Will Excessive Exercise Prevent Weight Loss?
Ever wonder if too much exercise can prevent weight loss in an individual who’s trying to shed pounds?
First of all, just what is “too much”? This is subjective. Is it merely the time spent doing exercise?
Or should we define “too much exercise” as overtraining, which can cause physical symptoms such as an elevated resting pulse, mood disturbances, insomnia and persistently sore muscles?
The answer to “Can too much exercise stall or prevent weight loss” is NO, NO and NO.
I’ve preached that certain kinds of physical activity are better for fat loss than others.
For example, want to get rid of the fat in your stomach? Do squats and deadlifts, not endless walking on a treadmill and thousands of crunches.
Want to strip the fat off your legs? Do high intensity interval training and plyometrics, rather than steady state, lengthy sessions of aerobics.
Few people exercise literally all the time. They have to work, raise their kids, tend to their spouses, etc.
However, there are people whose jobs involve a lot of physical activity.
When’s the last time you saw a fat landscaper or arborist? When’s the last time you saw a fat roofer or fisherman?
Though overweight people aren’t drawn to jobs involving a lot of physical labor, you have to ask yourself why all of that physical labor—in the people who get these jobs—doesn’t eventually cause them to GAIN body fat.
It’s no coincidence that farmers, construction workers and military personnel are rarely obese. You won’t find a professional basketball or soccer player who’s chubby.
Why would burning a lot of calories prevent weight loss?
What prevents or stalls the losing of body fat is a storage of calories, not an expenditure.
How do we store calories? By being sedentary or by eating more food than our body needs. Unused calories will be stored in the form of fat.
Our ancient ancestors were near-constantly moving.
They walked everywhere, on rough terrain, on hills, across rivers. They paddled canoes, speared at fish, chased after other prey, climbed trees and built huts with their bare hands.
Picture primitive peoples carrying buckets of water, pushing wheelbarrows, surviving without motors, engines and electricity. They didn’t lounge around watching TV or have computers.
There are modern-day peoples who live just like this. They are called modern hunter-gatherers.
It’s unheard of to be a fat or even overweight hunter-gatherer. In any hunter-gatherer society, you’ll likely never find an overweight individual.
Their very physically active lifestyle keeps them from gaining excess body fat.
So to believe that “too much” exercise could hinder weight loss is a very erroneous way of thinking.
Lorra Garrick has been covering medical, fitness and cybersecurity topics for many years, having written thousands of articles for print magazines and websites, including as a ghostwriter. She’s also a former ACE-certified personal trainer.
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Top image: Freepik.com
How Do I Raise My Daughter Not to Date an Abusive Man?
There are ways to raise your daughter so that she never gets involved with an abusive man.
The environment little girls grow up in is crucial for instilling the inner strength to avoid toxic men.
It’s been said that we are a product of our childhood environment, so certainly, there must be a way to “abuse-proof” your daughter against involvement with violent men — which includes avoiding being drawn to them in the first place.
Steps Parents Can Take to Abuse-Proof Their Daughters
“Treat your daughters with respect,” begins Tina B. Tessina, PhD, a licensed psychotherapist in Southern California who counsels individuals and couples as well as abused women, and is author of over a dozen books including “It Ends With You: Grow Up and Out of Dysfunction.”
Being treated with respect in the home teaches young girls that they deserve to be respected by their eventual boyfriends.
They will also more easily recognize when they’re being mistreated.
The next step is to teach our daughters to be self-sufficient. That’s a major one. Not depending on a man to take care of her is a major deterrent to an abusive relationship.
“Focus on her character, intelligence and competence – not her cuteness, beauty or attractiveness to boys,” continues Dr. Tessina.
An example of this might be as follows: Your 16-year-old daughter expresses an interest in the sport of powerlifting.
You can either encourage this, shame her for it because “girls don’t do those kinds of things,” or fall somewhere in between.
Or maybe your 12-year-old daughter announces one day she wants to be an orthopedic surgeon.
Are you going to tell her to ditch her dream because less than five percent of board-certified orthopedic surgeons are women?
Though few people know this fact from the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, you get the point.
“Teach her to value her own self: her intelligence, her competence, her kindness and caring, her strength,” says Dr. Tessina.
She urges parents to show love and respect for each other so that your daughter grows up “with the image of your own relationship as her pattern to follow.”
What if you’re a single parent?
Dr. Tessina says to make sure your daughter witnesses couples “in positive interaction.”
Make sure she’s around good men (your brothers, uncles, cousins, friends, your father).
This way she can learn what kind of people men should be and how to recognize potential for abuse.
Other Ways to Abuse-Proof Your Daughter
Dr. Tessina says to discuss with your daughter things like song lyrics, TV shows and abusive celebrity behavior (e.g., Rihanna and Chris Brown).
“Don’t leave your daughter to absorb pop culture without a discerning voice explaining what works in life and what doesn’t.
“Make sure she’s exposed to good role models in school, in your family, in the neighborhood and in the media. Teach her to value character over notoriety and wealth.”
Martial arts training (combined with a healthy home envirionment) is yet another tool to help build a self-esteem that can’t be chipped away by a toxic man. Freepik.com/master1305
How does a parent teach a daughter to “sniff out” a potentially abusive young man?
“The opposite of abuse is respect,” says Dr. Tessina. “If she is around respectful people most of the time; disrespectful people appear strange and unpleasant.”
In other words, respectful people are normalized, and toxic people are marginalized.
Parents should not punish their daughters for speaking their mind or expressing opinions, though there should be parameters within which to speak (e.g., no foul language).
And yet another way to abuse-proof a daughter so that she never stays with an abusive, controlling man is to encourage her to think independently.
This way, she won’t be drawn to a man who wants to control her.
Give your daughter plenty of opportunities to make choices in life (she can choose her bedroom colors and hairstyle, but she can’t choose the color of your new car or your hairstyle).
Dr. Tessina appears frequently on radio, TV, video and podcasts, and has been in private practice for over 30 years.
Lorra Garrick has been covering medical, fitness and cybersecurity topics for many years, having written thousands of articles for print magazines and websites, including as a ghostwriter. She’s also a former ACE-certified personal trainer.
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Top image: Freepik.com
Sources: tinatessina.com/index.html; http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-11-17/health/ct-x-c-female-orthopedic-surgeons-20101117_1_orthopedic-surgery-orthopedic-surgeons-number-of-female-applicants
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Burn Tons of Fat: Mix Strength Training & Intense Cardio
Do you need to burn a LOT of fat?
Mixing brief intense cardio in between strength training sets burns more fat than a session of strength training followed by cardio exercise.
In an effort to lose weight and get a trim and toned body, many women and men will first complete a session of weight training — and then follow it up with 45 minutes or even an hour of aerobics such as with a stationary bike, jogging on a treadmill or using the revolving staircase.
Fat Burning Guidelines
Insert brief bursts of intense cardio in a strength training workout by doing the cardio immediately after most weightlifting sets.
The cardio segments last 30-60 seconds, and simply performing aerobics for this time period isn’t enough to incite the major fat burning. These 30-60 seconds must be intense.
The reason this burns so much fat is because a taxing of the cardiorespiratory system immediately follows a taxing of the musculoskeletal system; a lot of heavy metabolic work slamming the body all at once.
The cardio segment is conducted while the body is still trying to recover from the weightlifting set.
This modality, called integrated concurrent exercise, was studied by W. Jackson Davis and colleagues (University of California at Santa Cruz and the University of California at Berkley).
Two groups were compared. One group did a strength training workout followed by a treadmill workout.
The other group performed the exact same strength training workout, including same volume, and did the same quantity of exercise on the treadmill – except that the cardio on the treadmill was done right after the strength training sets.
How much of a difference in fat burning did this create after 11 weeks?
It produced 991.8 percent more fat burned, when compared to the first group.
The weightlifting sets need to be intense; we’re not talking simply moving around resistance just to get through the set.
The rep range should be 8-12, and the weights should be medium to heavy, so that getting through 8-12 reps is difficult.
The cardio component should get you very winded; this means 10 mph on the treadmill, not 5 mph.
This principle can be applied to the stationary bike and elliptical machine; use the equivalent intensity. Fast box jumping can be substituted for running and pedaling.
Inserting short intense cardio intermittently in a strength training session will burn up a ton of fat.
Source: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18714239
Lorra Garrick is a former personal trainer certified through the American Council on Exercise. At Bally Total Fitness she trained women and men of all ages for fat loss, muscle building, fitness and improved health.
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