METABOLISM & WEIGHT LOSS
Don’t wait! Get in touch with PTC Rik + 32 498 399 280 Roeselare – Bruges – Damme – Knokke – Cadzand region
Have you ever noticed that professional athletes are always so lean? And yet, you almost never see them working out in the gym. They train their body as a whole, in a very functional manner. Let PTC Rik explain how.
Metabolism plays an enormously important role in your weight and weight control. If you want to lose weight, the best thing to do is to speed up your metabolism. Your metabolism determines how quickly your body converts nutrients into energy. Your body uses that energy as part of its normal, healthy daily function. The faster your metabolism works, the more calories you burn. However, there are also physiological factors that you have no control over. These include factors such as age, gender, height, hormones and hereditary factors. Unfortunately, they also affect your metabolism. Age, for example, slows it down and you gradually gain weight because you build up more body fat.
Fortunately, there are also things that you can control. You can influence your metabolism by making certain exercise and diet choices.
Functional training with a Professional Personal Trainer usually works wonders: three-dimensional training according to the myofascial line stimulates many more muscle groups at the same time and thus burns fat a lot quicker.
Functional training has a strong positive influence on your hormonal balance, which again means more fat burned.
Functional circuit training boosts tissue circulation, and again you burn more fat.
What does metabolism do?
Metabolism converts the food you eat into energy. When you eat normally, your body uses up to approximately 85% of this caloric intake to power all of your physical processes. These include the digestion process (metabolism) itself as well as keeping your body warm, driving your blood circulation, wound repair, hair growth and repair of the body in general.
Around 15% of your caloric intake is used by your body to support all kinds of physical activities. These are the movements that you do every day, such as standing, walking, biking, household chores and sometimes exercising. You can increase this percentage up to 25% by doing a lot of exercise.
Why would you want to speed up your metabolism?
When you speed up your metabolism, you automatically burn more calories per day. Once possible consequence of faster metabolism is losing weight through loss of fat.
Even at rest, you burn more calories when your metabolism is faster. One effective way to boost your metabolism is to grow more muscle mass. Maintaining one gram of muscle requires up to 90% more energy than maintaining one gram of fat.
Roughly speaking, maintaining one kilogram of muscle uses around 90 calories per day. In contrast, your body burns about 9 calories to maintain one kilogram of fat.
Of course you don’t have to be overly muscular to take advantage of this effect. A slight increase in your muscle mass already goes a long way. By the way, did you know that muscle mass takes up to four times less space than fat mass? By working to build a little muscle mass, you automatically become thinner!
Why and when does your metabolism decrease?
The speed of your metabolism decreases starting at age 25, by 5% every 10 years. Unfortunately this process is irreversible. It is simply part of the natural ageing process.
The metabolic process slows down due to the opposite forces of reduced muscle mass and increased fat mass. You can’t do anything about this.
Fat burns 90% fewer calories than muscles. That is why you slowly get heavier over time and love handles and belly fat slowly get larger.
Cutting down how much you eat for short periods of time also slows down your metabolism. This is what happens with so-called crash diets and diets that prescribe fewer calories than you actually need. The idea behind them is to lose weight. And this is what happens during the first few weeks, but your metabolism also decreases.
Because the speed of your metabolism has decreased, as a result of the low-calorie diet, your body then uses the energy it still does receive more efficiently. After a few weeks, your body gets used to the “new” condition and stops shedding weight.
Then, because your metabolism is slower, you gain weight again. And, then, what’s even more annoying is that you may have lost a few kilograms, but your fat percentage has barely decreased. It’s your muscle mass that has dropped the most. And this is a big problem. Muscles are the biggest driver of your metabolism.
What’s the best way to see real results?
Creating muscle mass is therefore an effective way to control fat mass and to get a leaner body. Muscle mass gives your metabolism a big boost, because of all bodily functions your muscles use the most energy.
You can work out 3 times a week, but there are several ways to build muscle mass, such as doing household chores, walking and biking for a half hour every day. However, this does not build strength.
Ask your Personal Trainer to develop efficient training sessions for you. Learn to work out right. Respect a healthy diet and avoid energy drinks and unnecessary supplements.
Not very smart!
However, many people want to go FAST when they try to lose weight and slim down. Temporary diets often promise good (and lasting) results, but unfortunately this is almost never the case. And you actually already know that. Because how can a temporary diet – with necessarily temporary results – produce lasting effects?
So avoid crash diets, juice cures, slimming pills, hormone treatments, all kinds of super diets and diets that prohibit certain types of food, such as carbohydrates, or combinations of foods, and prescribe eating others in abundance. These temporary regimens modulate the speed of your metabolism in ways that are best avoided.
But FAST diets do produce results, don’t they?
Of course these quick fixes will help you lose weight in the beginning. Especially in the first three to five weeks. But this is mainly because your body is suddenly put on a different diet, and will turn to other reserves. The kilograms lost – over such a short period – generally correspond to water and muscle mass. (dangerous)
Water – one litre of water = one kilogram of body weight – replenishes itself automatically, and you will naturally become heavier again. Then, because your muscle mass has decreased, you automatically burn fewer calories. And this certainly will not contribute to sustainable weight loss.
- Build muscle mass: The best way to speed up your metabolism is to put your muscles to work. And the best way to do this is through weight training. Muscles burn a lot more calories than body fat. One half kilogram of muscle consumes around 35 calories per day, while one half kilogram of fat only burns 2 calories per day. What’s more, your muscles even continue to use energy at rest. So if you want to increase your metabolism over the long term, then weight training is the way to go.
- Work out in the morning: If you get your body moving early, it works on your metabolism throughout the day. Take your bike to work instead of the bus or car, and you’ll see that you are hungrier all day long.
- Drink more water: Your metabolism slows down with even slight dehydration of the body. So make sure you drink enough water. Scientific research has shown that people who drink 8 glasses of water a day burn more calories than people who drink 4 glasses of water a day. Drinking ice cold water also helps somewhat to speed up your metabolism. This is not recommended if you have a sensitive stomach.
- Eat more often: If you eat 3 large meals a day, your metabolism will be trained to slow down. In the hours between meals your body goes into energy saving mode. The calories at the next large meal are even harder to burn. It’s better to eat several small portions throughout the day. This keeps your metabolism running smoothly. Several studies have also shown that people who eat small portions throughout the day eat less during the main meals.
- Eat more proteins: Your body uses twice as much energy to digest proteins as it does to digest fats or carbohydrates. Proteins are found in tofu, eggs, fish, chicken, lean pork or beef, nuts, beans and dairy products. Make sure to each a varied diet.
- Avoid crash diets: Crash diets are disastrous for your metabolism. With a crash diet you consume less than 1000 calories per day. The weight loss you see at the start is at the expense of muscles and good nutrition. And with less muscle mass, your body burns calories slower. By the time you resume a normal diet, your metabolism has slowed to a crawl, and the kilograms pile on hard.
- Spice up your food: Chili peppers increase metabolism by 20% for half an hour after a meal. Eating spicy therefore does not lead to a spectacular, long-term acceleration of your metabolism, but every little bit can help.
- Drink black coffee: Coffee has many benefits: it can improve memory function and provide important antioxidants. But this cup of comfort does more yet. It also has a slight stimulating effect on metabolism. Drink your coffee black, because milk and sugar cancel out the effects of the increased metabolism.
- Drink green tea: Green tea is also a way to increase your metabolism. Green tea contains plant-based proteins containing flavin that accelerate the burning of fat. But don’t expect that the kilograms will simply dissolve just by drinking green tea. See it as a support for your metabolism.
Do sessions have to take place in the Fitness Club? Not at all! We can also do functional training on the tennis court, football field, …, at work or at home, at the seaside, in a forest, … why not give me a call? PTC RIK’S MOBILE NUMBER: 0498 399 280
Roeselare – Bruges – Damme – Knokke – Kortrijk – Oostende – Cadzand Region
