I was talking to a friend of mine today, and she was lamenting how she hadn’t lost any weight in the last week. In fact, she actually gained a couple pounds. She has been eating low fat ala Susan Powter who I turned her onto. She has also been running, and using an elliptical with a heart rate monitor which I also turned her onto. I asked her if she had been drinking enough water. She admitted that she hadn’t been drinking much water. So I told her she need to drink more water. Anyway, she has been weighing her self daily, and measureing herself monthly. Today she decided that if she didn weight under 160 pounds, that she would measure herself a week early. Well, she weighed herslef, and it came out as 161 lbs. So she measured herself. She was shocked to find that she had lost a couple inches around her waist, and a couple around her chest, though just a little bit around the hips. How is this that she hasn’t lost weight, but has lost inches? Well, it’s simple. Muscle weighs more than fat. That’s it. So a fit athlete might wiegh as much as a plump couch potato, but the athlete will be slimmer at the same height and weight.
How to gain muscle and burn fat? She is running and exercising while staying in the aerobic zone. In the aerobic zone, you burn primarily fat. When you workout harder, you start going anaerobic, and you start buring less fat, and more carbohydrates. So to burn more fat, you need run, or exercise slower and stay aerobic. You can find this by using a heart rate monitor. There are many different formulas and ideas about how to identify your arobic zone. Most of them have you working out at a percentage of your max heart rate. A simple formula to ESTIMATE your max heart rate is 220 minus your age. Another is 205 minus half your age. Personally, I ran sprint intervals up and down a hill to max out my heart rate giving me the number 193 BPM. I am 43 years old, and defy the estimates. My own training program is a mixture of different philosophies. But I try to keep my heart rate between 135 and 150 for all of my workouts. So if you workout like this, you will gain muscle, and burn fat.
But you also want to eat healthy. I try to eat low fat. Fat has 9 calories per gram. While carbs have 5.5 calories per gram. From what I have read, your body only needs to burn a single calorie waorht of the fat, to store the other 8 calories worth as fat in your body. For carbs, your body needs to burn half of the calories (2.75), to store the other 2.75 calories worth as fat.
So eat healthy low fat foods, and workout trying to stay in theaerobic zone. That is how to gain muscle and burn fat.
I bought the elliptical machine for my wife. It is a used Proform 545e elliptical trainer. I bought for $80 off of craigslist. To get it home, I had to disassemble it some to get it into my car. In the process of taking it apart I mangled some of the axle caps. The guy selling it to me said I could get them at Home Depot for almost nothing… not quite. The axle caps were 5/8″ and 3/4″. The biggest onces that Home Depot sells are 1/2″. I looked around online and had a hard time finding axle caps in the size I needed. I decided to order then from Proform. The 5/8″ axle cap cost $1.27 and the 3/4″ axle cap cost $2.13. I needed two of each. Okay…$6.80. No problem. But then they charged me over $12 for shipping! When I got the things, they were in a small padded mailer, and would have cost about a dollar to mail first class! So now I had another $20 into it.
n the process of putting it together, I noticed the resistance dial worked backwards from what it should. I took appart the control panel, and found the cable wrapped around the plastic wheel the wrong way. I corrected this. But when I put it back together, and tried it, there was snap. I opened it back up, and found the little plastic tab that held the cable to the plastic wheel had broken off. I looked up this plart on Proform’s site, and found it cost over $55. I don’t think so! I managed to fix it by drilling small hole into the side of the plastic wheel, and fixing the cable in place with a small wire. This worked and didn’t cost anything!
Now that I had the elliptical machine all put together and working, the question was whether or not my wife would use it. I had afterall bought the treadmill for her, and she only used it a few times. Good news! She has been using the elliptical! She likes the non-impact of the elliptical. I think it also helps that it is quiet as opposed to the treadmill motor.
I have since bought her a Polar heart rate monitor, and set her up with some zone numbers to work out in. I just hope she sticks to it.
In the last month I have lost about 10 pounds. I have kept up my running schedule running about 2 some miles a week. And I am still doing my martial arts classes. But the main change was to start eating healthy low fat foods. The local grocery store had a bunch of Healthy Choice entrees on sale at 8 for $10. So we picked up a bunch of them. I wish we had picked up more. We have a larger freeze, and we will eat them. I have been bringing them to work, and have been eating a pizza bread for breakfast, and then another entree for lunch. I have also kept bananas on my desk for snacks. My main goal is not to so much lose weight, but to lower my body fat percentage. And I think I have been doing that. I am able to pinch less fat in various areas. But my scale at home which measures body fat is still fluctuation between 15%-16%. I guess thats an improvement, because it had been flutuating between 16%-18%. I am still not sure how accurate the numbers are. I think I have lost more body fat than that. Oh well. I am looking in the mirror and seem to have more muscle definition. I ordered a blood pressure monitor, and am hoping the drop in weight will also lower my blood pressure.