subject: Looking For The Fastest Way To Lose Fat And Sculpt Your Body? [print this page] Looking For The Fastest Way To Lose Fat And Sculpt Your Body?
Proper strength training exercise tends to be overlooked by people looking to lose weight as mistakenly they believe that toning up muscle tissue will not help with weight loss. But nothing could be further from the truth and that belief is a fallacy that leads its believers to poorer health, greater disease risk and a body that may become thinner but not stronger, shapelier or healthier.After our mid 20's our bodies lose around one half pound of muscle tissue per year. Of course, this results in an overall strength reduction as we would expect, and which also means a slowing of the metabolic rate which then translates into weight gain.So, it makes good sense that to reverse that weight gain we need to increase the speed of our engine - our body's metabolism. Once this is restored to its full strength the increased calorie burning will slowly but surely burn off unwanted body fat and give us our slim trim body back.Increasing the metabolism is also the only way to sustain long-term weight loss as it is the increased calorie burning that will achieve this. We used to believe that restricting food was the best way to lose fat along with lots of low intensity, long duration activity but we now have a greater understanding about our metabolism and have discovered that these things work against the very thing we are trying to improve. When a decrease in food intake is sensed by the body it puts the brakes on fat loss and instead hangs on to it even more as an ancient protective mechanism to prevent starvation. Metabolism is slowed to conserve energy and the body makes do with whatever it is getting till the threat has passed.The more lean toned muscle you have, the less excess fat you will have. The reason for this is that muscle tissue is highly active and will keep burning fat for hours after a work out. Unfortunately, the popular wisdom of the past forty odd years - that we would all be better off doing 45 minutes to an hour a day of intense 'cardio' type activity - has created a generation of over-trained, under-fit, immune-compromised exercise-aholics.We now know that when we over exercise in this manner we create stress hormones like cortisol which keep us fat and make us sick. Ever wonder why large quantities of 'spin' classes, endless treadmill sessions and never-ending hours on the 'elliptical' have done little to shed those extra pounds or firm up that soft flabby body?Proper strength training exercise is so effective at reshaping the body and burning off unwanted fat that you can achieve three times the results in half the time when it is done correctly and you do not over- train. You only need 2-3 sessions each week done with the correct level of intensity for fantastic results. And instead of compromising your health you will be building it. Nothing gets your body burning fat quicker and nothing can sculpt your body better than strength training - nothing.
