Archive for January, 2009
What To Do When Weight Loss Plateaus
Written by success on Saturday, January 17, 2009 | No Comments
Categories: Uncategorized Tags: burn calories, exercise routine, lose weight, plateau, weight lifting, Weight Loss
When you are attempting to lose weight you will hit the the dreaded plateau. You know what I am talking about. Everything seems to be working so well. You are burning calories and losing weight. Your exercise program and diet is working. Success is yours. And then seemingly overnight everything changes.
You haven’t changed anything. You haven’t eaten more or exercised less. So what happened. Well you have hit a plateau. It is inevitable. Why you ask?
Well your body is sometimes you enemy when attempting to lose weight. Your body wants to maintain a balance. So when you are losing weight your body is trying to figure out how to adapt to it and stop it from occurring. I know this stinks but it is a reality. So if you want to avoid plateaus then you need to keep your body confused or off balance.
Here are some ideas.
If you are in the weight room you can change your set and reps from week to week. You can stick with the same exercise program but vary your sets and reps.
You can switch up your exercises. Instead of doing a barbell bench your may want to switch to a dumbbell bench press or an incline bench press. I would vary your weight room exercise routine at least every 12 weeks or so.
If you are doing cardio then you can vary your intensity or the time that you do your cardio workouts. Do something like interval training where you can constantly switch up the times of intensity and moderate activity.
You may also want to try re-feeding. I wrote a recent article on this so I won’t cover it again. You can read the article on How to Lose Weight with Re-Feeding.
If you keep your body confused through the tactics described above then you should be able to bust through any plateaus that you may experience.
The Key to Losing Weight: Discipline
Written by success on Wednesday, January 14, 2009 | 4 Comments
Categories: Uncategorized Tags: Bob Greene, discipline, lose weight, Oprah, Oprah's trainer, Weight Loss
Not long ago the media was abuzz with the news that Oprah was tired of the diet struggle and had decided to pack it in. It wasn’t quite termed that way however. I think that it was presented that Oprah had come to grips with her body and had accepted herself as she was or some other load of crap.
I got to thinking how good it must be to be Bob Greene. He is Oprah’s trainer, her longtime trainer. His work has been an absolute failure and yet he has made quite a bit of money by publicizing the fact that he is the trainer of the world’s most well known overweight woman. It must be nice to not be able to help your client and still make a ton of money.
Actually, it is not Bob Greene’s fault. I am sure he knows his stuff and has said and done all the right things. I bet he is torn at times. He is happy for the publicity that Oprah draws to him but probably wishes she looked more like Hale Berry. It might help his business a bit more.
The basic problem with Oprah and for so many of us is that in order to achieve fitness we need to desire it and we need to exercise discipline. A personal trainer can only provide so much in the way of motivation. He/she doesn’t live with you and can keep you from eating a pint of ice cream every night with two Hershey’s bars on top.
If you want success in reaching your weight loss or fitness goals then you and you alone need to take the responsibility. You will be the biggest reason for your success or failure. How strong is your self will? How much do you want it? How can you create a mindset that will lead to your success?
Tom Venuto who is the author of the wildly successful and incredibly informative ebook Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle (if you haven’t picked it up then you should) has recently come out with a regular book entitled The Body Fat Solution.
The Body Fat Solution is written about the discipline side of things. What do you need to do to be successful? If you want the mental edge to reach your goals then check out the book. Be honest with yourself. You know what you need to eat. You know how you need to exercise. However, you still haven’t reached your goals. Maybe it is time to explore the mental side of things. Good luck.
Basal Metabolic Rate – Key to Burning Calories and Losing Weight
Written by success on Saturday, January 10, 2009 | 7 Comments
Categories: Uncategorized Tags: activity level, basal metabolic rate, burn calories, lose weight, resting BMR
What is basal metabolic rate? Well to put it simply, basal metabolic rate (BMR) is the calories that you burn by being alive. If you spent the entire day in bed this would be the number of calories that you would burn.
BMR is different for each individual based on a variety of factors but this number once you know how to calculate it is the bulk of the calories that you will burn during the day. Your body burns calories all day long even if you don’t think it is happening after you step on the scale. You burn calories when you body tries to maintain the muscle it has, when your body maintains your body temperature and when you body performs basic daily functions such as pumping blood, breathing and the like.
As I mentioned your basal metabolic rate is determined by many different factors. Here are a few:
Gender – Males have a higher BMR that women. This is basically because men have a higher percentage of muscle mass and in general they weigh more.
Age – Yes, I am sure that it is no surprise to you that your BMR declines with age. After all how would all of this extra weight made it to your belly or thighs or other unwanted places.
Weight – The more you weigh the higher your BMR. It is sort of a catch 22. It is nice to have the higher BMR but who wants the extra weight to get it.
Muscle – The more muscle you have the higher your BMR. It takes more calories to maintain a pound of muscle than it does to maintain a pound of fat.
Genetics – Some people are just blessed. I work next to a guy who can’t gain weight if he tries and he is 50. Many would love to have this problem. Some have higher metabolisms than others and will burn calories at a faster rate.
Diet – This is one of the biggest mistakes that people make when trying to lose weight. If you starve yourself or otherwise deprive your body of calories you will cause your basal metabolic rate to drop. Sometimes you can cause it to drop by as much as 10% – 20%. Starvation is not a way to lose weight.
Body Temperature – If you have a fever you will burn more calories than you would if you body temperature is normal. This is one of the reasons that you may lose weight when sick (even though you don’t get out of bed). You may also lose weight due to other reasons as well that are not to comfortable.
Outside Temperature – Since one of the things that makes up your BMR is the energy expended to maintain your body temperature it only makes sense that you will burn more calories in the cold since your body has to work harder to keep your body temperature up.
Activity Level – The more you exercise the higher your BMR. Not only do you burn calories from the exercise but you also raise your BMR causing you to burn more calories even while at rest.
How to Calculate Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR)
The first thing you need to do is figure out how many calories you burn in a normal day. This would include your maintenance level (calories burned by laying in bed) and your activity level. The more active you are the more you would add to your maintenance level.
The maintenance level for the average woman would be between 1800 and 2100 calories and for the average man it would be between 2600 and 2900. Some individuals due to their activity level require much more. If you remember that during the Olympics a report came out that Michael Phelps needed to consume about 10,000 calories a day just not to lose weight.
Here is a basic equation for calculating your BMR.
Women:
655 + (4.3 x weight in pounds) + (4.7 x height in inches) – (4.7 x age in years)
Men:
66 + (6.3 x weight in pounds) + (12.9 x height in inches) – (6.8 x age in years)
I am a 44 year old man who is 5′ 9″ and 180 pounds. So my calculation would be as follows:
66 + (6.3 x 180) + (12.9 x 69) – (6.8 x 44) = 1791
This gets just your resting BMR. Now you have to calculate your activity level. To do this you can use the following rule of thumb.
If you are sedentary : BMR x 20 percent
If you are lightly active: BMR x 30 percent
If you are moderately active (You exercise most days a week.): BMR x 40 percent
If you are very active (You exercise intensely on a daily basis or for prolonged periods.): BMR x 50 percent
I am moderately active so I would take 1791 and multiply it by 1.4 to get my BMR. So each day I burn on average a little more than 2500 calories. If I wanted to lose weight I would have to figure out how to keep my caloric intake underneath of that level.
I hope this was helpful to you. If you don’t want to take the time to calculate your own BMR you can find calculators all over the internet.