Fat Loss for Dummies, Part 2: The Lost Art of Intensity
By
Matt Pack
I’ve been saying for years that fat people finish marathons all the time. What
people need to realize is that it isn’t about the distance covered—it’s about
how quickly or intensely the distance was covered. I wish people
would get this through their heads when January comes and they embark on the
magic “run for weight loss” kick. They see the Kenyan crossing the Boston
Marathon finish line and actually believe that running made him skinny. The fact
of the matter is that the Kenyan’s body type had more to do with the selection
of that runner’s mother and father than running 26.2 miles ever did.
Some people are “built” for running long distances and some aren’t. On
average, most people aren’t. “Why?” you may ask. The large majority of our
population is just too structurally unsound to run over long distances.
Imbalances at the ankle and hip can reap havoc on the knees and low back. Just
ask any local physical therapist who his number one patient is. More often than
not, he will say the long-distance runner. Professional long-distance runners
are plagued with overuse injuries such as plantar fasciitis, shin splints,
anterior knee pain, IT band/lateral knee pain, and hip and low back
dysfunctions. I won't even get into the free radical damage and the actual
“oxidizing” that occurs in the body from not only pollutants in the atmosphere
but just from running for prolonged periods of time. The free radical damage
mentioned has been shown to increase the likelihood of many types of cancers,
especially brain cancer.
Excessive running/aerobic activity also increases a stress hormone called
cortisol. Cortisol is a necessity for fight or flight situations like running
from a tiger or getting out of a tight jam. However, elevated cortisol levels
for long periods of time can have negative effects on your health as well as on
your fat loss program.
Elevated cortisol levels are no stranger to the average person. A typical
stressful day usually starts with a “healthy” bowl of cereal with low fat milk
and orange juice. This type of breakfast is notorious for stimulating or spiking
insulin levels. Over a long period of time, the elevated insulin levels become a
stressor to the body, which increases cortisol levels. We’re just getting
started. After breakfast, you head off to work and into rush hour traffic. Now,
you’re late for work! More stress equals more cortisol. You finally reach work
and find out that you’ve missed your scheduled Monday morning meeting. More
stress and more cortisol. After a long day of work (stress), you feel the only
thing that will relieve your stressful day is that 8:00 pm spinning class. More
stress, more cortisol! Is it surprising that more heart attacks take place on
Mondays than any other day of the week?
With a day such as this, the last thing your body needs is a spinning class
or any long duration aerobics at all for that matter. A better choice is some
sort of stress management such as a massage or getting to bed earlier. Your body
doesn’t know the difference between insulin stress, work stress, or spinning
stress. It only senses a fight or flight situation, and when your body thinks
it’s in danger, the last thing on earth it’s concerned with is getting beach
ready.
Wait! There’s more! Another problem with low intensity/long-duration running is
that it just doesn’t work for fat loss. Yeah, I said it. It stinks. Is it good
for weight loss? Sure, but what good is the lost weight on the scale if you’re
destined to gain it back plus ten extra pounds? Forget the fact that it’s time
consuming, places undue amounts of stress on your muscular skeletal system, and
causes overuse injuries. It just isn’t an efficient strategy for long-term
fat loss. The key word here is “long term.”
You see, it isn’t just running that’s the problem. It’s spinning classes,
aerobics classes, cardio kickboxing classes, Zumba classes, body bar classes,
and every other class that they offer at your local, big box gym. They all seem
to work but then something interesting happens. Your results start to slow down
or they magically come to a screeching halt. This usually happens around the
beginning or middle of February—the same time you stop your New Years resolution
every year. Is this some sort of a coincidence? I think not.
These classes are fun, and boy do they make you sweat! Unfortunately, you can
dance in the mirror and laugh and sweat all over that pretty little abdominal
mat, but until you realize that fun and sweat don’t always equal fat loss,
you'll continue to spin your wheels (pardon the pun). I know, I know—spinning is
hard! But is it really? How hard can something be if you’re able to make it
through one of those famous two-hour Thanksgiving Day rides? We keep getting
caught up in this “more is better” scenario. Let me explain why these
timed-based, distance training sessions fail to live up to their promises.’
Survival comes first!
Let’s assume you’re eating enough calories to support those two hours of
spinning, which you probably aren’t. More often than not, you’re using your
hard-earned muscle for energy. The last thing your body wants to do is use body
fat for energy, especially when it thinks you’re starving. I know your doctor
informed you that you should eat less and move more, but I respectively
disagree. When your calories are too low and you engage in any type of physical
activity, your body has to get energy from somewhere. That energy is coming
primarily from muscle, the most metabolically active tissue your body possesses
and that same tissue you worked so hard for in your “body pump” class.
This is really quite simple. Muscle burns calories at rest, but the crazy
thing is that muscle also needs calories to maintain itself. So if you aren’t
eating enough calories, muscle becomes a threat to your existence and long-term
survival. If you’re running for your life on very little food (calories), your
body’s best bet is to dump muscle because it’s literally burning calories that
you don't have. Now comes the fun part! Because your body thinks you’re in a
survival situation, when you do decide to eat that Jenny Craig or Lean Cuisine
dinner, your body conveniently converts the food to fat and stores it on your
inner thigh or mid-section. This becomes a downward spiral because the running
was working. Frustrated, you increase the amount of time spent running, riding
the bike, or dancing in front of the mirror. Or you just lower your calories
even more (this never works) and you end up in an even worse situation than
before.
This scenario plays out every year in every gym in America! It has
successfully made billions of dollars from abdominal gadgets, diet pills,
doctors, gym memberships, and fad diets across the board. It sounds good. “All
you have to do is move more and eat less!” If this concept worked, Americans
wouldn't be the fattest and unhealthiest people on the planet.
Are we really smarter than a caveman?
In all honesty, human beings just weren’t built to run slowly in a straight line
for prolonged periods of time. On the contrary, we’re best suited for using our
energy for short bursts and then recovering such as in throwing a spear at an
elk or deer, chasing it down, and dragging it home to feast. Our body’s number
one goal is survival. From a caveman’s prospective, running for long stretches
wouldn't have been very smart. Think about it—would you want to fatigue yourself
by running a 5K or 10K and then get chased by a potential predator? Could you
actually manage to flee from danger with runner's knee or a case of shin
splints? How much sense would it make to go on a hunting marathon, slowly
running after your dinner, making all types of commotion, and scaring off
potential food while simultaneously making you more vulnerable to being eaten?
The only way to catch food was if you could actually sneak up on it. You know,
actually hunt for it.
Don't forget! Animals, yeah, they kind of sense things like danger. Oh, and
they hear pretty well, too. In order for you to catch dinner for your family,
you would have to be very, very quiet like Elmer Fudd looking for that widdle
wabbit. You would have to be cunning and keen, patiently (what do Americans know
about patience?) waiting for the right time to pounce. Then at the right moment,
you would have to throw a rock or a sharpened stick, sprint, and try to catch
the prey before it darted off into the deep forest or open plain.
I'm going to tell you a little secret. Would you like to know why there are so
many fat and unhealthy individuals in our country? Aside from the fact that
people live off of box foods, skip breakfast, work too much, don't sleep enough,
and obviously just don't move enough, they want results and don't want to work
for them. It just doesn't work that way! So what's the secret? The secret
is intensity. We have to work harder, not longer. If longer worked, you
wouldn't see fat marathon runners. But you do. If easy worked, riding on that
bike while talking to your girlfriend would work, but it doesn't. Cosgrove said
it best—“Simple and easy isn’t the same. Easy implies no effort. Simple means
not complicated.” Achieving total health and lower body fat levels is simple,
but it’s far from easy.
Stay tuned for part three! I’ll show you what the best trainers in the world are
using to attain extreme fat loss, and it can be done in less than 20 minutes!
Matt Pack, NASM-CPT, nutrition lifestyle coach level two, owns and operates
Impack Total Fitness from his warehouse located in Miami, Florida. He draws from
ten years of “in the trenches” experience, focusing his efforts primarily on fat
loss clients and mixed martial arts athletes. You can read more about his newly
released DVD, Fat Loss Secrets Revealed, at www.extremefatlosstraining.com or
contact him through his website at
www.impackfitness.com.
Elite Fitness Systems strives to be a recognized leader in the strength
training industry by providing the highest quality strength training products
and services while providing the highest level of customer service in the
industry. For the best training equipment, information, and accessories, visit
us at www.EliteFTS.com.
