Any woman who works out with weights will likely wax lyrical about it.

Weight-lifting brings tangible results and is hugely satisfying. It’s becoming increasingly popular amongst women, but many still fear they’ll soon resemble body-builders, rather than create the lean physique they desire.

Gradually, general consensus is shifting though, with more and more women trying resistance training - be that with weights or just their own bodies - and never looking back.

One female personal trainer even told The Independent she can eat eight times as much as she used to when doing purely cardio. But if that’s not incentive enough, we spoke to personal trainer Tom Mans to find out exactly why lifting weights is such a good idea for women.

1. Weight training is key to losing fat

“When it comes to fat loss, the single most important factor is making sure you burn off more calories than you consume on a day-to-day basis,” Mans explained to The Independent

By weight training, you build lean muscle, and muscle is a metabolically active tissue where carbohydrates and body fat are burned and used as energy. The more muscle you have, the higher your basal metabolic rate, so the more calories you’ll burn over the course of a day. 

2. It's more effective than cardio

Many people think slogging it out on a cardio machine or pounding the pavements are the keys to fat loss, but cardio like running or cycling puts strain on your muscles (which can lead to injuries) and won’t build muscle, according to Mans.

Plus with weight training, there are practically endless exercises you can do, so unlike with cardio you’ll never get bored.

3. Lifting weights doesn't mean you'll become big and bulky

“I completely understand why women think weight training makes you bulky and muscly,” says Mans, adding that it can make you bulky, but only if you do specific training with a strict diet to match.

Plus women are built differently to men, and Mans says we won’t become bulky because of our basic biology: “On average, testosterone levels in men are about seven to eight times as great as in women. And testosterone is the main hormone that builds muscles.”

4. It has a positive impact on bone density

“When our bones are put under stress from the force of resistance training over a long period of time, they grow stronger and increase in density to withstand the extra load and force,” Mans says.

“Resistance training increases bone density and therefore decreases the chances of women and men developing osteoporosis later on in life.”

Studies have shown that both aerobic exercise and resistance training help strengthen our bones’ ability to bear weight, but resistance training is more effective.

5.  It will improve your strength and boost your confidence

Every time your work out with weights, you become stronger, and so next time you’ll be able to lift more, which is both incredibly satisfying and motivating.

“Unlike fat loss, which takes a lot of time and patience, strength in the gym can increase on a week-by-week basis,” Mans says, “Especially in the first five to six months of training.”

Plus, it just feels awesome to feel strong: “My female clients get a massive confidence boost when they know they are can lift more than most men of the same age in the gym,” Mans says.

6. It makes you more athletic

Everyone wants to look toned and sculpted, and weight training is the way to achieve this. But it’ll also improve your abilities in other sports.

“I have trained a range of athletes in the past - from professional rugby players to tri-athletes to motorcycle racing drivers,” Mans says. “Having a solid strength base helps improve many other elements of athleticism, including power, speed, agility, endurance and muscle mass gains. 

“Strength training and weight training will help the body adapt to the forces it will face during sport and through everyday life.”

Weights machines can be daunting so put people off. But all you have to do is ask someone how to use them once, and then you’ll be good to go.

And if you don’t have access to a gym, it’s easy to find at-home resistance-based workouts using stretchy bands, dumbbells or even cans of beans (or bottles of alcohol, depending on your priorities).

Once you start working out with weights, chances are you’ll never look back. And then you’ll be one of the ones waxing lyrical (and smashing the men at arm-wrestling).

Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/why-women-should-lift-weights-6-reasons-exercise-fitness-confidence-strength-fat-loss-a7829436.html

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Video - How Intermittent Fasting Affects Your Body and Brain

Intermittent fasting is becoming widely understood to not only help with fat loss but also have major long term health benefits. Watch this short video now and see for yourself how it can help you.

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Weight Loss vs. Fat Loss: Are You Sure You’re Losing Fat?

Weight loss is one of the hottest topics ever. Everyone seems to be trying to lose weight nowadays. But what’s the difference between weight loss & fat loss? People seem to use both terms interchangeably.

After reading this post you’ll understand the difference between weight loss & fat loss, but also which one you should aim for and how.

Weight Loss vs. Fat Loss. What’s the difference? Let’s start by defining weight loss & fat loss so you know what I mean here.

Weight Loss. You want to lower your body-weight, the sum weight of your bones, muscles, organs, body fat, …

Fat Loss. You want to lower your body fat, the amount of fat your body carries. Healthy goals are 10% body fat for men and 15% for women.

Problems with Weight Loss. If you want to lose weight, it’s most likely because you carry too much fat. There are people who must lose weight, like athletes before a competition, but most want fat loss. So stop weighing yourself.

Unreliable. Your body-weight can fluctuate daily since it’s influenced by your stomach/bowel/bladder content, water loss/retention, muscle loss/gain, fat loss/gain, … You’ll have no idea what’s going on.

Irrelevant. 2 people with similar height can weigh the same, but look completely different because one has lower body fat than the the other. Check the picture at the top for an example.

The last point shows why the BMI standard is flawed: it doesn’t take your body fat into account. Both guys in the top picture have the same BMI, but one is clearly healthier: his body fat is lower.

Here’s How The Weight Scale Can Mislead You. Clothes, mirrors & pictures don’t lie. Neither do fat calipers. But the weight scale can become your worst enemy by misleading you and killing your motivation. Examples:

Carbs & Water. Carbs bind to water. So eating less carbs will make you lose weight: water loss. This is why you lose so much weight on a diet like Atkins the first 2 weeks: it’s mostly water. Of course, increasing your carb intake will make you gain weight again: water retention.

Muscle Gains & Fat Loss. You’ll gain muscle while losing fat when you get into strength training. But on the weight scale it will look like you’re not making progress: your body-weight doesn’t change. Track your body fat using a fat caliper and you’ll see your body fat is going down.

How to Make Sure You Lose Fat, Not Muscle? Check the picture above: 5lbs muscle takes less space than 5lbs fat. That means you’ll look slimmer at the same body-weight by building muscle. Keys to losing fat, not muscle:

Get Stronger. Strength training builds muscle & prevents muscle loss. It also helps sticking to your diet. Check the StrongLifts 5×5 routine.

Eat Healthy. Eat whole unprocessed foods 90% of the time and eat less starchy carbs. Check the 8 nutrition rules.

You can do cardio to speed up fat loss. But without strength training, cardio will cause muscle loss and you’ll end up skinny-fat. Avoid.

How to Track Progress Efficiently. You don’t need to track progress weekly, changes wouldn’t be drastic enough. Track progress every 2 weeks.

Stop Weighing Yourself Daily. The daily fluctuations will mess with your motivation. Weigh yourself once every 2 weeks, not more.

Stop Looking in The Mirror. Self-image issues can skew perception. Shoot full body pictures and compare them with old ones.

Track Body Fat. Get a fat caliper and track your body fat every 2 weeks. Use this how-to guide and watch this video.

Take Measurements. Girth measurements of your neck, chest, arms, waist & thighs. Waist should go down, rest should go up.

Shoot Pictures. Full body pictures from ankle to neck, front/back/side, every 2 weeks. Compare with your previous pics.

Strength Stats. Log your workouts. Strength going up means muscle gains and strength training prevents muscle breakdown.

Listen also to what people say. They’ll notice your body change more than you will. Clothes will start to feel differently too.

You Might Not Want to Lose Weight. Big guys who want to lose weight often change their mind once they’ve lowered their body fat. They realize they prefer to stay big as long as their body fat is healthy.

Focus on fat loss first. Once you’ve got your body fat down, check if you like what you see. Then decide if you still need to lose weight.

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Source: https://stronglifts.com/weight-loss-vs-fat-loss-are-you-sure-you%E2%80%99re-losing-fat/

Video - 140 LB Body transformation - Fat To Fit - Amazing Fitness Transformation

A classic example of someone incredibly overweight transforming their body and health. If they can you can. Watch and see how you feel. What can you do to take your first steps to a better, healthier you. Comments welcome.

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What’s the difference between weight loss and fat loss?

Losing lbs isn’t always a good thing—here's how to know if your efforts in the gym and kitchen are actually paying off.

DITCHING THE LAYER OF FAT covering your six pack means you’re cutting calories and increasing your burn. But seeing the scale flash three pounds less than last week doesn’t necessarily mean all your hardwork is paying off.

There’s three explanations for weight loss, says strength and performance specialist Joel Seedman, Ph.D., owner of Advanced Human Performance in Atlanta: Losing fat, losing muscle, and losing water. With a perfect diet and workout regimen, you’ll just be shedding fat. But because there are so many moving parts when it comes to dieting and working out, chances may also be losing weight you’d rather keep.

Muscle Loss

Muscle requires constant work to maintain—we all know this. But if your attention is on fixing your diet or upping your cardio in order to burn fat, that focus is probably coming at the expense of strength training.

Plus, if you’re more focused on your calorie restriction than working out, you’ll almost assuredly lose muscle tissue weight, Seedman says. Why? Because calorie restriction usually means macronutrient restriction. Without enough protein in your diet, your body can’t rebuild the tissue even if you are strength training.

Not only is it a bummer to forfeit those gains, but muscle directly impacts your basal metabolic rate (BMR)—or the rate at which your body burns calories both while working out as well as at rest. Less muscle means a lower BMR which means a lower calorie burn throughout your day.

Muscle tissue also regulates your insulin sensitivity—the biological process that determines how well your body absorbs nutrients. If you lose muscle tissue from dieting improperly, the nutrients you eat are less likely to be partitioned to your muscle cells and more likely to be turned into fat cells, Seedman adds.

Water Loss

One of the fastest ways to lose weight in the short-term is to cut carbs—that’s because carbohydrates retain some three times as much water as any other type of macronutrient, Seedman explains. When you cut back on carbs, your body isn’t retaining as much water, plain and simple.

But losing water weight is like buffing your car—it makes the exterior look sleeker, but the beautification is short lived and no interior improvements have actually been made. “If you lose intermuscular water, at first it’s not a big deal—it’s like letting a little air out of a balloon,” Seedman explains. But after a few weeks, because muscle is 70 percent water, the tissue adapts to the dehydration and your muscles shrink and start to atrophy. You’re not only compromising the structural integrity of your muscles, but as you lose bulk thanks to the lack of water, you’re also triggering the whole metabolic dysfunction of BMR and insulin sensitivity that comes with losing muscle. 

The problem comes when you drop below 50 to 75 grams of carbs on a consistent basis, Seedman adds. You still need to eat some carbs—at least .5 grams per pound of your body weight for a low-carb diet or .75 to 1.5 grams per pound for a more balanced calorie-restricted diet will allow fat loss without losing that intramuscular water.

Fat Loss

Your aim is for maximum lipolysisis—the biological process of breaking down fat lipids and triglycerides in either the food you eat or that are already stored in your body. This mostly happens in the mitochondria of the muscles, which is why the more muscle you have, the more fat you burn, Seedman points out. Exercise has also been shown to upregulate those lipolytic enzymes and improve mitochondria function, which is why working out helps you shed fat.

While that sounds pretty straightforward, it’s actually incredibly hard to predict your potential burn rate. “It’s not just calories in, calories out,” Seedman clarifies. While traditional thinking was that between your BMR and calorie intake, you could calculate how much fat you’ll lose per week. But there are an infinite number of possibilities that can occur among the different enzymes, hormonal response, biochemical reactions, and endocrine function—just to name a few—which can all affect this rate, he adds.

How Do You Know?

If you see more than two pounds disappear in a week, you’re dealing with more than just fat loss. “When guys start upping their workouts and cutting calories, they’ll see fat loss pretty quickly—but never at a rapid rate,” Seedman explains. This two-pounds-a-week is most everybody's threshold for fat burn. If you drop 10 pounds in a week, the vast majority of that will be water weight and a little bit of muscle loss as well.

Source: https://www.mensfitness.com/weight-loss/burn-fat-fast/whats-difference-between-weight-loss-and-fat-loss

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Video - Fastest Strategy to Lose Belly Fat

Do you need help to loose belly fat? 

Watch this video now by Dr Berg, to get an alternative view on what strategies could help you loose that unwanted fat.

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Why Sleep Is the No. 1 Most Important Thing for a Better Body

Even with the very best diet and fitness routine, if sleep is off, you're wrecked. Here's why.

Imagine two women you know: One is your model of fitness success (She clearly knows how to slim down correctly and has the body to show for it), and the other is what you fear. This friend has her heart in the right place, but no matter how hard she works, she still struggles with the process and doesn’t have the body she wants. The troubling part is that when you talk to both, they share a common approach:

1. They eat meals that focus on lean protein and vegetables.

2. They exercise at least three times per week, focusing on both weights and cardio.

3. They know which foods are truly healthy and which they need to limit—and they do.

And yet one friend—the one who continues to struggle—can’t maintain her focus. She has trouble controlling her hunger, always craves sweets, and, despite her biggest efforts in the gym, she doesn’t seem to achieve the same results as someone else following the same program.

The problem might seem obvious at first. After all, one woman strays from her diet more than the other. And if exercise “isn’t working,” it probably means she just doesn’t really know how to train.

Maybe it’s genetics. Maybe she’s lazy or lacks willpower. Or maybe, diet or exercise isn’t the real problem.

RELATED: Your Best Body Ever Starts Here

Sleep Controls Your Diet

The debate about the best way to achieve a healthy weight always revolves around eating and movement. If you want to look better, the most common suggestion is “eat less and move more.” But it’s not that simple, or even accurate. Sometimes you want to eat less and move more, but it seems impossible to do so. And there might be a good reason: Between living your life, working, and exercising, you’re forgetting to sleep enough. Or maybe, more importantly, you don’t realize that sleep is the key to being rewarded for your diet and fitness efforts. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 35 percent of people are sleep deprived. And when you consider that the statistic for obesity is nearly identical, it’s easy to connect the dots and discover that the connection is not a coincidence.

Not sleeping enough—less than seven hours of sleep per night—can reduce and undo the benefits of dieting, according to research published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. In the study, dieters were put on different sleep schedules. When their bodies received adequate rest, half of the weight they lost was from fat. However when they cut back on sleep, the amount of fat lost was cut in half—even though they were on the same diet. What’s more, they felt significantly hungrier, were less satisfied after meals, and lacked energy to exercise. Overall, those on a sleep-deprived diet experienced a 55 percent reduction in fat loss compared to their well-rested counterparts.

Poor Sleep Changes Your Fat Cells

Think about the last time you had a bad night of sleep. How did you feel when you woke up? Exhausted. Dazed. Confused. Maybe even a little grumpy? It’s not just your brain and body that feel that way—your fat cells do too. When your body is sleep deprived, it suffers from “metabolic grogginess.” The term was coined by University of Chicago researchers who analyzed what happened after just four days of poor sleep—something that commonly happens during a busy week. One late night at work leads to two late nights at home, and next thing you know, you’re in sleep debt.

But it’s just four nights, so how bad could it be? You might be able to cope just fine. After all, coffee does wonders. But the hormones that control your fat cells don’t feel the same way.

Within just four days of sleep deprivation, your body’s ability to properly use insulin (the master storage hormone) becomes completely disrupted. In fact, the University of Chicago researchers found that insulin sensitivity dropped by more than 30 percent.

Here's why that's bad: When your insulin is functioning well, fat cells remove fatty acids and lipids from your blood stream and prevent storage. When you become more insulin resistant, fats (lipids) circulate in your blood and pump out more insulin. Eventually this excess insulin ends up storing fat in all the wrong places, such as tissues like your liver. And this is exactly how you become fat and suffer from diseases like diabetes.

Lack of Rest Makes You Crave Food

Many people believe that hunger is related to willpower and learning to control the call of your stomach, but that's incorrect. Hunger is controlled by two hormones: leptin and ghrelin.

Leptin is a hormone that is produced in your fat cells. The less leptin you produce, the more your stomach feels empty. The more ghrelin you produce, the more you stimulate hunger while also reducing the amount of calories you burn (your metabolism) and increasing the amount fat you store. In other words, you need to control leptin and ghrelin to successfully lose weight, but sleep deprivation makes that nearly impossible. Research published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinoloy and Metabolism found that sleeping less than six hours triggers the area of your brain that increases your need for food while also depressing leptin and stimulating ghrelin.

If that’s not enough, the scientists discovered exactly how sleep loss creates an internal battle that makes it nearly impossible to lose weight. When you don’t sleep enough, your cortisol levels rise. This is the stress hormone that is frequently associated with fat gain. Cortisol also activates reward centers in your brain that make you want food. At the same time, the loss of sleep causes your body to produce more ghrelin. A combination of high ghrelin and cortisol shut down the areas of your brain that leave you feeling satisfied after a meal, meaning you feel hungry all the time—even if you just ate a big meal.

And it gets worse.

Lack of sleep also pushes you in the direction of the foods you know you shouldn’t eat. A study published in Nature Communications found that just one night of sleep deprivation was enough to impair activity in your frontal lobe, which controls complex decision-making.

Ever had a conversation like this?

“I really shouldn’t have that extra piece of cake… then again, one slice won’t really hurt, right?”

Turns out, sleep deprivation is a little like being drunk. You just don’t have the mental clarity to make good complex decisions, specifically with regards to the foods you eat—or foods you want to avoid. This isn’t helped by the fact that when you’re overtired, you also have increased activity in the amygdala, the reward region of your brain. This is why sleep deprivation destroys all diets; think of the amygdala as mind control—it makes you crave high-calorie foods. Normally you might be able to fight off this desire, but because your insular cortex (another portion of your brain) is weakened due to sleep deprivation, you have trouble fighting the urge and are more likely to indulge in all the wrong foods.

And if all that wasn’t enough, research published in Psychoneuroendocrinology found that sleep deprivation makes you select greater portion sizes of all foods, further increasing the likelihood of weight gain.

The bottom line: Not enough sleep means you’re always hungry, reaching for bigger portions, and desiring every type of food that is bad for you—and you don’t have the proper brain functioning to tell yourself, “No!”

Sleep Sabotages Gym Time

Unfortunately the disastrous impact spreads beyond diet and into your workouts. No matter what your fitness goals are, having some muscle on your body is important. Muscle is the enemy of fat—it helps you burn fat and stay young. But sleep (or lack thereof) is the enemy of muscle. Scientists from Brazil found that sleep debt decreases protein synthesis (your body’s ability to make muscle), causes muscle loss, and can lead to a higher incidence of injuries.

Just as important, lack of sleep makes it harder for your body to recover from exercise by slowing down the production of growth hormone—your natural source of anti-aging and fat burning that also facilitates recovery. This happens in two different ways:

1. Poor sleep means less slow wave sleep, which is when the most growth hormone is released.

2. As previously mentioned, a poor night of rest increases the stress hormone cortisol, which slows down the production of growth hormone. That means that the already reduced production of growth hormone due to lack of slow wave sleep is further reduced by more cortisol in your system. It’s a vicious cycle.

If you're someone who doesn't particularly enjoy exercise, not prioritizing sleep is like getting a physical examine with your father-in-law as the investigating physician: It will make something you don’t particularly enjoy almost unbearable. When you’re suffering from slept debt, everything you do feels more challenging, specifically your workouts.

The Better Health Secret: Prioritize Sleep

The connection between sleep and weight gain is hard to ignore. Research published in the American Journal of Epidemiology found that women who are sleep deprived are a third more likely to gain 33 pounds over the next 16 years than those who receive just seven hours of sleep per night. And with all of the connections to obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart failure, and cognitive failure, the need to sleep goes far beyond just looking better and seeing results from your diet and exercise efforts.

While there’s no hard number that applies to all people, a good rule of thumb is to receive between seven and nine hours of sleep per night, and to make sure that one poor night of sleep isn’t followed up with a few more. It might not seem like much, but it could make all the difference and mean more than any other health decision you make.

Source: https://www.shape.com/lifestyle/mind-and-body/why-sleep-no-1-most-important-thing-better-body

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Is There A Magical Macronutrient Ratio For Fat Loss?

I've written more than 100 fitness articles that have been published all over the world. My goal is to help you get in the best shape possible!

Ask The Ripped Dude: Is There A Magical Macronutrient Ratio For Fat Loss?

Q. I'm Trying To Lose Some Fat, But Everywhere I Go To Look For Helpful Information, I Get Conflicting Views On The Proper Macronutrient Ratio. Is There A Right Answer?

Great question! In reality, when you're trying to lose weight, there's no ironclad macronutrient law for mapping out your diet plan. No macro mix can save you if you eat way too many calories or way too few.

Yet your macro mix is an important consideration. Your body type, metabolism and weekly physical activity level all have some bearing on your ideal percentages for that moment in time. But that doesn't mean it will be the macronutrient ratio you'll use forever. It may change if and when your body weight or body fat fluctuates, or if you run into any plateaus.

Then there's the fact that you have to continuously manipulate your ratios throughout any fat-loss plan. The macronutrient ratio I typically play with for maintenance purposes is 50% protein, 35% carbs and 15% fats. But that's for me. I need to stay lean all year round. That ratio won't necessarily work for you because you have a different body type, fitness goal and activity level.

My body type is an ecto-mesomorph, which means it has a higher tolerance for carbs than most people. Even if I increase my carbs to 40-to-50 percent, I won't suffer. Not everybody is like that. Individuals who are carb-sensitive have to monitor their carbs closely and make adjustments in their ratios.

Macro-Morphing

Each body type or combination of body types will have a different reaction to various macronutrient ratios. If you're not sure which type you are—or how to even begin thinking about your macros—here are the ISSA recommendations:

Ectomorph: If you're an ectomorph, you're naturally thin with skinny limbs and a high tolerance for carbohydrates. Usually, your metabolic rate is fast. A good starting macronutrient ratio for you would be something like 25% protein, 55% carbs and 20% fat.

Mesomorph: Mesomorphs are naturally muscular and athletic. They have a moderate carbohydrate tolerance and a moderate metabolic rate. Mesomorphs can usually start at a 30% protein, 40% carb, 30% fat macronutrient ratio.

Endomorph: If you're naturally broad and thick, you're probably an endomorph. Endomorphs have a low carbohydrate tolerance and a slow metabolic rate. If you're an endomorph, try a ratio of 35% protein, 25% carbs and 40% fat.

Don't let your body type be an excuse for not reaching your goals. If you're an endomorph and have a difficult time leaning out, or are an ectomorph and can't seem to gain weight, don't give up. You can beat your biology; you just need to put some serious work into doing it. You need to want it bad enough.

Bottom Line: These ratios are a starting range for most body-types, but don't be afraid to experiment for better results. Sometimes, decreasing your carbs and increasing your good fats can show remarkable fat-loss results. Get to know your body!

Source: https://www.bodybuilding.com/content/ask-the-ripped-dude-magical-macronutrient-ratio-for-fat-loss.html

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