Understand Your Metabolism and Unlock Your Weight Loss Results

Have you ever seen an ad for the next latest and greatest weight loss program or diet pill, only to see in fine print that this person also ate a balanced diet and did regular exercise? The other common complaint all the time is "I workout hard everyday and I don't lose a pound." Does this sound like you? The key to achieving health weight loss and keeping it off for a lifetime is understanding your metabolism.

When you think about weight loss you want to think in terms of a diet fitness program. The problem many people do is they only focus on one aspect which leaves them always falling short of their goals.

What is metabolism any way?

Your metabolism doesn't have to be confusing. Let's break your metabolism down in to two aspects. First, is your body's ability to break down food that you eat and convert it into energy or store it. You can store fat in your fat cells though you do store carbohydrates in your muscle cells to be used as energy later. The second is the rate at which your body produces energy, or do you have a fast or slow metabolism? The other key part to your metabolism is what you are burning for energy.

Your metabolism wants small amounts of food at regular intervals throughout the day. Typically every 2-3 hours is a good time to eat. This isn't eating the average American meal 5 times a day, more cutting your meal in half and eating that amount throughout the day. When we go longer than 3 hours between meals are body starts to store the food we do eat as fat, and can burn away muscle tissue for energy instead of using your food. When you eat 5 small meals a day you train your body to use fat as your main fuel source. A proper metabolism burns 70% fat as its main source of energy all day long. Just think while you are working sitting at your chair you are burning fat.

It is through exercise that we raise our metabolism up. The amount of calories we burn is not as important as the rate at which we burn calories. If burning 3500 calories worked than all the walkers at the gym would be the thinnest people. You typically see runners much thinner than walkers and that is because running burns calories at a greater rate and raises up your metabolism. You burn more calories by raising up your metabolism the entire day than you can in any workout.

Cardio interval training is considered one of the best ways of raising up your metabolism. Interval training is short burst of high intensity follow by short durations of low intensity and then repeated. People after doing an interval workout burn more fat as a source of energy for the entire day after than any other form of cardio. You only want to do one interval workout per week as over doing it creates over training and a drop in results.

Combining exercise and eating 5 small meals and you will unlock your weight loss potential. This not only the fastest ways to lose weight these habits work for the rest of your life to have more energy and keep the fat off your body.

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Three Big Rules for Eating and Reaching Your Fitness Goals

Whether your fitness goal is weight loss, athletic performance, more energy, better health, or just simply toning up, it is vital that you pay attention to your nutrition and food intake to reach this goal. In my experience as a personal trainer, working with thousands of clients over a period of 16 years, I observed that the role that food intake plays in a person reaching his or her fitness goal is paramount. In fact, it makes up for more than 75% of the influence of whether or not a person is successful. The challenge for me was that people who would be working very hard in the gym expected to see results and couldn't understand why they weren't getting them, even after all that work. I would always say to my clients and anyone in the gym that would listen, "You can work out ‘till the cows come home, but if you're not eating well, your body won't change, at least not cosmetically, period." Frequently, that statement would be met with some confusion and the response that they had been eating well, and things just weren't working anyway. Well, upon further review of the actual diet and food intake the clients actually had, it usually wasn't difficult to see what could be improved with them so they could start seeing the results (typically weight loss) that they desired.

What I found was that people who want to lose weight believe that the only way that is going to happen is if they eat less food, which in many cases is actually counter to what the person actually needs. They have been eating a certain way for awhile and they are dissatisfied with their appearance, so they take the food intake they have been eating and they reduce the calories while they come to the gym and work with a personal trainer. They get sore and maybe see some change in the beginning of their program, but it isn't long before they are at a plateau and frustrated, because this plateau certainly isn't the result of a lack of effort.

Here is where a basic knowledge of the way that food intake actually influences weight loss is a tremendous help. It takes some of the mystery out of the equation and allows a person to make some intelligent choices that will help them reach their fitness goals. There are three big concepts that I find have really helped people get a grasp of the basics.

The first is to EAT ENOUGH! As I said before, the tendency is for people to really restrict their food intake in an effort to lose weight. If a person comes into beginning a fitness program having truly been an overeater, then a reduction in calories is appropriate. However, the culprit with most people who are overweight or overfat is not that they eat too much, it's that their metabolism is shot from a lack of exercise and bad eating habits. So, ironically, one of the things that has to happen with a person who wants to lose weight is that they frequently have to increase their overall intake of food somewhat to keep up with the demands of the new exercise and keep from starving, allowing the metabolism to rise naturally.

The second is to EAT OFTEN. Rule #1 doesn't do any good if all the calories you might be taking in come at dinner after starving yourself all day. This is the biggest single reason people have trouble with their physiques, this lack of regular eating. Regular eating throughout the day never lets the body get too hungry or too full, and the body responds by raising the metabolism and burning more fat. The ideal number of meals and snacks combined throughout the day is from 4-6, spaced evenly starting with breakfast as soon as you get up in the morning.

The last rule is to EAT BALANCED! I once had a client who said that she was eating 5 times a day like I had suggested, yet upon further examination I found that she was eating a handful of Cheerios for three of those meals. The result was that she wasn't eating enough food overall to fuel her body, and she was missing some key necessities in her diet, like adequate amounts of protein, that kept her from reaching her fitness goals. Eating balanced means getting adequate amounts of protein, carbohydrates, fats, fruits and vegetables spaced evenly throughout the day with each meal, if possible. This controls appetite and keeps the body feeling well fueled throughout the day, contributing to fat loss.

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