Namaste,
Welcome to
Body/Spirit
Fitness.
This is a site
of information
and ideas to
support your
physical
health and
inner journey.
westerville, reynoldsburg,
new albany pilates ashtanga
aerobics Columbus Gahanna
Ohio OH
diet weightloss weight loss
Patti Helsten Petrella
teaching Pilates and Yoga
URL:
http://www.yoysearch.
com/
Description: A
convenient interface
to ten types of
search.
Body/Spirit Fitness offers you ideas and
information for fitness and health for the
body, mind and spirit.
Patti Helsten Petrella
teaches Yoga and
Pilates.
This is a fitness site for
body spirit and mind.
Articles and help on
weight loss, wieght loss.
Diet tips, exercise tips,
weightloss tips, lowfat
cooking, low-fat
cooking, low fat cooking.
Vegetarian tips.  
Dealing with obesity
resistance resistence
training with weights
Weight Loss Through Resistance Training-Part II

By Patti Petrella
As we continue to investigate how resistance training affects
weight loss, let's look at what makes us fat. Eating too much
and exercising too little are the major culprits.  Add that, to
the fact that our metabolism slows down over time, and you
have the formula for most of our weight gains.

How do you combat this?  You could diet, but let's see what
happens when we lose weight by dieting alone. Dieting
causes you to lose fat, muscle and water. The loss of muscle
causes our metabolism to slow down.  

When we feel deprived enough on the diet, and we are no
longer losing weight, we eat more and gain all the weight back
that we lost, and usually even more.  The weight that we put
back on is all fat and thus we are faced with even a slower
metabolism, and a tendency to gain even more weight on
less food.

Decades of research have shown us that diets alone, just do
not work. Only about 5% of people who go on diets are even
mildly successful.

The reason is simple. Your body thinks that it is in a
state of starvation when you diet. It slows down your
metabolism, to keep your stores of fat efficiently stored for
even more starvation. It also releases comparable amounts
of fat and muscle.

All of this causes the yo yo syndrome of losing fat and muscle
and gaining back just the fat until your metabolism slows
downto a very inefficient system of burning calories and fat.

Now lets see what happens if you add resistance training to a
healthy diet, that is not calorie restrictive. By this I mean that
you are not putting your body into the starvation mode.

First you want to burn up more calories than you take in, by
exercise. This can be done by merely cutting calorie intake by
250-350 calories and increasing your exercise by 250-350
calories per day.

This will result in a loss of 1-11/2 lbs a week.  
You should not try to lose more than that.  This will increase
your metabolism and prevent muscle loss.

Second by adding resistance training as part of your exercise
plan, you will be actually adding muscle to your body, which in
turn increases your metabolism.  This is the opposite of the
yoyo effect.

Studies have shown that individuals on a weight resistance
programs lost on an average 4.5 times as much fat as those
on aerobics alone, with both groups eating the same diet.

A remaining word of advice, is not to rely on the scale, alone,
when charting your progress.  Muscle is denser that fat.  A
pound of muscle takes up less room that a pound of fat.  

Gaining muscle and losing fat may keep the scales from
budging during some weeks, but you will still notice looser
clothes and a physical improvement.  If you need to see the
progress, use body fat calipers rather than the scale.

A professional personal trainer can set you up on an effective
program designed to suit your needs.  If you need a personal
trainer referral, contact us at fitness@bodyspiritfitness.com.
Body/Spirit Fitness also now has circuit training aerobics to
Help you sculpt the body you want.

To sum it up, by training with weights, you are improving your
body composition, increasing your metabolism, burning fat, as
well as not depriving yourself of foods, unnaturally. This is the
type of healthier lifestyle that we can live with, and gives us
the emotional and physical control that diets, alone, take
away from us.
The Wellness
Community of
Greater Columbus

FREE CANCER SUPPORT

The Wellness Community
of greater Columbus
exists because no one
should face cancer alone.
We support those
affected by cancer
through a variety of
programs and services.
Our goal is to assist our
participants in developing
a sense of control and
empowerment, deter
feelings of isolation and
aloneness, and to instill
hope. Our focus is not the
disease itself, but how to
live as purposely and fully
as possible.