Keeping Fit; Muscle Over Fat;
Don't Just Eat Less, Strength Train, too;
Weight-loss
by Wayne Westcott
Only 5 percent of New Year's dieters will keep the weight off.
Initially diets work well for shedding pounds but work
poorly for weight maintenance.
The popular low-carbohydrate and high-protein diets produce
relatively rapid weight loss. However, they do so at a high price in terms of health,
fitness and permanent improvement. Water loss, which is rarely a good thing, is a casualty
of this type of diet.
Although all human tissues contain water, fat is only about
8 percent water whereas muscle is almost 80 percent water. Quite simply, when you lose
water weight you also lose muscle tissue. Physiologists tell us that approximately 25
percent of the weight lost on popular diet plans is muscle. That is, a 20-pound weight
loss really represents about 15 pounds less fat and about 5 pounds less muscle.
Because muscle is essential for physiological function,
physical performance and personal appearance, it should never by sacrificed for the
purpose of weight loss. Furthermore, muscle plays a major role in regulating your
metabolism, especially your resting metabolic rate that accounts for about 75 percent of
your daily calorie utilization.
Consequently, a 5-pound muscle loss can reduce your energy
requirements by 150-200 calories per day. As your metabolism slows down, the same amount
of food that previously resulted in weight loss may now be too much to prevent weight
gain. Trying to eat even less food simply increases the muscle loss and intensifies this
unhealthy cycle of diet-induced debilitation.
Is Dieting Wrong?
Your physician or registered dietitian can best answer that
question for you. Is dieting missing something? Yes, it is missing critical components to
prevent water loss, muscle loss and metabolic slow-down.
To prevent water loss, dieting should be accompanied by a
water replacement plan, which means drinking 8 to 16 glasses of water daily depending on
food choices, exercise activities and climatic factors. As an additional benefit of water
consumption, consider that you burn almost 100 calories just to warm 12 glasses of cold
water to body temperature.
Avoid Muscle Loss
To avoid muscle loss, your diet plan must be combined with
an exercise program that includes strength training. Although 30 minutes of aerobic
activity (treadmill walking or stationary cycling) and 30 minutes of strength exercise
(circuit or Nautilus machines) use approximately the same amount of energy (about 225
calories), only the strength exercise promotes muscle development.
If you are not convinced that you need muscle-building
activity, consider that you lose 5 to 7 pounds of muscle every decade of adult life. Add
to this 5 to 7 pounds more muscle loss from a low-calorie diet plan, and strength training
becomes a most important component of a healthy lifestyle.
The participants in our weight loss studies add between 1
and 3 pounds of muscle during their 10-week training program even though they are
concurrently dieting and losing several pounds of fat weight. By increasing their muscle
tissue they raise their resting metabolism and further enhance their energy utilization.
In essence, they lose fat faster and keep the weight off because they have bigger and
better engines. Your muscles are the engines of your body and you burn a lot more calories
with a strong 8-cylinder engine than with a weak 2-cylinder engine.
Although strength training is the essential component, our
program participants also perform aerobic activity and stretching exercise for
comprehensive physical conditioning that enables them to look better, feel better and
function better, as well as to lose body fat.
Copyright 2003 The Patriot Ledger
The Patriot Ledger The Patriot Ledger
(Quincy, MA), December 30, 2003, http://www.patriotledger.com/,
Wayne L. Westcott, Ph.D., is fitness research director at the South Shore YMCA in Quincy,
and author of several books including "Building Strength and Stamina" and
"No More Cellulite." |
