Action: Invest in physical activity now! Step Four of the Body Blitz Plan will help you boost your metabolic rate through structured exercise sessions.
2. YOUR DIETING HISTORY
If you are a seasoned dieter and you religiously try every diet on the market and have experienced weight gain/weight loss again and again – long-term it will be harder to lose weight effectively. You may already have experienced this. For example, every January you may have a favourite diet that gives you great results – well, it did the first couple of times you did it and now you are experiencing frustration as the scales are not giving you the results you want. This is because as the body is continually put through phases of excess and deficit there comes a time when our metabolism may stop working effectively and instead of losing weight we can actually increase the amount of body fat we have.
Action: Stabilize your calorie and fat intake now. Step Five of the Body Blitz Plan will show you how to be consistent with your nutrient intake whilst still continuing to live life to the full.
3. YOUR EXERCISE HISTORY
To lose weight and body fat you need to exercise regularly. If you were active when you were younger you will be at an advantage as muscles have a memory – this means that even if you are not exercising now the muscles will be able to respond more effectively and quickly to exercise once you do start. But even if you were not active when you were younger, it is never too late to start. Becoming active now and staying active will help you realize your fat loss goals as well as have an immediate protective effect on your health.
Action: Start being active today. Step Four of the Body Blitz Plan will show you how to increase your accumulated physical activity levels.
4. YOUR EXISTING EATING PATTERNS
Quite simply, the more erratic our eating patterns the harder it is to lose weight, and the longer you have had erratic eating patterns the more frustration you are likely to experience trying to lose weight. The body actually balances itself out over seven to eight days; however, in those seven to eight days if you have overeaten one day and then starved yourself the next in an attempt to make up for the excesses, the body will rebel and you will not lose weight and body fat.
To lose body fat, and for us to actually see a difference in the shape of our bodies, we need to eat a healthy and balanced diet and be consistent about it.
Action: Apply the starch curfew and cut your intake of fat – and be consistent! Steps One, Three and Five will put you in control of your diet no matter what the situation.
5. YOUR EXISTING ACTIVITY PATTERNS
If you are reading this and thinking, but I already exercise and go to the gym and I am active during my day but still I’m not losing weight, you may be experiencing frustration because:
You do not have enough variety in your exercise programme and your body has become complacent at always doing the same thing.
You are not working hard enough at your daily activity so you are not putting your body under enough physiological strain to increase your fitness.
Action: Complete the activity audit in Step Four and work out your exertion rates. This will give you a better picture of how you can expend your energy effectively.
WHERE DO WE STORE OUR BODY FAT?
Have you ever wondered why some of us seem to store all our body fat on our hips and thighs and some of us tend to have long lean arms and legs but store more of our body fat around our midriffs? This distribution of fat is associated directly to two main hormones in the body. These hormones, lipoprotein lipase LPL and hormone sensitive lipase HSL, directly affect whether we store fat or encourage it to be distributed in the blood and then burnt off. LPL tends to encourage fat storage and HSL tends to encourage fat to be burnt off. The amount of LPL and HSL we have tends to vary between men and women, individuals and areas of the body.
Men tend to have more LPL in the belly and less HSL in the lower hip area. This creates the more pronounced apple shape we see in overweight men, with more body fat distributed around the belly. Women tend to have more LPL in the hips and back of the arms and less HSL in the upper body. This classically creates more of our traditional pear shape. When women lose weight we generally still have more LPL in the hips so still have a pear shape.
So the challenge for us is to try and create more HSL and one of the best ways to do this is with EXERCISE. Weight-bearing aerobic exercise such as brisk walking, jogging and aerobics is the best form of exercise to choose. Swimming, even though it is an aerobic activity, has shown to be less effective for weight loss as it is non-weight bearing so it is not so effective in burning off calories. In addition, swimming increases LPL, which has the effect of decreasing our core temperature, which in turn can stimulate us to eat more.
The Body Blitz Plan will help you reduce your weight and body fat and boost your confidence to put you in control long-term. It is important to understand however that due to your own individual makeup your body will have an optimum shape it naturally wants to be. The Body Blitz Plan does not promise you false results but it will help you shape, tone and improve the overall appearance of your body – and it will help you lose weight and body fat and keep it off for good!
WHY IS MEASURING BODY FAT IMPORTANT?
When we stand on weighing scales we are actually measuring our total body weight which is made up of muscle tissue (also known as muscle mass or fat-free mass) and fat tissue (also known as fat mass). Muscle is denser than body fat, so if you took a pound of muscle and you took a pound of fat, the pound of fat would take up a lot more space. It is the amount of fat that we have in our bodies that actually affects our body shape and health. The reading we receive from traditional bathroom scales tells us what the total amount of our body weight is – body fat and muscle (and other tissue such as bone) – but it does not tell us how much fat we actually have. It is this excess body fat that is associated with heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and certain types of cancer. By measuring our body fat not only are we monitoring how much of our weight is actually fat but it also gives us an indicator of our health status. Monitoring our percentage body fat actually allows us to impact our health by ensuring we lose body fat as opposed to muscle mass.
Studies have shown that with very low calorie diets, the body will actually lose muscle mass and keep hold of body fat. This means that with some ‘diets’ you may actually increase the amount of body fat you have!
HOW CAN I MEASURE HOW MUCH BODY FAT I HAVE?
Body fat can be measured in a number of ways. One method is with skin fold calipers. The skin folds are generally taken at four sites around the body.
Possibly the most convenient and accurate method however is with body fat monitors. Constructed as a set of bathroom weighing scales, by entering your height and sex and standing on the scales, a safe technique known as bioelectrical impedance analysis will determine your percentage body fat. Replacing bathroom scales with body fat monitors will give a true idea of what is happening inside you – this way you get to see a complete picture of your total body weight, muscle mass and fat mass. Body fat monitors are now available from a wide range of outlets.
HOW MUCH BODY FAT SHOULD WE HAVE?
We all need to have body fat. Too little and we run the risk