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Negative Calorie Balance:
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Don’t lose too much weight too fast. That can also mean don’t do too much cardio too soon! Unless you recently gained 15 pounds on that two week cruise, your fat loss should be limited to 1-2 pounds per week for permanent fat loss. More than that, even with 6 mini-meals per day, is leaning towards muscle and metabolism loss. A negative calorie balance of 500 calories per day will give you your 3500 calories for your safe and permanent one pound per week. My caution for cardio is not shocking your body with a drastic addition of cardio to your training. Going from no cardio to a high intensity 1000 cal. hike or kickboxing class could be the same shock as going from 3000 calories per day down to 1200. Your body will freak out, drop its metabolism and burn muscle! Progressively ease into it over a couple weeks.
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Minimum Strength Maintenance:
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You must keep up your strength training while adding cardio to your training program. If need be, you can cut back on your strength training to two days per week at the bare minimum. Just as the human body is efficient at shedding muscle to protect its fat stores during famine or starvation mode, the body can shed those powerful, explosive and good looking strength fibers even if all you do is cardio!
Strength fibers are called fast twitch fibers. These fibers are fast to fatigue but explosive and strong. Fast twitch help you get up off the floor. Your endurance muscles are called slow twitch fibers. These are slow to fatigue and can go for hours. That would be your walking, biking or swimming muscles.
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If you only train your endurance fibers, your body will realize those fast twitch fibers are not needed and are actually hindering your endurance! If your training does not keep some stress on strength, you could lose it! The epitome of this is the aesthetic differences between sprinters and marathoners. If you want to look a skinny Ethiopian marathon runner, I probably have nothing more to offer you! Log off this site. My ideal body is more like the sprinter or the gymnast. I like muscles and curves! I contend that stronger people can adapt to endurance easier than slim/skinny endurance people trying to get stronger. If you can’t stand up (strength), you cannot go for a walk (endurance).
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