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  • Tip of the Week

    --A word on Calorie Deficit--


    Instead of a standard tip, i would like to discuss calorie deficit, muscle maintenance, and the psychology of programming the body via diet.


    Your body requires a certain amount of food just to maintain it's composition while it tries to stay alive and be kept breathing, commonly known as Metabolic Rate/Resting Metabolism/Basal Metabolic Rate/ ETc; I will call these maintenance calories for short.

    When you are consuming less than maintenance calories, your body looks for other resources to fulfill it's needs... and for lack of time i will state, their are many things that it can do! This is really individual-sensitive too, but there are common grounds we can discuss.

    The body knows that excessive muscle is not required to continue living, so it prioritizes efficiency and often will go after mscuel tissue if needs aren't being met in some circumstances. To illustrate, it would be a person saying to themselves "hey, i'm living in excess and i cannot pay my bills.... Maybe i could sell one of the 3 Maserati's that i own? " Bills being the required maintenance money to live and the Maserati's being the excessive muscle that you can certainly live without, in a time of need. Muscle is basically what increases the baseline requirements of caloric needs. The body will go for efficiency and balance, so lowering the amount of muscle you have would reduce calories needed, and make the body's job easier because it understands it's being malnourished!

    So, The first take home here is that you do not want to under-eat because you risk the chance of losing muscle and leaving only body fat to show for! More commonly, i know that women have trouble with this, as I've heard on numerous occasions of severely malnourished women complaining about how they cannot lose weight/fat... or they gain it instead! This is while working out in the gym multiple times a week. To be clear, their are men who also under-eat!

    Unfortunately, for PEGGY SHMEATS (our hypothetical subject) 5 foot 2, 160 pounds who worksout 3 -4 times a week, has a desk job, a BMR of 1800 calories, and consistently eats 800 calories a day...... you are telling your body STORE, STORE, STORE FAT!! Chronic under-eating has told the body to hold onto fat (store) to use later because it is not getting what it needs as frequently as it needs it in order to survive. You body's outlook is now "Store fat to survive! and Burn muscle because it lowers BMR" and operates on these principles! ... not to mention the long-term destruction this has on your metabolism in the process!

    Now this is another thing to consider: Given the above analysis, take Mrs PEGGY SHMEATS, 5'2, 160 Lbs, working very hard to lose that FUPA.... ....... she is working out too! ---> It's very good that the individual is driven/determined enough to work hard to make the necessary changes and get rid of the fat. In actuality though, she is costing the body another 5-600 calories by training... So what this means is, you would add that to her expenditure(BMR) which we could say is now 2400 on her workout day. To summarize, that's 2400 maintenance calories required throughout the day to perform these actions, and the individual has eaten only 800. See a problem??


    This is pretty exaggerated to get the point across, but at the same time, people are really doing this... 800 calories taken in, while 2,000+ burned - This causes all kind of problems in the body too, as far as overall health and wellness.


    In the end, a good starting point for those struggling to lose body fat and improve composition would be to make sure they are eating enough. Through diet, you can reassure the body it doesn't have to worry and it won't have to STORE as often because it's getting what it needs! Use the scale as a tool..... determine how much your weight fluctuates and how frequently. If weight is going up and down more than 2-3 pounds everyday, then you should be working on eating and drinking water on a more consistent basis. The more you keep your diet consistent, the less apt you will see sporadic changes and can diagnose other variables such as exercise. Once again, this is just a place to start if you are struggling to maintain a healthy figure! More to come!



    -Quick Note on BMR-

    It's good to have a rough ballpark of your BMR to start. Many different ways to acquire, like being dunked in a tank... or you doctor can suggest something official too, but many will probably just choose to use a BMR calculator to give hem a ballpark... which is fine really. I personally like to take body weight and multiply it by 10 and then add 300 for average joes... this also depends on the job and level of difficulty/activity. Of course this will vary greatly, especially if you are engaged in manual labor. For the average 200 pound person, that's about 2300 calories, to give you an idea.


    **Also remember, I do not know your medical history so if you are type 1 diabetic, have thyroid issues, and other things of this nature you should always consult your healthcare professional about being in a state of severe caloric deficit**




    Till next time!
    Rick

    Also on Facebook - [url]www.facebook.com/richard.liberto[/url]
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