My body My responsibility

This means it’s time to work out again after having regained the weight you lost for Carnival.

With our weight loss goal firmly in our minds, we must explore what may have been slowing down the process or stopping it altogether. Some women may say that they have been working out diligently and have had no additional weight loss. But, have you considered the simple principle of calories in and calories out? To lose weight in a healthy way we need the combination of calorie reduction and exercise. Some people, and sadly even a few gym instructors, also think that exercise is the only answer.

They believe that a couple of hours of vigorous cardio exercise and weight lifting will be the recipe to a slimmer you.

In truth, if you did three “butt kicking” workouts per week that burned 500 calories each, you would still have only burned enough calories to lose less than one pound. This is a direct result of each person’s individual body composition and calorie intake. The more fat a person has, the quicker they will lose weight from fat and water. However, as you get closer to your ideal body weight, your body holds on to fat stores for dear life and sacrifices muscle over fat. At this point the body is afraid that it will starve.

However, if you lose body weight by diet alone it can be said that the reverse happens, you will lose muscle mass. This results in loss of body strength as your body composition changes.

The down side of losing weight without exercise is that when your calorie consumption returns to normal you will gain weight. Sadly, when you gain weight after losing it without exercise, you don’t naturally regain the lost muscle mass. In fact, most of your regained weight will be in fat stores, so your body’s fat percentage will be higher than before the initial weight loss. Your body fat percentages only increase the more you repeat your “yo-yo” diet.

Muscle burns more calories than fat, so it stands to reason that the higher your muscle to fat ratio, the higher your BMR (the rate at which your body uses calories) will be. If you continue upon the damaging diet only path your BMI (body mass index) gets out of balance, making it increasingly difficult to lose weight because your fat to muscle ratio is so disproportionate. You get fatter even if you weigh less then when you started as you will now have a high body fat percentage.

To be truly successful and happy with your body and weight it really takes a combination of exercise and diet. Neither one on its own is the answer.

Muscle is essential to building or maintaining a shapely, healthy body. Consequently, because of the hormonal changes that women experience as they get older, they lose bone density, increasing their risk for developing osteoporosis.

Thankfully by routinely lifting weights you can slow bone deterioration and are able to help your bones grow stronger, help maintain your body’s strength, and reduce your chance of developing osteoporosis.

For weight loss to be done in a successful, healthy and safe manner one must diet, indulge in cardio and actively partake in weight training. Doing one without the other yields less than attractive results and in some cases, such as dieting, if taken to the extreme can lead to death. Your body is your responsibility and you are charged with making wise choices that will ensure that you are there for your loved ones for years to come.