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Tasty Treats!
Add a little flavor to your love making! |
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by Frank Occhipinti
Losing weight is one of the biggest challenges many people face
in trying to achieve their fitness goals. Understanding nutrition and exercise
and how they work together to create change in our bodies can bring you closer
to your goals. With so many myths and unhealthy fad diets that claim quick and
easy results, it's not surprising that many of us buy into the quick fix plans
and diets. We become frustrated when the expected results are not achieved.
Then why, you may ask, are so many of these diets so popular and so many people
swear by them? Why do these products and diets promise fast results yet don't
deliver them?
The answer is simple. Quick fix plans and diets don’t and can’t work because
they are physiologically incorrect.
With fast food a main stay in our culture and technology advancing at such a
rapid pace, people today are eating more and moving less. Each year the average
person gains more and more weight. Losing weight doesn’t have to be a struggle
and is actually quite easy to understand and accomplish. One of the first steps
in losing weight and keeping it off is to understand and apply the first law of
thermodynamics—calories in vs. calories out:
 If your caloric
input is more then your caloric output = weight gain
If your caloric
input is less then your caloric output = weight loss
If your caloric
input is the same as your caloric output = no change
 The first law of
thermodynamics is pretty straightforward, common sense really. With the quick
fix plans and diets, can you be sure that you are really losing fat or are you
really losing muscle? What’s the difference, you ask, as long as the numbers on
the scale go down? The difference is that if you are losing weight from muscle
atrophy and not fat, you are actually doing damage to your metabolism. Muscle
atrophy is the wasting away of muscle. Muscle burns more calories than fat and
when you lose weight from muscle atrophy you lose the ability to burn as many
calories a day as you did before the rapid weight loss. In essence, you’ve
managed to slow down your metabolic rate. Keeping the weight off and losing
additional weight becomes all but impossible. The only approach that truly
works is to increase lean body mass while decreasing body fat. Therefore
effectively, achieving desired results, a lean toned body. See
diagram A to the left.
Quick fix plans and diets set you up for failure because they emphasize weight
loss at all cost. So stop wasting your time on fad diets and plans and learn
how to do it right and keep the weight off.
Develop a starting point and record body measurements and statistics in the
beginning and throughout your plan. Exercise, plain and simple, is essential in
order to gain lean muscle mass but you don’t have to spend hours in the gym to
build muscle and increase your metabolic rate.
Nutrition accounts for at least half of your results and is a vital part of a
weight loss program. Anything in excess will eventually sabotage your journey
to weight loss. Consistency and moderation in what you eat can undoubtedly
become a lifestyle change. It takes a little preparation and organization to be
successful.
With some determination and a clear understanding of how nutrition and exercise
work together, desired fitness goals can be achieved and sustained without
drastic and unhealthy quick fix diets.
In future articles, I will get into more detail about nutrition and exercise,
all the components involved and how it affects your body. Don’t let
misinformation discourage you from achieving your fitness goals. You can do it!
Frank Occhipinti is a NFPT certified personal trainer located in Huntington
Beach, CA. Frank has over 5 years of personal fitness training experience and
his own firm, Fitness Prescriptions. For more information please contact him at
714-374-5957 or via emai:franko@socal.rr.com.
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