By Nawaz Modi Singhania
Fighting a long-drawn battle with fat and losing? Nawaz Modi Singhania shows you how to strategise, attack — and win the battle of the bulge.
Okay, you’re on the right track, but are you in a temporary rut? Are you feeling a bit frustrated and stuck in your current struggle? Have you been huffing and puffing away endlessly on that old stationary cycle for hours on end with little or no result? Or, doing an obscene number of stomach crunches only to see your waistline expanding? And are those hips and thighs getting larger despite the fact that you’re religiously working out?
OUTSMART THE FAT These are some of the most common mistakes people tend to make which keep them from achieving their fitness goals.
Here are some tips to help you work out smarter:
* If your main goal is fat and cm loss, exercise cardiovascularly for at least 35 to 40 minutes to begin with. Activities such as walking, aerobics, swimming, jogging, rope jumping, stair climbing, hiking, or even a raquette game are all considered cardiovascular. The thing to remember here is that the body is so designed that during the first 20 minutes of your workout, it does not use fat for fuel. It’s only thereafter, that fats are utilised. So go longer with this segment.
* One of the most common errors people make is that when they have a problem area such as the stomach or hips and thighs, they tend to spot work it to death. Big mistake!
The misconception here is that people imagine that spot work equals spot reduction. It doesn’t. When you work a particular area, you can work on muscle tone and even reshaping that group, but you cannot reduce its surface area. The area tends to bulk up as you work on developing it, and that makes it appear larger and more apparent.
So, make sure that you spot work the area only moderately, and combine this with any aerobic activity as described above, so that you bump fat off from these areas instead. It’s also a good idea to then work other body parts such as the upper body and calves, so that you develop these areas and look more proportionate.
* Fad and crash diets seriously jeopardise your health, and they just do not work. Here’s how. Crash diets which allow less than 500 calories per day cause a loss of potassium and nitrogen in the body. This loss triggers a mechanism in the body that causes us to hold on to our fat stores, and to turn to muscle protein for energy instead.
Scientists have speculated that within each of us is a unique ‘set point mechanism’ that regulates the amount of fat we carry. It’s a way of stocking up for emergencies in case of starvation and famine. If the body perceives that it is starving, as it does when we crashdiet or fast, the set point kicks into action, causing the body to keep a tenacious grip on its fat stores.
In a bid to get out of this situation and to replenish itself, the body will first cause you to crave food — most commonly foods that are fuel-dense, high-caloried sugars and fats. If you stand your ground and resist, the body’s next line of defence will be to react by slowing down the mechanism in order to conserve calories. In the face of such food deprivation, the body holds onto its fat for dear life!
Desperate Times Desperate Measures