I know you want long lasting fitness and fat loss results. There is too much misinformation out there and I’m here to break down some of it for you. What are the top metabolism mistakes that most people make? What effect do these mistakes have on your progress?
Take a look:
# 4: Diet Pills
If there was actually any form of pill or magic bullet, do you not think that we’d all be looking our better? Diet pills and aids is a multi-billion dollar business. Marketing experts find all your hot buttons and they push them repeatedly to try to convince you to empty your wallet. There is really no long term solution that can be found in a supplement. The only thing that will lighten up is your wallet. Save your money on this snake oil and invest your money in whole and organic (as much as possible) foods.
#3: Long Slow Cardio
I cannot stress it enough that long slow cardio will not give you the body you desire. Many fall prey to the slow plod on the treadmill or around the block because it’s easy to face every day, especially when your energy is low. You may want to just hop on the treadmill, barely break a sweat and call it a day. Heck, I know many that this is your every day workout and you wonder why you don’t lose your muffin top. You need to do high intensity interval training. You need to train intensely, do things you’ve never done to achieve results you’ve never had. You need to break a sweat and go till you want to drop. The good news is that your workouts are short and you can add a ton of variety to these sorts of workouts so you never get bored.
#2 My Workout is Enough
Exercise, the right kind at the right time will help your quest for a better body, but it’s just the start. Metabolism includes many different variables: sleep, nutrition, fitness, stress management, etc., all of which work together to help your body function at a higher level. Don’t think that you can add 3 hours of exercise a week while maintaining a poor diet and sleep schedule with crazy levels of stress and make great progress. All things work synergistically to either speed up your progress or stop it in it’s tracks. Sadly, many try exercise without looking at any other lifestyle variables and when they don’t get immediate results they throw in the towel thinking that exercise isn’t effective.
An interesting fact is that lack of sleep, or even mild sleep deprivation can adversely affect the metabolism. Sleep deprivation puts the body into a similar biological state as sustained calorie deprivation. Cortisol levels are increased which in turn causes an increase in insulin resistance which means that foods are more easily turned into stored fat as opposed to being used for energy. As well, leptin levels are decreased. Leptin is an appetite suppressing hormone. In essence, your body thinks it’s in survival mode: your appetite is increased and food is stored more readily.
#1 Restricting your Calories too Much
In an effort to lose fat, many well meaning people will try a diet that severely restricts calories. This is wrong for so many reasons. First of all, with a severe calorie deficit the body goes into survival mode and tends to shut down the metabolism. Then, when the diet is ‘over’ so to speak, you will tend to gain more weight while eating less calories. Muscle is often sacrificed and used for energy and so lean muscle mass decreases with dieting. Again, this tanks the metabolism because muscle is metabolically active tissue and you want as much of it as possible to keep that metabolism working.
Fueling the body is not like balancing a cheque book: calories in, calories burned and weight lost or gained. There are a number of other factors that play into this picture and this equation is too simple and inaccurate.
Stay tuned as I’m going to give you some ideas on how to speed up your metabolism in the upcoming posts.
Any thoughts?