Tanqeed Health Series : Part 1 – Misconceptions of Weight loss

This post is dedicated to all TQ members/visitors who are or might want to become health-conscious.This is my first post for the health series which I had planned long back, wherein I wish to share some of my own training experiences and knowledge based on secondary research regarding misconceptions of weight loss.

Most people think that spending two hours at the gym or eating less will make them lose weight.Both are delusions.IMO gym is nothing but a fad to make money.You pay the fees but the instructor will not guide you beyond the first week.After a month or so,it becomes just a place to hang out with friends.Do not waste money on it.Instead a 30-40 min proper intense workout even at home can give better result.

Many think that doing a 1-1.5 hr long continuous cardio everday will cause significant weight loss.This is the biggest misconception.Your RMR (resting metabolic rate )remains elevated for only 1-2 hours following a typical cardio workout. Conversely, your RMR remains elevated for up to 1-2 days following a strenuous training session ( high intensity exercises) in which a large quantity of your skeletal muscle has been traumatized.I can vouch for this from personal experience. I am a Shotokan Karate practioner myself and we train only twice a week! Moreover our training session is not continuous but always broken down into stop-start sessions where the whole body is pushed to limits. There are times when I can hardly walk back home because my whole body is exhausted,the muscles are traumatised. But this is where the secret lies.This trauma created in your muscles during such training is the process of muscle protein breakdown. Then, in the hours and days following that intense training session, your body must repair the damaged muscle. This is called muscle protein synthesis. During this whole process, your RMR is elevated due to the repair work your body is performing. Hence, you end up burning a lot more additional calories from this residual RMR increase than you would have from the those long continuous cardio training sessions.

Excessive cardio training actually can cause a loss of lean muscle mass, therefore decreasing your RMR. the lower your RMR, the harder it’s going to be to lose any more body fat and easier to store body fat if you happen to overeat.

Most competitive sports are also based on stop-and-go movement or short bursts of exertion followed by recovery.
Another benefit of variable intensity training is that it is much more interesting than long boring steady state cardio programs.
A 20-minute high intensity interval training session is much more effective than a 40-50 minute boring steady pace cardio session due to several factors like residual metabolic after-burn effect, muscle retention, hormonal response, heart rate variability, etc. It will also save you time!

Keep your workouts shorter but intense; your best results will most likely come from keeping your workouts between 30-60 minutes in length.

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But just exercise alone is not sufficient.Eating habits are the sole reason that most people never lose weight no matter how hard they train.And No! Eating less doesnt help lose weight.This is another biggest misconception.

While people do experience initial weight loss with crash diets, it is actually a loss of lean muscle, which will lower your RMR, making it easier to put the fat back on in the long run.

One of the first reasons people experience an initial quick weight loss with a low carb diet is that they lose water weight by depleting their muscle glycogen stores. Muscle glycogen stores are basically stored carbohydrate in all of your skeletal muscle. A significant quantity of water is also held in the muscle cells of the body along with the glycogen. When you deplete your muscle glycogen stores, you also lose a good bit of water weight.You might have noticed that a persons muscles appear smaller (kind of shrunken) when they go on a low carb diet.

When you eat carbohydrates, they are broken down in your system and raise your blood sugar. Your pancreas secretes insulin to remove the excess sugar from your blood and deposit it into fat stores.Slow and steady carbohydrate sources are ideal because they give you steady energy levels, reduce cravings, and allow your body to utilize fat for energy in addition.The more unrefined and fibrous the carbohydrate source the slower the carbohydrate will be digested, and the lower and more steady the blood sugar and insulin response.More heavily refined starches and sugars where the fiber has been removed will be digested much more quickly and cause a higher blood sugar spike and subsequent crash after insulin has done its job.
People who eat a lot of refined processed carbohydrates typically go through these cycles of blood sugar spikes and crashes, which causes them to crave more carbohydrates and leads to body fat gain.

The blood sugar level can be managed by what is called the glycemic index (GI) of foods.Basically, foods that raise your blood sugar quickly will have a higher GI and foods that raise your blood sugar slowly and to a lower degree will have a lower GI. Examples of foods with high GI’s are white rice, white bread, white potatoes, corn flakes, crispy rice cereals, sugars (except fructose), ice cream, bananas, cooked carrots, candy, and any other refined carbohydrates where the fiber has been removed.
Examples of foods with lower GI’s are most dairy products, most fruits and vegetables, whole unrefined grains, sweet potatoes, barley, beans, and most other higher fiber carbohydrate sources.

Now that you are aware of the misconceptions,in next part i will talk about the 30-40 mins intense workout. 😀

Tags: Cardio Diet Glycemic Index Health RMR