Toning?

What the heck is toning, anyway?

Actually, I'm not sure what people (women) mean when they tell me 'I just want to tone up'. I mean, I know what they mean but they still think lifting light weights is how to 'tone'. Toning is simply shaping the muscle and being able to see definition, right? You can't do that with light weights. I often wonder if those women really see themselves. I see scores of participants in weight conditioning classes that look exactly the same after 6 months of taking classes regularly. Guess what? They never increase their weights and, that's right, they are the ones that use 5 pound weights for their large muscle groups (legs, back and chest) and 3 (!) pound weights for everything else.

The other day one of my friends, who also happens to be a fitness instructor, ask me a great question. She asked me 'If you feel a burning sensation when you are lifting those light weights, isn't that working the muscle?' Of course she knows that you are working the muscle but she was asking why then do you need to work heavier weights, especially since you feel a burning sensation while lifting those light weights. The muscle will not change if you have been lifting the same amount of weight over a 3+ months. That burning sensation that you feel is your body's inability to process lactic acid (a bi-product of exercise) out of your muscle at the rate your are producing it. In reality you shouldn't feel a burn at all, your muscle should ultimately fatigue so you have to struggle to complete the last repetition. The discomfort you SHOULD feel is soreness within 24-48 hours. I am not saying that you should feel debilitating soreness, but you should feel your workout the next day, or the day after. If that's happening, you will get the results you are want.

To elaborate on when you should increase your weights, research now shows that the body adapts to a particular exercise or drill within 6-8 weeks, give or take a little bit. They used to think it took about 3 months for your body to adapt. That's a huge difference. What that means is that every couple of months you need to change what your doing. If you take a weight conditioning class, and your club has heavier weights then you are currently using, you need to increase the amount of weight you are using so that you can keep moving forward with your fitness goals.

If you aren't getting the results that you want, change up what your doing and see what happens.

Fat Loss and Goals

Eat less, move more. Right? If it really were that simple we wouldn't have an obesity rate approaching 75%. There are a lot more factors involved. Culture, our habits and our genes play a significant role in fat loss. We don't all gain fat or lose fat for the same reasons, or at the same rate. Each person has to think about their own obstacles. Following are a few to consider:

* Not enough exercise (this is the duh one).
#1 excuse? Not enough time. If you have time to sit at the computer and play around on Facebook, you have enough time to exercise. It's all about choices. Start by making a plan and schedule exercise into your week. START SMALL!!! I think that is the one that trips up the most people. They think 'I can't go to the gym for an hour so I might as well not go at all'. Wrong. Jogging 2 miles takes approx 30 minutes. Not long at all and you don't even have to figure in the travel time. I wouldn't expect you to bench press 400 pounds the first time I worked with you. That's ridiculous, right? Then why do you expect to go to the gym and workout for an hour or two when you haven't been going at all. Another great motivator? An iPod loaded with your favorite music.

* Choosing the wrong foods.
You may be rolling your eyes and saying 'I know! I know!' but it isn't as complicated as it seems. If you have a sweet tooth, try fruit first. And two you already know - eat a better breakfast and eat slowly. Seriously. Try it. Good breakfast choices? Half a bagel with light cream cheese and some fruit. Low fat yogurt, fruit and toast. Hard boiled egg and oatmeal. If you find something that you like eat it every day. Studies find that when people stick closely to meals that they like and are healthy they maintain a leaner physique. I'm not saying that you need to eat the same thing every day, but stick close to it. Eating slowly involves putting your fork down. Talk to people if you are dining with anyone, but do it without taking bites between words. Sip some water. You really will be amazed at how little it takes to fill you up.

* Mindless eating.
This is really a mind/body disconnect. You aren't really aware of what your eating or how much. Anytime you eat when your not hungry or don't stop when your full, the food you are eating has no connection to your body. Use yoga breathing to focus. Breathe slowly in through your nose and out through your mouth. I usually use a count of four - inhale-2-3-4, exhale 2-3-4, etc. Remove distractions when you are eating. Turn off the computer, even if you need to eat at your desk. Hang up the phone. Turn off the television. This one also involves portion control. If you are eating mindlessly, you aren't aware of how much your eating. Try smaller bowls and plates. And never, ever eat straight out of the bag, carton or package. Ever.

* Stress and fatigue.
The less you take care of yourself the more likely you are to gain fat. For an example, look at the nursing population. They are notorious for devoting all their love and care to other people and never taking care of themselves. They are wonderful people in a thankless career, but when you don't care of yourself depression follows and with depression there is often fat gain. Get more sleep. Write down what is causing your stress and list ways to help alleviate it. Yoga, deep breathing and meditation are all wonderful for reducing stress but many people aren't comfortable with those methods or feel silly doing them. My suggestion is to find something that you love to do and do it regularly. It could be painting, dancing, reading, getting your nails done, thrifting/garage saling, etc. It's your life so take care of you.

My best advice for tackling a goal, any goal, is to break it down. Way down. Try to do something every single day that helps you reach your goal. Maybe your overall goal is to lose 40 pounds. That will probably seem over whelming and the majority of people will give up before you start. First, I would suggest that you change that goal to something like, running a 5K by the end of October or walking in the Breast Cancer Walk on whatever date. Those goals will get you to the fat loss just by the nature of the goal itself. So everyday you walk, or run, or ride, or whatever it is, brings you closer to your goal. Maybe it's running for 15 minutes.....or even 5 minutes. It doesn't matter because you are still moving forward, not backward. If fat loss is your goal, try changing one thing about your diet everyday as well. Exchange your morning donut for fruit. Trade in your whole milk for 2%. Pretty soon all those things become second nature and now you don't even miss what you were eating before.

That is the recipe for permanent change and that's what you have to do to be healthy. You hear it all the time. Life-style change - that's what works.

Moderate Exercise

I wanted to follow up on my earlier post about low-intensity vs high intensity cardiovascular exercise. I don't want you to think that if you don't perform high intensity exercise every time you workout, you aren't getting any benefit. That's not true. There are a ton of benefits that can be achieved by engaging in moderate exercise.

Here are just a few:

*It plays an integral in maintaining weight and metabolic balance.
*It tones all the muscles, joints and connective tissue needed for heavier activity.
*It physiologically and hormonally counters the effects of stress.
*It reduces the risk of breast cancer and death due to cardiovascular disease.
*It can decrease overall systemic inflammation in the body and the risk for a vast array of diseases that it causes.
*Believe it or not, it reduces the risk of the common cold.
*It elevates mood and the sense of well being for 2+ hours after performing the activity.
*It can help alleviate the symptoms of chronic depression.
*It promotes better sleep.

So why am I suggesting that higher intensity is better then lower intensity (overall)? Because it is necessary for fat loss. If you notice above it states that it is great for maintaining weight, not losing fat. It is also great for metabolic balance not increasing metabolic rate.

All the benefits above are fantastic and worth pursuing. So if moderate exercise is what you do, fabulous! But if fat loss is what you seek, you need to up the intensity. Period.

What constitutes moderate exercise? Rollerblading, heavy gardening, leisurely bike riding, brisk walk, mowing the lawn, outdoor hiking, light swimming, dancing, badminton or ping pong - you get the picture. Just lead an active life and you'll reap all the benefits of moderate exercise. But, again, if it's fat loss you want you will have to increase your energy output.

Low Intensity Vs Higher Intensity Cardio

I have received several follow up questions on the posts that I wrote earlier on cardio vascular training, so I am going to elaborate a little more on that.

We are going to look at lower-intensity vs higher-intensity, not interval training per se.

One of the reasons that people have a hard time changing the way they think about cardio vascular training is because of past media attention to the 'fat burning' zone. The fat-burning zone does exist, well, sort of. Yes, the body burns a greater percentage of fat at lower-intensity aerobic training, not a greater amount of fat. That's where all the confusion comes into play.

Working out at a lower intensity may burn 50% of your total caloric expenditure in fat, and working out at a higher intensity may burn 35% of your total caloric expenditure in fat. That looks like you should keep going at in the lower intensity range, right? Well, let's look at the numbers:

A 150 pound woman who is reasonably fit gets on the elliptical trainer for 45 minutes at a low intensity (reading her Cosmo or watching TV - this is the most likely scenario in any health club). She has been doing this same thing for, let's say, six months now. During that 45 minutes she burns approx. 200-300 calories. *The machine will say she has burned more, but in reality she is probably burning a little less every time she performs the activity because her body is used to it.* Of that 200-300 calories, she has burned 100-150 calories of fat, based on the above equation.

Now the same 150 pound woman hires me as her trainer (very smart woman). The elliptical is a safe piece of equipment (my least favorite) so we stick with it. To make it simple, before I really start to push her, I ask her to select the interval or hill program listed on the machines console. I also ask her to forward through all the prompts asking for her age, weight and sex. The machine is supposed to be able to figure out how many calories you burn with that information which is absolutely ridiculous. Does the machine know your resting heart rate? Does the machine know how much muscle you have? Does the machine know if you are on medication? Didn't think so.
Anyway, we get her going and I monitor her exertion by asking her how she feels, but I also watch her. If she starts to look around the gym at the other members during the higher intensity segments, I increase the intensity. If she is focused, we stay at the same intensity. I do not expect her to go at a high intensity for the full 30 minutes. If your mind is wondering, you are not pushing yourself hard enough.

Now she has burned approx. 300-400 calories, 100-150 of them from fat. She has burned the same number of calories from fat but in a lot less time. As long as she monitors her intensity, and she doesn't start zoning out (which will lower her caloric expenditure), she will continue to burn more fat. Next step would be interval training to bump that fat burn even more.

Remember, this is not INTERVAL training, this is just increasing the intensity of your cardio vascular training. I will write more about interval training later. This is a great place to start learning why increasing the intensity of your cardio vascular workout is so great for your fitness and fat loss goals.

All you have to remember is: If you can read a magazine while working out, you might as well get off the machine.

Lift More Weight For Significant Fat Loss

One thing I hear women say all the time is "I don't lift weights, because I don't want to get big". That is a myth. A myth that just doesn't seem to go away! Strength training is one of the three components of fitness - strength, cardio vascular endurance and flexibility - you need to do all three to be your fbest shape. Lean and defined, that's what most people want when they say they want to lose weight. I tell them 'Nope, you want to lose fat".

You won't get big by lifting weights, unless that is your specific goal. You would need to increase your caloric intake significantly in order to build that much muscle. Women are not predisposed to building large muscles. We don't have enough testosterone in our system. When you see pictures of bodybuilders, including women, they are huge. They take performance enhancing drugs. Period. I've seen it myself. I competed as a natural bodybuilder. When I was in the back, before a competition, I would see other women who had the side-affects of male hormone and steroid use. It is horrible. Back acne. Enlarged jaw. Enlarged clitoris. Some women even had to tape down their private parts so they wouldn't show through the competition bathing suit. And they were competing in a natural bodybuilding show. Very little drug testing was done, due to the cost. I could never understand why women would do that to their bodies just for a trophy.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, no 5 pound weights. That does not constitute a weight training program. You need to tax your muscle in order to build muscle. I think the term 'build muscle' is how the myth of getting big started. The 'building' part of weight training is actually very small. You create tiny, micro-fiber tears in your muscles whenever you lift weight enough weigt to challenge the muscle. Sounds bad, but it's good! When you create those tiny tears your body has to work at repairing the muscle tissue by knitting it back together. Ever time the body knits a muscle back together, it is stronger then it was before. Repairing the muscles also takes more energy (calories), so your metabolism is raised for the next 24 HOURS(!) after you weight train.

Of course, just lifting weights will not account for significant fat loss, although most of my clients notice a big difference in body composition with in 3-4 weeks of training regularly. You do need to do some cardio (but not much) and develop better eating habits. But you won't have to cut your calories by as much as you would if you didn't lift weights regularly.

There are a lot of really great books out there that will help you design a weight training program. Start slow and build from there. A little soreness is good (that's the discomfort from breaking down the muscle tissue), but I-can't-get-out-of-bed sore, well, that's not so good, although it may happen the first couple of times. You don't even need to join a gym to get a good weight work out. All you need to do is buy a set of dumbbells (NO 5 POUND WEIGHTS) and a bench, and that bench could be a step aerobics bench which you could use for so many different things that I can't even list them all here.

The formula for fat loss? Weight training 2-3 times per week, cardio 2-3 times per week (but short and intense is best) and a good diet. Remember, I don't believe in significantly cutting calories. You should eat when your hungry and stop when your full. Try to get more protein into your diet and try to get rid of starchy carbs, such as white bread, white rice and sugar. Replace them with whole vegies, fruits and whole grains - not whole wheat, but whole grain. There is a big difference.

I often ask clients and my class participants "Do you think I look too muscular". Assuming they are answering honestly, they almost always say no. I lift heavy weights regularly. It keeps me strong, lean and defined.


If you don't believe me, check it out.

Treadmill Workout

If you work out on indoor cardio equipment (well, really, what is OUTDOOR cardio equipment?), then you may be awfully bored with what you have been doing. The following is a fantastic treadmill workout which my clients love (to hate)!

First check your treadmill to see what the incline percentage is, i.e. is the range 0%-10%, or 0%-15%. They do vary, but most treadmills now have the 0% to 15% range.

Start on the 0% incline, at 3.5 miles per hour, or a comfortable walk. Stay there for about 3 minutes and then increase your speed until you are at the fastest, but also comfortable walking or running speed. What that means is, if you are a runner, you will need to increase your speed until you are running very comfortably. For a walker you will have to increase your speed until you feel as if you need to break into a run, and then back it off until you are walking at a brisk pace, but comfortably.

Once you have established your pace, the workout really begins. I am going to outline one workout in this post. There are quite a few you can do, but I am going to leave those for later posts, so check back.

After you warm-up and find your pace (which should take approx. 5 minutes), increase the incline to 5% for one minute. You must try to keep your original pace throughout the workout. After one minute at 5%, drop the incline back to 0% for one minute. Repeat, raising the incline to 7%, dropping to 0%. Repeat the same sequence at 9%, 11%, 13% and 15%. In other words, up one minute, down one minute. Again, throughout the work out you need to try to maintain your original pace. Cool down for 3-5 minutes and then stretch.

This is an interval workout without the need to increase your speed, which a lot of people assume they need to do. I love this type of cardio training because you do not have to be a runner, walkers can achieve the same intensity (and same results) without running.

The workout takes 25-30 minutes to complete and burns approx. 9X more fat then steady-state cardio activity. SO if you got on the treadmill and walked or ran steadily for 45-60 minutes, you would achieve LESS fat loss results then if you performed the above workout for 25-30 minutes.

I would say that was much better use of your time, wouldn't you?

More Nutrition Information

Fat loss is not as simple as cutting calories and increasing activity. Calories are not the primary focus of some very successful fat-loss programs. How much you eat may not be as important as what you eat. Fats are no longer considered bad. And eating a lot of carbohydrates may make you fatter, even as much as cheese and steaks can. Research shows that certain carbs may cause more metabolic problems than any other food you put in your mouth, because of the assault of glucose on your system, which essentially shuts down almost all other nutrition processing functions (including fat burning) while it is being processed.

Eating more protein will even speed up your metabolism and slow down your appetite. It will make you feel full faster then either carbohydrates or fats. You body uses more energy to to digest then carbs or fat. The more protein you eat, the harder your body has to work to digest it, which means more expended calories. People that eat a high-protein diet (over a high-carb diet) burned more then twice as many calories during the hours after they eat.

Everybody has heard of good carbs vs bad carbs. The good carbs are the ones that empty out of your stomach slower. Bad carbs empty out quickly. The longer it takes for something to process through the system, the more satiated you will feel.

So what do you eat?

Best protein sources are (you probably already know these):

* Lean beef
* Chicken breast
* Turkey breast
* All types of fish

How about carbs? (these may surprise you):

* Breads - pumpernickel and sourdough
* Grains - Barley, parboiled rice, Bulgar and kasha
* Pasta - Angel hair, linguine and other thin strand pasta; bean threads or cellophane noodles; whole grain spaghetti
* Cereals - Rice bran, unsweetened high-fiber, like an all bran cereal.
* Vegies - Sweet potatoes, yams, green peas, tomatoes
* Fruits - Mangoes, bananas, kiwi, oranges, grapes, apples, pears, strawberries, dried apricots, peaches, plums and cherries
* Snacks - Cheese, nuts and olives
* Protein-carbs - Unsweetened peanut butter, beans, eggs and unsweetened soy milk
* Misc - Low-fat yogurt, foods sweetened w/sucralose, saccharine, fructose or aspartame.

What about fats?

* Olive oil
* Canola oil
* Corn oil
* Walnut oil
* Soybean oil

Got it? The easiest way to think about the above foods is to ask yourself, 'How many steps did this food take to get to my table'? If the answer is, 'Alot'. Avoid it. A whole, fresh potato? Ground to produce section. Potato chips? Ground, processing factory, packaging factory, long truck transport (most likely) and then to the grocery shelves. Phew.

Good luck on your fat loss goals, and refer to the above lists often.