Fatso to Muscles

First and foremost- Happy Memorial Day!

Most people want to change how they look and feel so they can look better and feel better. But most people that start an exercise program or enroll at their local gym, usually quit within a few weeks. Those people quit because they find it harder than what they anticipated it to be; the exercises, the diets, and the dedication that they have to put forth and giving it their all is too much for most that can handle.

Some people that I’ve worked with want to change their physical appearance, but they don’t want it to be difficult or even a little hard. And I’ve worked with many people within the few years I’ve been working at the local gym.

It bugs the heck out of me when they enroll at our facility, thinking that all they need to do is exercise with little to no intensity and have their physical appearance change dramatically.

I hear this quite often, “The weights are too heavy.” or, “It’s too hard.” I would then try to explain to them that if they wanted to physically alter their bodies to look close to those models they see on magazine, billboards, and television, they would have to push themselves to the brink so that their bodies will have to change.

Since I’ve been working at the gym for a few years now, I do see people that do physically change. Day in and day out, I see those people, the very few, that come and are serious about changing their looks and overall, changing how they feel, inside and out.

The ones that can bear the insignificant pain that comes with exercise and sacrifice, understands the glory of what their accomplishment could bring to them. To those people, I applaud them for their will to achieve more.

They have met three things that got to where they are today, and those things that were met, everyone could also meet: exercise, diet, and dedication.

Exercise is difficult; our bodies take a lot of pounding and a lot of stress so that our bodies can change physically, if that is our objective, so just think and imagine: a few months of agony and sacrificed beats a life time of defeat and suffering. The agony of running and lifting weights, and the sacrifice of things you have to give up for a few months are better than the feeling of defeat and suffering.

Today, I had just got done with HIIT about an hour ago, and I felt like I wanted quit after the the second session. The intensity of my training got me to the point where I wanted to collapse on the floor, but I knew in my mind that if I give in now, I would never accomplish my goal. And not only did I have to exercise, but I had to eat right.

Giving up foods that we all love to eat everyday like: burgers, pizza, fried chicken, and for me, pho, are some of the food we have to sacrifice in-order for us to have a faster transformation. Sure, we can eat foods like that, but if we don’t work out like Michael Phelps, then eating all that food, or calories, will be turned into stored energy, which everyone knows as fat. So we have to give up those kinds of foods, or basically, watch how many calories we take in.

I eat a good and balance meal everyday for 6 days a week, and I feel great both physically and mentally; I get a lot of vegetables and fruits in my diet, and I get a good amount of protein in my diet. Do I still eat whatever I want? Sure! I eat what ever I want only once a week, and for me, that’s on Sundays. I don’t deprive myself of foods I love because the mistake that I’ve made in the past was, not giving myself of foods I want. And until I’ve reached my goal, I could only have a reward day, as I call it, only once a week.

Exercising and eating right is only 2 out of 3 things we have to do, but there is still another, and the other is…dedication. A lot of definitions can be said about this way of thinking or this way of feeling or both: willpower, attitude, determination, discipline,  or passion. What ever the case maybe for you, if you have this, then you have already accomplished it.

To me, there is only one life, and we should do everything that is possible, but not illegal or dangerous, to get to where most of us dream of. The first thing anyone has to do to change themselves physically is exercise; exercise promotes health benefits like prolonged health. The second thing is diet; exercising but without having the right diet is disastrous to your goal. And the last thing is: dedication. This is the most important one because it doesn’t matter if you exercise and diet right, if you lose the will power to continue on, then you never began in the first place, in my view. Now quit complaining about little things that are so insignificant and start to think and imagine where you would be physically and mentally a few months from now. Let’s get this!

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Having been working at a gym for a few years now, there are things I see and notice; I see how members work out; I see what type of work out they do; I see what they do to prepare themselves for their work out. But one thing is for sure, I notice all the time, that most of the members, always weigh themselves before and after their exercise. I know this because the scale is next to my desk; it is the only one in the facility. And I have to say, that weighing ourselves every hour by the hour will do nothing but discourage you in your path to weight loss.

I work on the weekends at a local gym nearby my house. I have been working there for 3 years now, and I always see people weigh themselves before and after. Sometimes, they weight themselves 4 or 5 times within one visit!

They come in, weight themselves, go stretch, come back and weight themselves again, then work on the elliptical for 30 minutes, come and weigh themselves, go to the restroom, come back to the scale, use no more than 3 strength machines, come back to weigh themselves, go to the locker room and get ready to leave, right before they leave, they come back and weight themselves yet again.

That may be an extreme example but there have been people I have witnessed that weight themselves periodically within their hour visit at the facility, as if it was a ritual for them. A routine or habit, a bad one if I may say.

Weighing ourselves so many times does not somehow change our weight within a few minutes. Sure, our body weight fluctuates because we consume liquid and we expel liquids, but common now, weighing ourselves frequently may also discourage us.

I for one have done what most people do, and that is weighing myself periodically within one visit to the gym. I had been discouraged many times by doing this. I know by exercising frequently it is beneficial but weighing myself frequently, it impacts my sub-conscience mind to think I have failed, thus I would not proceed or try any hard because the exercise and diet I have been doing has failed.

I know it is just water weight; we consume liquids and we expel them, but it will have an impact on your sub-conscience even when you know it it’s only water weight that you’ve gained and not fat.

Instead of weighing yourself so frequently, you can weigh yourself once a week or once every two weeks. This will let you know more accurately if you are really losing weight or gaining weight so you can have an idea of where you’re weight is really at, and what you need to change in terms of exercise and diet.

As for me, I weigh myself every week on Sunday morning. I have lost about an average of 1.5 lbs a week, which is a good rate to lose, and a good rate for me. And no more weighing myself 5 times a day because that can only be counter-productive.

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It’s May already! Did anyone think how fast it has gone since the beginning of this year!? I sure didn’t. With a blink of an eye, Spring is here! I was away and haven’t been writing much during April because I had put my time and energy towards a project I had to complete by the end of April. And I successfully completed it, but with the effort in working on that project, I had put-off on my blog. The time and energy I had put into that project, I had disregarded my blog and my exercise.

For the ones that don’t know yet, I was working on a house project for my uncle during most of April, and had really no time and energy to update my blog. Sure, I could have spend a few minutes writing something, but I didn’t feel that a few minutes of writing would produce a great post.

The time I was spending on the project, I had no time or energy to put forth into my blog. I literally worked more than 12 hours a day and 7 days a week for 4 weeks. During the schedule I had, after work I was dead tired, so after, I would just take a shower and eat dinner then I just go to sleep.

I can understand how most people have a hard time getting their exercise in for the week. I had little to no time for my exercises and even if I did had some time, I was too tired to start. And plus, the kind of exercise I was doing before this project, I put close to 100% of my effort in. I was doing high intensity interval training.

So after working on the project, I choose not to exercise too hard, and thus, my exercises slowly dwindled from 5 thru 6 days a week to 1 day a week. Also during this time, I didn’t want to hurt myself so my exercises slowly decreased in the number of days I do work out.

And also during this time, I had put off on my blog slowly until I had not written any thing for a few weeks. As I mentioned before, I was just too tired and had little to no time. And the little time that I had, I didn’t feel like writing because I wouldn’t have written a great post.

So all in all, I am now officially finished with the project and now fully committed with writing again. I do apologize for not writing as frequent as I should. I have learned that balance is important in your daily life. As I’ve found out, I didn’t have that balance. I was totally committed to one thing and slowly let go of my main focus. I am sure quite a few of you out there have experienced this before. I now have a better understanding that balance is an important factor in maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

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To let you guy know what I have been doing for the last week or so. I have been helping my uncle with a house project. He asked me to help him spray out his house, interior and exterior. Guess what!? I finally finished! Well, not completely, but most of it, like 90 percent of it. One thing that I got from this project was that I could understand how most people have no time and energy after work. I for one, had no very little time and hardly no energy after work during this project.

At first, I thought he meant help him paint a room or some minor paint job. I had no idea how much he wanted me to do, and how big this project was going to be.

It was supposed to be some of my cousins, my uncle and me to do the job, but one by one, they all just left me hanging! I can’t blame them though because they live, at least, 30 or more minutes away, and I live only less than a mile away from my uncle’s place.

And all of them have other things to do than to spend their days at some old house scraping old paint and taping door knobs and light fixture that need not be sprayed.

I guess I was the only person that had nothing better to do during Spring break than to help out his uncle spray out some old house. It kept me busy and I made some money from it.

So I was put in charge of the housing project that my uncle gave me. He promised a hundred dollars a day, and so far, it’s been eight days I’d been working at his place, so I should get at least a grand because counting the many trips to Home Depot, he should throw in an extra two hundred for gas.

I’ll tell you what though, it is a lot of work. I usually spend a minimum of eight hours a day working on the house and getting it ready for spraying.

I can understand how many people struggle to lose weight or even get in shape for that matter. During this project after work, I am so tired; I usually eat something, take a shower, and then hit the sack because usually after I finished, it is already late.

So I can relate in some ways how many people say they are busy throughout the day and after wards they are tired and are not willing to put the energy to exercise, because there is practically no energy left.

The time that I’m writing this is about 30 ’till 11 P.M. I got done two hours ago from this time, and I’ve been up since 9 A.M today. Now I have a better understanding of how and why people cannot exercise when they are done with their work, particularly blue collar workers.

During the project, after work it would be late and I barley had enough energy to focus on writing and updating my blog. At first, I thought I could handle it. I thought after work I could write a post or two, but had no idea how draining it could. That was why I haven’t updated my blog since the beginning of April.

That would be that last of that! I will have to dedicate my time and energy on my blog first and focus on others second. I usually write most of my post during the evenings. I would have to change that to mornings now.

So all in all, I’ve learned that it is balance; however, it is really hard it terms of energy. We only have so much energy in a day and once we’ve used it up, we need to replenish it by eating and sleeping. So next time, if there is a project like that again, I would definitely rearrange my objectives/tasks for the day and see how it will go from there.

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It seem like body fat is unnessecarily in modern times. It’s not like we hunt for food weeks at a time and need body fat as stored energy. There are supermarkets, restaurant, and even 24 hour convenient stores around where we live. However, with all the convenience of food being around, we tend to eat more and more and not get enough exercise, in other words, we consume more calories than we use, therefore, we get fat over time. Some people tend to carry fat in certain areas than others, but we generally carry fat in the midsection, thighs, arms, and neck. Not a great place for fat to be because it doesn’t look appealing. Most people have the misconception of working a certain area and it will go away. Well, you are wrong my friend! I hate to break it to you but there is no such thing as spot reduction in exercise.

We’ve stopped hunting and gathering for food since the last 200 years or so (this is only speaking for modernized cultures). Our modern day society has advanced so rapidly that our bodies can’t keep up.

We have supermarkets that keep our meats, produce, and grains for us for a long period of time so we don’t have to worry about bad or spoiled food. We have refrigerators at home to keep food longer in storage. We have chemicals in most of our foods to keep it preserved from bacteria and the environment.

We have an abundant amount of food. So living in modern society with plentiful food is easy to come by, but our bodies has not advanced as fast as our minds. We had and have great minds to overcome disease, famine, and drought, but yet our bodies has not developed an absence for body fat. I understand that we do need body fat to survive, however, I think some of us have too much of it, and in certain areas that is unwanted.

I’ve been working as a fitness trainer at a local gym for the past two years or so, and have been asked so many questions about spot reduction.

The question is generally like this, “I want to lose some fat in this area, what do I have to do in order for me to lose fat in this area?” and my response is, “Sir or Ma’am, There is no such thing as spot reduction in exercise.” “You can do 500 sit ups a day for 5 days a week for the next 2 years, and you’ll never see a six pack if you have a certain amount of body fat.” “People tend to gain weight evenly, and thus, people tend to lose weight evenly as well, but some areas take longer than other parts, particularly the abdominal area for men and the hips and thighs for women.”

Doing all those sit up would get you some rock hard abdominal muscles for sure, but too bad you can’t see them with a layer of fat between the skin and the muscles.

Now don’t get it wrong though, you want to still work on the abdominal muscles a few times a week, but don’t think it will burn the fat in that area, because again, there is no such thing as spot reduction in exercise. You want to continue your core training because those are the only muscles that are holding your upper body up.

Here are some links to other site that will go into detail about “The myth of spot reduction.”

• www.diet-blog.com
• www.acefitness.org
• www.montleyhealth.com
• www.intense-workout.com
• www.bodybuildingweb.com
• www.ab-core-and-stomach-exercises.com

Those are a few reputable organization and companies that will give you a more in-depth detailed description about why there is no such thing as spot reduction in exercise is.

If you still don’t understand, then you need to read on. If you want to get rid of that extra tire around your waist or just lose some weight, you need to burn more calories than you consume, eating more frequently but have smaller portions, I’ve found that by eating more frequently with small portioned meal, I don’t get hungry as often throughout the day, and with that, I don’t binge. And you need to exercise, with a combination of strength training and cardiovascular exercise everyday through out the week.

Gradually, you’ll start to lose weight, but don’t expect to lose fat in the area you want to lose so badly. It will be gone if you stick to your plan and have some perseverance.

So now, you have a better understanding of what you need to do in-order for you to achieve your goal. It takes time and work, but above everything you need to have perseverance in-order for you to complete your objective. No more waiting…the time is now. Let’s do this!

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