Saturday, May 26, 2012

Muscle gain/ Fat gain - dear unGodly weight GAIN


Your body tends to mirror image everything you do with it. When you take shortcuts for its fitness, it takes shortcuts too. You wound up having short term success but face imminent long term failure. When you find a shortcut to lose weight – you lose the weight but slowly start putting it back on too.  You think it because of you have lost your way after gaining results. When you repeat same cycle – your weight loss takes longer by putting up same effort. You feel the frustration; want some magic pill to fix it. However, there is no magic pill out there till date.

If you consider liposuction as magic way – just meet up with people who got their body operated and talk about their long term happiness. 90% of people aren’t happy going that way.  Those cheesy infomercials who sell some green tea pills, sauna, morning walker etc. are part of short term benefits which fails in long term. What do they do?

3 laws of body:
1.     Muscles burn fat.
2.     Your body is as active/ lazy as you are.
3.     Moderation is the key.

People who go for short term weight loss generally do it in 2 ways.
1.     They get extremely dehydrated (Google for side-effects). This also includes hours of aerobic cardio. All those hours on treadmills and spin cycles do just that. You sweat; you lose water from your body. When you consume water back – you gain the weight back.  Some people leave their body to dehydrate by not consuming enough water.  When body gives signal that dehydration – most people don’t get it and assume it is signal of hunger – hence load up on craving foods. When whole problem can be solved by glass of alkaline water.

2.     They put body in starvation mode – where body loses out key ingredients while trying to bank up on macro nutrients. Body starts consuming fuel from muscles. Why shall body work hard when it is so tired and trying to save energy. It won’t attack difficult store of energy (THE FAT). It will attack easier source of energy – muscles and feed from it. This is the reason people who get thin – still don’t like their body because they can feel fat lumps around their body. They see their vitality dropping and look older and sicker.  They may act energetic, however their body strength is really low.

Moderation is the key. What does that mean? Why am I getting fat? How do I get that strength?

It is safe argument that you are emotionally attached to the food. Your food has capacity to make you feel good/bad. Somebody told me and it made sense (atleast to me) - body has its own mechanism to decide when to conserve fat and when to let go. Like when you are gearing towards high endurance - your knee takes pounding - body realizes - it’s due to excess baggage - so it disposes it. When you do strength training - It moves fat tissue into muscles hence maintaining some form. Instead of completely disposing whole tissue - body finds it easier to utilize internal tissues and form muscles/fat from it. When you give it lot of junk - it believes it will later get time to digest difficult stuff, so it stuffs it aside and use main nutrients. When you keep stuffing it with junk - it mechanism falters. Hence you get fat.

When you eat junk once in a while - nothing happens to you. Your body just disposes it. In fact I take junk food once a week so that my body mechanism doesn't falter. It knows what to take in and what to dispose immediately. I have people who eat too clean find it difficult and become emotionally vulnerable when junk enters their system because their body doesn't know how to respond to it. They just feel ugly and sick. As every wise person would tell you that you shouldn’t have strong reaction toward anything in life. It is a key to inner peace.

Dieters make a key mistake by faltering the equilibrium. They either go all in or kick out all the temptation until they lose all the weight. When they reach their goal weight – they think journey is done and go back to old habits. They suddenly start gaining weight. Circle of dieting.

You just can’t deprive yourself from food you love long term. You are going to end up feeling extremely frustrated or getting completely side tracked.  One thing that we often forget is the importance of moderation. Fill up on servings of fruits and vegetables but allow yourself to enjoy the occasional indulgence for the sake of sanity. If you never allow yourself to enjoy a taste of chocolate, why on earth would you want to live forever? Seriously, do not forget to enjoy food for the sake of dieting. There is nothing wrong or sinful about enjoying food. Have a good relationship with food you intake (don’t make it dysfunctional). 

Disclaimer:

This post is meant for amateur performance athletes or people trying to lose weight or people who are gaining weight and they can’t figure out why they are gaining weight in spite of having same lifestyle through their life. I have tried my best to keep message in ENGLISH and not full of scientific jargon hence requirement to dumb down lot of facts for better understanding.  
I will write about metabolism some other time and how it affects your body.

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