Good job in taking more regular and smaller portions of meals throughout the day. That way, you'll keep your body's metabolic rate higher and more consistent. For those of you who are not familiar with how the body's metabolic rate works, here's the story:
Your body metabolic rate is basically, to cut the whole long scientific story short, the rate at which your body converts fuel/ food into energy. Different people have different Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR), the minimum energy expended to keep the body alive and it is determined by several factors like:
- Amount of body surface. (the bigger you are, the more energy you need to stay alive)
- Gender (males generally has higher BMR than females)
- Body temperature (if you’re having fever, your BMR increases)
- Thyroid Hormone Level
- Age (BMR slows down as you age)
- Nutritional state
- Pregnancy
- Caffeine and Tobacco usage
For those who believe or think that starving yourselves or skipping meals will make you lose more weight, you’ve been misinformed. Let me explain to you what I mean.
Our body has the capability to conserve energy and store fuel. If you’re eating at irregular intervals with an extreme varying amount (sometimes not enough, sometimes too much), the body gets the message that food is coming by rather infrequently so It needs to store up cause God-knows-when the next batch of new fuel is coming by and the body still need it’s fuel source to stay alive. So what happen? Your BMR slows down, meaning your body burns food slowly and stores more so that it can stretch out and survive longer without food. What happens when your BMR is on slow motion and suddenly after 8 hours of no food, you go for your nasi kandar/ lemak/ briyani?? Your body will get a shock of “food overload” and will have a hard time dealing with it. Most of what little energy your body is expending from your slow mo BMR would be dedicated towards digesting that big meal. Since your body is not very efficient in converting food into fuel, most will be stored and very little will get burned up to produce energy. Remember, your body still thinks that you’re living in When the next meal is coming so, better store store store. So, if you’ve been wondering why you feel sluggish and tired after a big lunch meal especially if you’ve not had breakfast or had not eaten for many hours, now you know!!! If you’ve been having difficulties loosing weight though you eat rather little, now you understand why!!
So, wanna make your body into an efficient fuel burning machine??? Do what Ridzuan is doing. Eat regular small meals. When you do that consistently, your body will start getting the message that food is coming by very frequently so there is no need to store unnecessarily. “Why keep?” it says. Better burn it up cause new batch of fresh food will be coming by soon. So with that, you will have more energy cause your body is converting food into energy more efficiently. With small meal portion, your body also need not dedicate so much energy to your stomach to do digestion so hence, you still have adequate energy to stay alert and active. A good interval between meals would be around 3 to 4 hours. Don’t stuff yourself full. Just eat till you’re not hungry anymore will do. Maybe around 70% of your stomach capacity. Hungry later?? Eat again…!!! However, do be smart in your food choices as well. I’m not trying to give you green light to eat magnum ice cream every 3 to 4 hours. Choose foods that are light and comfortably digestible. Before you put something in your mouth, think of whether that food is nutritionally beneficially or not, what’s it is going to do to your body, worth the calories or not… etc!!! Well, at least give a try in giving some thought. I know it’s not easy!! Hehehe…At the end of the day, you must still make sure that you don’t eat more than what your daily activity requires.
(Want a longer story on that topic? Ask me some specific questions and I’ll elaborate more in next mail)
Regarding your question about mid section flab, well, here’s what I have to say. What you have around your mid section are accumulated access fat. Here’s are the layers that you have around your body from out to in.
1) Skin
2) Some water retention (you can’t have none else you’ll looked like sun dried tomatoes)
3) Fat
4) Muscles
5) Bone
Each of these elements CANNOT turn into the other. You can have more or less of item 2, 3 and 4 but can’t interchange them. All those crunches will work on your item number 4. Muscles!! It is possible for someone to have big strong abs muscles but still maintain a thick layer of fat on top of it, blocking the appearance of the 6 pack abs.
You’re probably asking in your head now, so, how to reduce item no. 3 and increase item no. 4?? Fat on the mid section is no different from fat on other region. The thing is, different people have the tendency to accumulate fat at different places. So, if the mid section is your fat bank, it will be one of the last places you’ll loose your fat too. There is no way you can spot reduce your fat. The body will shed off the fat as it’s programmed to in your gene when your caloric expenditure is more than your caloric intake. Keep up your exercise and manage your food consumption and soon fat will be shed but you might have to exercise some patience before you can see the reduction on your mid section. Your face and upper body might shrink first.
As for doing crunches to boost up your abs muscle, bear in mind that muscles needs rest in order to develop and grow. Don’t go banging on it everyday. Doing crunches are only one of the available exercises for abs. There are many more exercises that you can do for your abs with varying degree of intensity and difficulties. I will teach you guys more during our training sessions. However, working on your six pack abs muscles for vain and cosmetic reasons only will not give you much functional benefit in your daily activity. Work on the deep core and lower back muscles with exercises like plank/ bridge and the back exercises that we’ve been doing. Those are the exercises that can increase your daily functional performance. Anyway, no matter how much you work on your mid section muscles but if you still don’t bring down your fat level, you’ll most probably end up looking the same though you would had gained more strength in that region.
One of the possible reasons why you feel that your body and muscles fatigue quickly could be due low energy level from poor nutrition and inadequate rest and sleep. When you’re in the gym pushing weights, make sure that you don’t overwork yourself. Maybe your body is trying to tell you that it’s not ready to take the load. You might benefit from an extended slow pace warm up time before you start running or pushing on the weights. I think you’ve mentioned that your exercise in the gym has not been very frequent and structured as well. Your body might need more time to adapt to your exercise but if you’re not following any program or schedule and you “hentam” on whatever and however you feel like, your body has no chance to get adapted and hence, every little thing that you do might be taken as too much for your body. Start all over again. Go slow, easy, keep the weights light and go higher reps, keep to one or two exercise per muscle group and try to achieve a more complete and total workout instead of just working your upper body. Remember, your legs have muscles too!!!!! Anyway, if you still experience symptoms of dizziness and early fatigue, please do consult your doctor. Since you have a company doctor, there is no lost or harm if you do go for a check anyway even if there might be nothing wrong with you…. Just to make sure!!
Ok guys, I think I’ve written a bit much for this mail. I hope none of you fell asleep reading it. Sorry if it takes too much of your time to read it. I hope you all learned something from this mail. It would be my best interest to share as much as I possibly can throughout this period that I’m working with you all.
Amy Loh (Personal Trainer - Hot & Ripped)
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