Can You Really Tone Your Body?
Today, something dedicated to muscle tone and the best way to get it.
Q. I would like to learn how to tone my waist without turning excess fat into bulky muscle mass.
A. Don’t worry about converting unwanted fat into bulky muscle mass. Contrary to everyday opinion, you can’t turn muscle mass into fat, or fat into muscle.
When most people say that they want to know how to tone up what they really mean is that they want to drop fat and replace it with a little lean muscle.
Think it over. What is a more toned body, if it’s not one with less fat, and more muscle?
The best way to firm up any section of your body – whether it is your stomach, your arms, or maybe your chest – would be to adhere to a proper routine of strength training and cardio exercise.
I understand that many women freak out if they are told that they’ll add muscle. The fact is, the amount of muscle mass you will add, especially if you’re using a restricted-calorie eating plan, is significantly lower than perhaps you believe.
It requires many years of effort along with an almost crazy obsession with diet and exercise to develop the type of carved female figures you see in the magazines.
In one study, thirty-two women were allotted to one of 3 training routines – a free-weights program, a Nautilus machine routine, or a Soloflex machine program.
Although the ladies built strength, there was no alternation in the dimensions of the thighs or arms. Average waist size actually dropped. Put simply, rather than “bulking up,” the ladies actually got leaner.
Fat is less dense compared to muscle tissue, and weighs about 0.9 grams per cubic centimeter (compared to 1.07 grams for muscle tissue). Therefore that one lb of muscle will take up less room than a single pound of fat.
Studies show that if you consume a low-calorie diet for 3 months, approximately 7 from every ten pounds which you lose will come from fat. Blend aerobic exercise with a low-calorie diet, and eight of every ten pounds you lose will come from fat. However, with a mixture of resistance training, cardiovascular exercise, and a low-calorie diet, you can expect all of the weight you drop to be derived from body fat.
One of the reasons strength training is so efficient at helping you drop fat is that it boosts your metabolic rate for up to two days following a workout. In addition, muscle is a more active tissue than fat. People who have more muscle tend to have a higher metabolic rate. What this means is they use up more calories and a lot more fat – regardless of whether they’re not at the gym.
Where does diet come in?
To firm up, the most important nutrient is protein.
Unless you get enough protein in your daily diet, then your system begins utilizing its own protein sources for energy. And imagine where that protein comes from? It will start eating away at your muscles – decreasing your metabolic rate, making you less strong and reducing muscle tone.
Diet plans higher in protein and lower in carbs also deliver better weight loss. How? They work because protein raises your metabolic rate (so you burn more calories) and will keep you feeling satisfied for a longer time (which means you eat less).
If you fail to obtain sufficient protein every day, you’ll rapidly lose strength, get weaker and your metabolic rate will slow.
