should I lose the weight to the certai npoint I want it at then tone up?
2006-09-08 14:55:38 · 14 answers · asked by jwslover12 1 in Health ➔ Diet & Fitness
There is no site specific way of losing fat... the old myth about working your abs to burn belly fat isn't true. To get rid of love handles, you need to lose overall fat. That happens with exercise and watching your diet. More on that below.
The most effective way to lose fat is aerobic exercise in the "moderate" fat-burning range, ideally first thing in the morning before you eat. When you wake your body is ready to burn fat and your levels of growth hormone are highest at that time. Later in the day it can take up to 30 minutes just to put your body into a fat-burning mode.
Another overlooked way to burn fat is by lifting weights. Skeletal muscle has very high caloric needs... almost twice that of adipose (fat) tissue. Put on a little muscle and you will burn calories all day even at rest. Be aware that skeletal muscle weighs more, so with this approach you may see your weight increasing while your body fat is melting away. Not realizing this often stresses folks who think they should be losing weight as a measure of fitness. Forget the scale, look in the mirror and you will be happy.
For diet, keep a diary for a couple of weeks counting calories, grams of protein, and grams of fat intake. It is easy with online sources of nutritional information (type the name of the food and calories into the Google search engine) and packaging labels. That will let you quickly figure out where the fat is coming from in your diet.
Fat gives you 9 calories per gram. So take the number of grams of fat, multiply by 9, then calculate what percentage the fat calories are of your total daily calories. Restricting the calories from fat to about 20% of your total intake is ideal for a maintenance diet... that isn't overly restrictive. Of note, you need some fat in your diet. For instance, the body uses fat to produce hormones. Once you have a picture of how to modify your diet, you can drop the diary and just go back to it occasionally if you are wanting to tweek things further.
There is a subset of questions that goes further and asks about "How to get a six-pack?" The answer is the same. Six-packs are 20% abdominal exercise and 80% diet. There is one caveat... abdominal muscles will form in the position that you exercise them, so be certain to pull them tightly toward your spine while doing crunches, etc. Also, during most lifting, the "core is active" which means that you should be stabilizing with contracted abs then too. Fail to do this and the abs will form, but bulging outward and the result is not attractive.
If you are trying to build muscle as a way to lose fat, then you may need to increase total calories and specifically your protein intake. I target about 0.8 g of protein per pound of body weight each day when actively building. That is far more protein than most people need in their diets.
Hope this is helpful to someone.
Aloha
2006-09-11 15:48:58 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 0⤋
Start toning up now! By increasing your muscle mass, you will be increasing your metabolism. This means that you will burn more calories, even while at rest!
Besides all the other health benefits, weight training can really help you lose the weight and keep it off.
2006-09-08 22:03:02 · answer #2 · answered by Obi_San 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I wouldn't go so far to lose weight like going without food, but if you eat a lot, you could just eat slow till you get full then quit. Also, more cardio exercises could be good to lean you up. Plus lifting weights could bring the forms of your muscles out. Good luck!
2006-09-08 21:57:40 · answer #3 · answered by merlin_steele 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Tone up as you exercise. The more muscle mass you have, the better your metabloism will work, which means you lose weight faster. It will take some time to where you don't look as fat.
2006-09-08 21:58:41 · answer #4 · answered by Snowshadow 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Do a bunch of cardio exercises while working out and that'll make you lose the fat and tone up at the same time.
2006-09-08 21:57:15 · answer #5 · answered by sweetchick 1 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Doing both at the same time would be best. Balance cardio with weight traning (lifting does burn some calories and its eaiser to lose weight when you have more muscle)
2006-09-08 21:57:33 · answer #6 · answered by DonSoze 5 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Loose the weight then work on building up your muscles. You can do both at the same time if you are doing the correct exercises.
2006-09-08 21:58:35 · answer #7 · answered by deadly_rose_04 2 · 1⤊ 0⤋
if you're just weight training, you're gonna gain muscle. body fat has to do with the combination of exercise and diet. if you're still putting in more calories into your body than you're burning, then you will still have a considerable amount of fat. so do the combination of exercise, cardio, and proper diet.
2006-09-08 21:59:50 · answer #8 · answered by dr. mcdreamy 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Aerobic exercise such as walking runing and cycling.
Weight resistance training causes you to increase muscle mass.
2006-09-08 21:57:37 · answer #9 · answered by teef_au 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
yes start to lose and then start toning. read tips on weight loss and exercise programs on this site
2006-09-08 22:07:41 · answer #10 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 1⤋