Personal Trainer Newsletters
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HealthFX America Vol. 20 Newsletter - November 2003 by Mandy Sosnowski http://www.healthfxamerica.com In this issue: * The Mathematics of Losing Weight * Featured HealthMax Pro Exercise - Squat* * Exercise Quick Reminders * Featured Recipe ***The Mathematics of Losing Weight*** My husband is an engineer, so I am familiar with people who need to understand the numbers. Some people are more touchy-feely and they just want to move in the right direction, but there are many who need FACTS. Well, if you are one of those people, here are the nitty, gritty basics to what it takes to lose weight, or to be more precise, lose body fat. All human bodies are built basically the same, so that is why these are hard and steady facts for everyone. There are some differences between men and women which I will highlight. The only other caveat is people who have metabolic disorders or thyroid problems such as Graves disease. If you have a metabolic disorder, you should be under a doctor’s care. Everyone else has very similar metabolisms based on sex, so this, unfortunately, means that you can’t blame your inability to lose weight on your “slow” metabolism. If you think you have a “slow” metabolism because you are having a really hard time losing weight, it is probably more likely that you are eating too many calories for your size… read on. Your metabolism, or the number of calories you burn on an average day doing no extra activity, is YOUR BODY WEIGHT (in pounds) x 11 (if you are female) OR x 12 (if you are male.) Men are born with more muscle which means that per pound they have a higher percentage of muscle than women, so they burn more calories per pound than women. This fact brings up an interesting point. The only NATURAL way to raise your metabolism is to add muscle to your body. It is like the size of an engine in a car. The bigger the engine the more gas you burn. No matter what the weight loss supplement people say… MUSCLE is the only natural way. So let’s say you are a woman and you weigh 200 pounds. That means you need 200 x 11 calories per day or 2200 calories per day to maintain your body weight. In other words, you can eat 2200 calories per day and maintain your weight. What if you want to lose weight? You have three options: you can eat less than 2200 calories per day or burn extra calories doing physical activity or BOTH. Okay, now what? You want to lose weight and you have chosen to go with the BOTH option. How much of “both” do you need to do? It depends on how fast you want to lose weight. There are 3500 calories in one pound of body fat. So if you eat 2000 calories per day, 200 less than what you need, and burn 300 extra calories exercising per day, you will have created a 500 calorie deficit per day (200+300). If you do that for one week, you will have created a 3500 calorie deficit (7x500) and lost one pound of body fat. The hard part of doing this program is counting your calories accurately, both the ones you eat and the ones you burn. When you get good at doing that, you will be on your way to successful weight loss. There are many websites out there that can give you more information than you could ever want concerning these topics. Good luck! ***Featured HealthMax Pro Exercise*** Squat* http://healthfxamerica.com/healthmaxpro/guide/bmanex7.html The muscles being used in this exercise are the hamstrings (back of upper leg), quads (front of upper leg), and gluts (butt). The quads are doing most of the work, but if you concentrate on allowing the hams and the gluts to do more, they will. This is a great overall leg exercise that will help increase muscle mass in some of the largest muscle groups in your body. To prepare the machine for this exercise remove the bench from the machine and choose any of the four positions of the inner handles on the Y bar. Adjust the bottom cylinder to 1 and adjust the top cylinder to desired intensity level. Begin the exercise standing facing the HEALTHMAX PRO pad with your feet on the foot plates. Your hands should be gripping the handles on the Y bar at shoulder level with your palms facing forward. To complete this exercise, begin by pushing your butt back at an angle behind you, as if you were going to sit in a chair, as far as possible, pulling the handles down with you so your hands stay at shoulder level. Your torso will angle forward as you are pushing your butt backwards. In other words, your chest will drop down towards your legs. Be sure to keep your back flat like a table and your abs tight. It is important to try not to let your knee bend to the point where your knee is past your foot. You want to try to keep your knee directly above your ankle. To do this you really need to push your butt back and lean forward. You could even put a chair behind you if necessary. Barely let your butt touch the chair and then come back up. It is important to really focus on squeezing the butt as you return to starting position. Try not to rest at all before starting another rep. There are a couple of different things you can experiment with on this exercise. The positive or difficult part of this exercise is on the way back up from the squatting position. You can go extra-slow on the way up or you can hold the contraction while in the squatting position. You can also experiment with where the pressure in your foot is coming from. If you focus on pushing with the toes, you will be putting more emphasis on the quads. If you focus your pressure though the heel, you will be putting more emphasis on the gluts. Exercise Quick-Reminders Remember that increasing your muscle mass is the only way to NATURALLY increase your metabolism. Your leg muscles (your hamstrings, quads, and gluts) are the biggest muscle groups in your body. If weight loss is one of your primary goals, make sure you are working these muscle groups thoroughly. They should be the first exercises you do in your workout so you have the most energy to give to them. ***Featured Recipe*** Shieldzini (Japanese cucumber salad. Very good side dish with maki and sushi!) 3 cucumbers 1 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon vegetable oil 2 teaspoons white sugar 3 tablespoons rice wine vinegar 3 tablespoons soy sauce Cut cucumbers lengthwise and scoop out seeds with a spoon. Slice into bite-size pieces and transfer to a salad bowl. In a small bowl, mix together remaining ingredients. Pour over cucumbers and gently toss. Refrigerate for several hours before serving, tossing occasionally. Found at http://www.allrecipes.com You are receiving this email because you have requested product catalogs or purchased products from us in the past. To be removed from our customer mailing list please click here: REMOVE | |
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