Hype-Free Fad-Free Fitness By Pete
Pete Piranio offers an insider's guide to truthful, honest and sensible solutions to fitness and health. Piranio is the owner of Fitness Together, with locations in Wauwatosa, Brookfield and Delafield.
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The Fat Loss Trifecta
By Pete Piranio
Thursday, Jun 26 2008, 03:43 PM
Now that we've laid the ground work for this blog, let's get to some "nitty gritty" details that will get you on the road to a successful body transformation.
If permanent, long lasting, and fast fat loss is what you want, this trifecta is part of your plan:
1) Create a caloric deficit from dieting.
The research currently supports a lower and quality carbohydrate diet as being superior in terms of fat loss than an isocaloric diet of higher carbohydrate intake. Now I don’t mean the fad carbohydrate diets. Eliminating any macronutrients from your diet is the silliest thing I’ve ever heard of. Thankfully, that fad has lost some of its traction. What I do mean is quality starchy carbohydrates (wheat, brown rice) with fibrous carbohydrates (veggies) and lean protein. The success of lower quality carbohydrate diets is due to an increase in protein intake (highly thermic) as well as a reduction in insulin levels allowing more fat to be burned. The research supports it -- but the evidence from our clients is overwhelming.
2) Burn more calories from the use of metabolically demanding exercise.
Interval aerobic training for shorter periods of time is much more effective for fat loss than the traditional long steady state cardiovascular exercise regardless of what the “Fat Burn Zone” on the cardio machine says. We’ll get into this in future posts, but I can tell you now, it’s part of the misinformation contributing too many folks struggling. The use of high intensity interval workouts that burn a lot of calories while you are performing is the key. Interval training allows you to reach these high intensity levels without the average person killing themselves. Of course appropriately building up to interval training is essential. The fact is you can burn as many and more calories in less time with interval training. A better result in less time is a winner in my mind. The added bonus is that through creating metabolic disturbance with this type of training, the body continues to burn more calories at rest after the session.
3) Elevate metabolism by maintaining your lean muscle tissue -- and making it work.
Muscle mass is one of the biggest determinants of resting metabolic rate. While science continues to investigate and debate exactly how many extra calories are burned per day by the addition of one pound of muscle -- what IS clear is that muscle is metabolically active -- more muscle = more calories burned. And what is indisputable is that muscular work - resistance training is very metabolically demanding, not only burning a ton of calories while you are performing the exercise, but it also contributes to raising metabolism.
The biggest single factor in success in fat loss programming, in my opinion, is the effective understanding of EPOC. This is the 'excess post-exercise oxygen consumption' and represents the oxygen consumption above resting level that the body is utilizing to return itself to its pre-exercise state.
In other words, it's not just the calories burned during training that count. It's also the "extra" calories burned in the post exercise period (up to 48 hours in some examples) that REALLY make the difference.
Any program that is at all effective has to work through one or more of the above factors in order for fat loss to be created. It's an easy way to evaluate whether a program will work or not: 1. Does it have a nutrition component? 2. Does it include resistance training? 3. Does it include energy system work? 4. Will it elevate metabolism?
Successful programs such as Fitness Together’s target all of these synergistically (i.e. they work together to enhance results). For example, we incorporate what we call the FT Essentials of resistance training, energy system specific aerobic exercise and a practical nutrition program design not only for fat loss, but easy lifestyle implementation. Thank you for allowing me to guide you through the health and fitness maze!
In good health,
Pete Piranio BS, CSCSwww.FitnessTogether.net
