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sonbuenas · 02-16-2007, 07:18 PM

If you're trying to change your body composition ie: lose fat and keep muscle, not just lose weight, your diet is 80% of the battle. The key is regulating your insulin levels throughout the day by eating light meals all day long. If you eat alot at once, especially sugary or quickly digestable stuff (white flour, high fructose corn syrup) your insulin levels spike, triggering your body to store fat. Conversely, if you don't eat anything for several hours, your insulin levels drop and your body will go into survival mode and try and store fat as well. So aim for six or seven light meals throughout the day.

As far as exercising, keep on weight training because this keeps your metabolism revving for up to 72 hours afterward. Heavy cardio (runnning or or jogging for more than fifteen minutes or so) WILL start to burn muscle. A better approach is interval training because it keeps your body burning fat, and maintain a higher metabolism for a while after your workout. Do intense cardio for a minute and then light cardio for a minute. Repeat that six to seven times.

And one more thing: Muscle takes a lot more calories to sustain itself than fat does. Adding a pound of muscle will force your body to burn an extra 50 calories a day just sitting around. So lets say you weigh 200 lbs and your body fat percentage is at 17 percent. If you can drop that number to 10 percent while building muscle to keep yourself at 200lbs then thats an extra 14 lbs of muscle on your frame which translates to 700 calories a day. Thats a huge difference.

02-16-2007, 07:18 PM	#9 (permalink)
sonbuenas Junior Member Join Date: Dec 2006 Posts: 12	You want interval training If you're trying to change your body composition ie: lose fat and keep muscle, not just lose weight, your diet is 80% of the battle. The key is regulating your insulin levels throughout the day by eating light meals all day long. If you eat alot at once, especially sugary or quickly digestable stuff (white flour, high fructose corn syrup) your insulin levels spike, triggering your body to store fat. Conversely, if you don't eat anything for several hours, your insulin levels drop and your body will go into survival mode and try and store fat as well. So aim for six or seven light meals throughout the day. As far as exercising, keep on weight training because this keeps your metabolism revving for up to 72 hours afterward. Heavy cardio (runnning or or jogging for more than fifteen minutes or so) WILL start to burn muscle. A better approach is interval training because it keeps your body burning fat, and maintain a higher metabolism for a while after your workout. Do intense cardio for a minute and then light cardio for a minute. Repeat that six to seven times. And one more thing: Muscle takes a lot more calories to sustain itself than fat does. Adding a pound of muscle will force your body to burn an extra 50 calories a day just sitting around. So lets say you weigh 200 lbs and your body fat percentage is at 17 percent. If you can drop that number to 10 percent while building muscle to keep yourself at 200lbs then thats an extra 14 lbs of muscle on your frame which translates to 700 calories a day. Thats a huge difference.