when you are eating. So carry a piece of paper and a writing implement and just jot down what you have to eat. Then enter it in your tracker when you can. Planning you meals for the day is very important. It is very easy to overeat or miss you carb and fat grams when not tracking.
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