To achieve an enviable toned body, with the help of some basic nutritional knowledge, you could achieve your goals faster than you thought. Getting the right balance of food, exercise and dedication may seem a hard task but putting your mind to it is the first hurdle.
The Truth About Calories. What is a calorie? A calorie is considered in scientific terms one unit of energy. This energy is used to walk, talk, breath, sleep, stretch or run. All activities burn calories. The human body exerts its energy by using calories it receives from food. Thus when we speak of calories we associate the term with dieting and weight loss.
If the right type of fuel is not added to your car at the right times, you are going to have either poor performance, or none at all. Carbohydrates form the fuel source for your body. Being a short-term fuel source, you can easily run out of it if not taken at the right times, and in the right amounts.
To start with, there are a few vital principles that must be understood.
1. If you take in less calories than you use, you will lose weight. This weight loss can be 1. from fat or muscle. Naturally, if you take in more calories than you use, you will gain 1. weight. 2. Your energy needs differ every day and are made up of three factors – around 70% is 2. your Basal Metabolic Rate, or BMR (the energy you use whilst resting, dependent on 2. your lean mass/muscle, changes very little each day without extreme changes in 2. environment); around 10% is from Thermogenesis (heat production, changes a lot 2. each day depending on what foods you eat, how cold you are etc); and around 20% is 2. from Specific Dynamic Activity (movement, changes a lot each day depending on what 2. foods you eat). 3. Your body is either in a build up (anabolic) mode, or a breakdown (catabolic) mode. 3. There is no ‘middle’ zone and you will be switching between anabolism and catabolism 3 3. at various different points during the day. 4. Your body still operates as it did in caveman times. It will defend its fat stores to 4. improve survival chances in times of starvation and, upon sensing a deficiency of food, 4. will adjust metabolism to match food intake.
The secret to packing on pounds of solid muscle mass is simple: For the most part, the types of foods you eat on a muscle-gaining program are the same ones you should eat all the time, whether you want to lose, gain or maintain - you just need to eat more of them. "Just eat more" is easier said than done, however. It seems like you're constantly shopping, cooking and eating. Sometimes preparing food and eating it can seem like a full time job! One way to make gaining weight and forcing down all that food less of a chore is to choose foods (or supplements) with a HIGHER CALORIE DENSITY. By doing so, you can get more calories in the same amount of food.
The glycemic index is a scale that measures how quickly carbohydrates are broken down into glucose. The original purpose of the glycemic index was to help diabetics keep their blood glucose under control. The glycemic index has recently attracted a lot of attention in the bodybuilding, fitness and weight loss world and is all the rage these days. Nary an issue of a fitness or bodybuilding mag is published without some reference to the glycemic index and diet books such as "The Zone," and "Sugarbusters" worship the index like some kind of idol. According to advocates of the glycemic index system, foods that are high on the scale such as rice cakes, carrots, potatoes, or grape juice are "unfavorable" and should be avoided because they are absorbed so rapidly and are therefore more likely to convert to fat. Instead, we are urged to consume carbohydrates that are low on the glycemic index such as black eye peas, oatmeal, peanuts, apples and beans.
Too many endurance athletes think they can function optimally by only supplementing with carbohydrates, forgetting the fact that most of the processes in the human body relies completely on the availability of proteins to work. And that does not even take into account that protein from muscle cells gets damaged through strenuous training, and thus needs replacing. If you drained all the water out of a lean athletic body, more than 50% of what is left will be protein. Even the hemoglobin that carries oxygen in your blood is protein. The structure of your genes and your brain cells are totally protein. All bodily functions, from the twitch of your toe to the creation of new muscle, are in total controlled by enzymes, and all enzymes are protein.
Protein is formed from amino acids. Many of the 21 amino acids can be made by the body, but the nine essential amino acids must be provided by the diet. These are: isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, tryptophan, valine, and histidine. Arginine is also essential for children for healthy growth. Fact is that when any of the above is in short supply, it forms a weak link in the chain and hampers the function of the others. Both whey protein concentrate and egg albumin, provide almost 100% of the necessary amino acid mix, followed by fish and meats at about 80%, and casein and soy at roughly 75%. Many other plant foods provide less than 50% of the amino acid spectrum.
Diet books outsell almost every other subject area both on the internet and in the book stores. Our life styles in the twenty first century don't allow us to consume the calories that our bodies tell us we need and many of us therefore are permanently on diets and find our weight yo-yoing backwards and forwards.
