Posts Tagged ‘lean muscle mass’

You have seen pictures of them; fitness models pulling up their shirts to reveal rock-hard six-packs wrapped with only a paper-thin layer of skin. The truth is, you too, with a little work and time, can have a toned, well-defined stomach. Everyone has a six-pack somewhere beneath the fat. It is a matter of shedding that flab to allow the muscle to define the shape of the abs rather than a layer of fat.

Ab Exercises Alone Don’t Work
Contrary to the infomercials and a myriad of fad gizmos and gadgets that are put in our faces every day, abdominal exercises alone will not define your stomach. You can get up in the morning and do a hundred crunches every day and still not get that attractive six-pack that lies dormant somewhere beneath the fat.

Ab exercises are, of course, important. With efficient exercise of the abdominals and plenty of rest and recovery time between workouts, the muscles in your abs will grow. Well-developed abdominal muscles can do nothing but strengthen your stability during exercise and, of course, look amazing once you shed the obscuring fat around them.

A Three-prong Approach to Defining Your Belly
If you want a six-pack, and who doesn’t, you must engage in a three-prong attack at your fat. Your first wave of attack is effective strength training, not only of the abdominal muscles. The second attack is effective cardiovascular training to burn away excess calories. The third weapon is reducing the calories in your diet and eating only nutrient-rich foods. Let’s discuss these three categories on one by one.

Use Effective Strength Training to Build Lean Muscle Mass
The name of the game is muscle mass, and you want lots of it. If you want to shed fat, muscle mass is your best weapon. Every pound of lean muscle mass on your body consumes, on the average, 13 calories a day, but can consume up to 50 calories a day. With plenty of lean muscle mass, you can transform your body into a fat-burning machine. However, don’t make the mistake of thinking that by merely adding pounds of lean muscle mass to your body, you can eat anything and everything you want. A healthy amount of quality muscle can help you to keep the weight off, but does not become a substitute for healthy dieting habits.

So how do you gain lean muscle mass? Strength training is the answer. But rather than concentrating on actually lifting weights, you should be concerned with rest and recovery time between workouts. When you lift weights, you only need enough exercise to start your muscles into repair and rebuilding mode. Once you have accomplished this, there is no need to perform any more exercise. It is time to stay out of the gym and let your body do the work. Only train with weights after your muscles have had a chance to completely recover between workouts. Only then can you expect to perform at peak levels and get the most out of your workouts.

If you are after lean abs, don’t make the mistake of thinking that training only your abs will do it. Your body has a more-or-less even distribution of fat throughout your system. If you train only your abs, you won’t burn as much fat overall as if you train your entire muscular system from calves on up to shoulders. You have to think globally, you must lose fat generally throughout your body to get to those abs. Eventually, as the fat melts away, your abs will emerge, beautiful and defined. But getting there is an all body effort.

Use Effective Cardiovascular Training to Burn Extra Calories
Calories are nothing more than a measurement of energy. Hence, any fuel can be measured in calories. A gallon of gasoline contains about 31,000 calories of energy. Your body burns calories at a rate defined by your metabolism–age, sex, and activity level all weigh into how quickly your body burns calories. If you consume more calories than your body burns, your body stores the extra fuel away in the form of fat. If your body burns more calories than you consume, your body is forced to take its fuel from fat reserves. Each pound of body fat contains about 3,400 calories. To burn them away, you must increase your activity level.

Cardiovascular exercise is one of the best ways to burn calories. When you hit the treadmill, elliptical, or stationary bike, your goal should be to burn as many calories as possible in the shortest time period possible. Use interval based training, by far the most efficient type of cardio training, to do this. You can burn upwards of 213 calories in 20 minutes of good, high impact cardio exercise. Multiply that by 3 [cardio workouts per week], and you have toasted 639 extra calories per week. That’s about 20% of a pound of fat. You can pretty quickly see the benefits of cardio exercise.

However, even cardio exercise is not enough to bring out your six-pack. You must also consider the third area of attack.

Consume a Nutrient Rich, Healthy Diet
The name of the game when going for a six-pack is putting your body in a constant state of caloric debt. That means you want your body to burn more calories than you consume. We have already considered how to burn more calories with cardiovascular exercise and weight training. Another way to burn the fat is to lower the amount of fuel you put into your system. Your body will burn what it needs to in order to function properly, either in the form of consumed fuel or in the form of fat reserves. The trick is to force your body to keep eating that fat away.

So how do you consume less without counting your calories or weighing everything you put into your system? A few simple tips might help.

Dump simple carbohydrates from your diet. Simple carbs found in white breads, candy, soda, brownies, cake etc. do nothing but bulk up your fat reserves. Your body doesn’t have to break simple carbs down to assimilate them into your reserves. With complex carbohydrates, found in whole grain breads, whole grain pasta, bran, and oatmeal, your body has to work to fuel itself. The process is more complicated than that, but the important thing is to forego the ice-cream, cake, pie, and especially soda pop. Instead, opt for whole grain substitutes and diet drinks. It won’t hurt; I guarantee it.

Drop your portion sizes by one half. When you sit down at the table for a meal, evaluate how much food you would regularly pile on your plate then take only half. If you are absolutely starving at the end of your meal, take seconds of only fruits and vegetables to satisfy the pangs. With this simple habit, you will quickly see the fat shed away.

Know how many calories you are eating. I know, I know; I just said don’t count your calories. Though if you drop simple carbs and limit your portion sizes, you do not need to count calories, it is still a good idea to know what you are eating. Pick up a small notebook from the grocery store next time you go shopping. For two weeks only, write down everything you eat in that book. If you have access to nutrition labels, write down the calories you have consumed. Generally you should shoot for about 1,100 calories a day if you are a woman and 1,700 calories a day if you are a man. For most, this will drop your fuel consumption sufficiently to put your body into the caloric debt zone. With this simple exercise you will soon find your trouble spots and know exactly where you need to cut back.

In Conclusion
A tight, well-defined stomach is absolutely in your grasp. But don’t believe those ab-only exercise gadgets or those miracle exercise scams that claim they will bring your abs out in only six seconds a day. Toning your abs is part of a whole. If you follow the advice in this article, you will see steady, consistent fat loss over your entire body and eventually your abs will appear, emerging from the obtrusive fat that hides your definition so effectively.

Craig Nybo is the president of www.TOTALhuman.com, a company dedicated to improving YOUR quality of life with advanced, highly efficient exercise programs.

A lot of people want to know the best fat loss exercise that gets them the best results in the shortest amount of time. Often, the best advice they receive is to “diet and exercise”. This is a great recommendation, but it is rather vague for people who are busy and who don’t want to spend a lot of their time exercising.

What you are about to learn are some of the best “bang for your buck” fat loss exercises that will help you burn more calories while working out in less time. These fat loss exercises will provide you with a fast way to lose weight because you will be able to work your whole body without spending hours in the gym.

You will notice that none of involve doing any “single joint” exercises such as bicep curls, tricep pressdowns, calf raises, etc. All of these exercises are meant to work your whole body. This will work all of your muscles, which will burn more calories and help you burn more fat. Also, these strength training exercises are a great way to add lean muscle mass and give you that “toned” look that all the magazine models
have.

PUSHUPS – are an exercise that will work your chest while the rest of your body stays straight. Pushups can get your upper body very strong. If you aren’t used to doing pushups you can always do them from your knees at first. Doing a lot of pushups will challenge anyone and will help you develop some nice definition in the upper body.

SQUATS – are one of the most common lower body exercises. They will really make your lower body strong and help you get the look of having “toned” legs. Squats are just like sitting down and standing up from a chair or couch. Squats can be performed with your own bodyweight or by holding dumbbells to add some extra weight. They are one of the most basic exercises that can always help you to keep getting in better shape.

MOUNTAIN CLIMBERS – are a total body exercise that can be very challenging. Mountain climbers begin in the same position as pushups except you alternate bringing each knee inward towards your midsection. You can do mountain climbers slow to really work the abs or faster if you want to make it more of a strength/cardiovascular exercise to burn extra calories.

PLANKS – will help you build core strength and work your abs. They are similar to doing pushups except you simply lay horizontally facing the ground and support all your weight with your forearms and toes. You lift your hips up off the ground and hold this position for about 30 seconds. You can add an extra benefit by squeezing your glutes and your abs the whole time.

DUMBBELL PUSH PRESSES – combined squats and overhead dumbbell presses into one exercise. You squat down and then push the dumbbells overhead when as your squat upward. If you do 25 straight reps you will really feel all the muscles in your body working hard. This is a great example of combining strength training and cardiovascular training into one exercise.

LUNGES – will really work your whole lower body. Lunges are essentially like squats except that you take a big step forward while lowering and raising your torso from the ground. Lunges will make your legs very strong and will burn a lot of calories. If you have never done lunges before then you might feel a little leg soreness the next day – which is a good thing!

I don’t know about you, but when I workout to lose fat I want to burn as many calories as I can in as short a period of time as possible. This is why these fat loss exercises are so great for fat loss. You work more muscles, which burns more calories, which helps you get more out of your workouts without spending hours in the gym. Of course a solid nutrition program is also needed for optimal results, but doing total body exercises like the ones in this article are a great place to start when you go do your next workout.

So, the fast way to lose weigh is to use total body workouts AND follow a smart nutrition program. Next time you workout try using these total body fat loss exercises in place of long cardio workout, crunches, situps, or any other abdominal exercises.

The 21st Century 6 Pack Abs Training workouts will show you how to get a flat stomach without ever having again having to do any boring crunches or sit ups. To get on the fast track to losing belly fat, visit Fat Loss Exercise. Tom Gifford is a Certified Personal Trainer, author, and fat loss expert.

Is anyone else confused by all of the weight loss, fat burning, ab workout programs that are being sold on the internet? As a former college athlete I was accustomed to being in shape, but I admittedly let myself slip over the past couple of years and gained some stomach fat. I still had some of the diets and workout regiments that we used in college, but they were all designed to build muscle and maintain lean muscle mass (not burn excess fat on a middle aged male).

Regardless of what you search for on the internet, you are inevitably going to see one of those ads for “lose 6 lbs in 9 days”, or “find the secret to six pack abs”, but how do you know which abs workout really works? As I started searching for them, I came across several dozen different workout books. With catchy titles like “The Truth About Six Pack Abs”, “No Nonsense Six Pack Abs”, and “Burn The Fat” just to name a few, I started to notice a trend.

1. All of the weight loss programs claimed to be the top selling e-book
2. They all claimed to have a secret that the fitness industry didn’t want anyone to know
3. All of them had the same basic sales pitch

So how do you know which program actually works to burn fat and help slim down your stomach? It is very hard to tell how each weight loss program differs based on their sales pages. Rather than taking their customer feedbacks at face value, I decided to seek out some actual users of the products to see if I could determine which exercise programs and diet guides were really going to help with my goals.

As I started researching the fat burning workouts, I found that there are some significant differences between them. For example, the top selling e-book according to ClickBank (which is an e-product marketing company), focuses more on simplified programs for toning your stomach and changing your nutritional diet to make changes (that is Mike Geary’s- The Truth About Six Pack Abs). The book 7-Minute Muscle by Jon Benson, which also claims to burn fat and sculpt your midsection, it focused more on gym exercises and condensing your workout into shorter workouts (not as much about dieting and abs exclusively). The far extreme that I found was the book titled Top Secret Fat Loss Secret which actually talked about detoxification and natural supplements to help burn fat and cleanse the body…. certainly not what I was looking for.

So before you start a search for any weight loss program or fat burning workout on the internet, take some time to do the research. There are a lot of good workout programs on the market, but not all of them will be exactly what you are looking for. If you take your time, analyze each exercise program, and find some honest reviews of the programs, you should be able to find a program that matches up with your specific goals.

Embarassed of that fat stomach? I was… Get unbiased reviews of the top weight loss and fat burning programs that are the top selling e-books on the internet.

If you smoke and carry weight around your middle, that belly fat could be smoker’s belly! Most people have never heard of ’smoker’s belly’ but studies have been done in the past more than once that explain why you’re on the thin side (or fat side) and have a protruding stomach.

Smokers usually weigh less than nonsmokers but not all smokers are slim either. And even though smokers weigh less than nonsmokers they tend to have more belly fat. One of the studies that was done in England of 21,800 British men and women reported that even though smokers have a lower BMI (Body Mass Index) they have more belly fat.

And compared to people who have never smoked, smokers had the smallest waist to hip ratio than current smokers. And the more cigarettes that are smoked the larger the belly. So if you start smoking even more cigarettes it means you will continue to increase the size of your belly. When current smokers were compared to former smokers or people who have never smoked, the smokers had bigger waist measurements and smaller hip measurements.

This research suggests that smoking may lead to belly fat if you don’t have any now and lead to more belly fat if you do have it now and also a reduction of lean muscle mass.

Even though smokers usually weigh less than nonsmokers do, not all smokers are slim, of course. When smokers start putting on the weight or fat they are more likely than nonsmokers to deposit it around the belly and this is verified in another study.

It’s still not known why smokers tend to accumulate more belly fat than nonsmokers do. But some researchers make a guess that smokers might be more likely to eat foods that are high in saturated fat than non-smokers but this has not been proven. Why the body tends to distribute the weight to the mid-section is yet to be discovered. Perhaps the chemicals in the cigarettes or tobacco influence the hormone levels.

What can you do about it if you have a fat belly? Quitting smoking is the first thing you want to do. When you quit smoking the body will adjust and slowly you’ll lose the belly fat provided you’re not taking in extra calories. Combine this with a weight loss program or weight loss plan or diet that you devise and you will lose weight and get rid of belly fat fast. You waist line will shrink and you will lose inches that have been around for a long time.