First, I would like to wish everyone a great holiday season. I have started my own company, Functional Conditioning LLC. This is a way for me to help people change their lives permanently, without dangerous diets or gimmicky exercise devises that do not work. Americans are the most obese people in the world. As crazy diet fads emerge and pass, more and more people try desperate things to lose weight. It is my job to deliver the TRUTH about how to accomplish fat loss in a safe and real manner.
The holiday season is fast approaching
Are you ready to gain 7 to 12 pounds of extra fat? The average American does just that. Eating an additional 200 calories per day equates to 2 pounds of extra fat per month. One pound of body fat holds 3500 stored calories. So, if you need to lose ten pounds, you need to burn an additional 35,000 calories.
Can you enjoy turkey with all the trimmings, and pumpkin pie with whip cream? You can now, thanks to a new medical device called the BodyGem. The BodyGem measures resting metabolic rate (RMR). Your resting metabolic rate represents 60% to 75% of energy (calorie) expenditure. RMR is the number of calories your body requires at rest for your heart to beat, lungs to function and all other vital processes. So, if you were to lay in bed all day and not move, the number of calories burned would be your RMR.
Until recently, there were only two ways to measure metabolic rate. The first method of measurement is the metabolic cart, which costs $25,000 to $40,000. This would require being admitted into the intensive care unit at a hospital. Or you can do the old height, weight and sex RMR table that was developed in 1919. This old table equation chart can be off by as much as 1000 calories per day. Remember that eating an additional 200 calories per day can add 2 or more pounds of fat per month.
Weight management is a simple equation
The equation is based on calories in versus calories out. If you consume more calories than you burn, you will gain weight. Conversely, if you burn more calories than you consume, you will have a deficit and lose weight.
The weight loss industry is a 50 billion-dollar per year money robbing machine. Remember weight management is calories in versus calories out. So, what are people spending their hard-earned money on? The biggest moneymakers now are fat burner supplements Metabolife, Xanadrine and Ripped Fuel just to name a few. These elevate both heart rate and blood pressure so your body burns more calories. The long term complication with this diet supplement is that it causes undue stress on the body and can cause permanent weight loss, called death.
We have all seen the great infomercials on TV that advertises some neat looking abdominal machine for magically melting fat off your body. Guess what? You can do 5000 crunches a day and never see your six-pack under layers of fat. Abdominal body fat cannot disappear just by doing crunches.
Find out the truth for your personal weight management
Take ten minutes and have your metabolic rate checked through me, utilizing the BodyGem. Once you have an actual medically calculated caloric number to work with, weight loss just became much more manageable. If you have a palm pilot or a home computer you can use the HealtheTech Balancelog (www.healthetech.com) to keep track of the foods you are eating throughout the day. Or, you can write your foods down and keep track that way. For example, Thanksgiving Day you know you will be eating a large dinner. With that knowledge ahead, you can pace yourself throughout that day. Once you reach the number of calories allowed per day, you can stop or know that the excess is going to turn into fat. This process takes the guesswork of calories out in the weight management puzzle.
Strength training boosts metabolic rate
Metabolic rate is going to lower as we get older. One way to keep your metabolism from dropping is to strength train on a regular basis. By adding muscle, your body will need more fuel (calories) to keep you going. I have trained women who changed their RMR from 1080 calories per day to over 1800 just in a couple of months of strength training.
Strength training boosts metabolic rate by creating more muscle mass. Fat takes up more space and does not require much energy to sustain it. The old belief of the only thing that burns fat is doing aerobic exercise, is simply not true. The term aerobic simply means with oxygen.
When you’re reading this, sleeping or watching television you are in an aerobic state. So, get more sleep and watch more TV! Just kidding! Severe caloric restriction results in the body going into gluconeogenesis. Which means the body will eat its own tissue to make glucose. Glucose is the only fuel the brain can use. We must spare muscle at all costs. In order to spare muscle, cardiovascular exercise must be done in moderation. Anything over 30 minutes of intense cardiovascular work is too much. Strength training can be done as little as 3 times per week. If you want to workout at your home, you can get pretty much everything you need for under $100. The other benefits of strength training are that it slows down the rate of osteoporosis, builds stronger tendons and ligaments, and helps with day to day activities as well as many other reasons.
To schedule a BodyGem test or find out additional information on exercise programs available, please contact Brian Barkley at 303-807-7166 or via email at bcbarkley@yahoo.com.