Better Late than Never...

Sorry for the day late, dollar short post, but I have been exhausted this week dragging myself all over the Tri-Cities (Great Lakes Bay Region? Whatever fancy name they're call Saginaw/Midland/Bay City these days) in an effort to promote the Hemlock Sawdust Days Dash 5k Trail Run/Walk!  Today, however, I'm taking some time to relax and reflect on the healthy lifestyle issues that I've run across this week.  

Today's blog inspiration comes from my friend Lisa.  She's been running a lot lately and can tell her clothes

are fitting better, but the numbers on the scale don't seem to be budging--what gives?  Another friend of mine, Rachel, likewise, told me she had lost only a few pounds, but several inches off her waist--huh?

The key here is that a healthy diet and exercise promotes not only fat loss, but also muscle gain.  This explains the weight-loss plateaus that some go through as well during their get fit journey.  It also explains why people seem to lose a lot of weight quickly on extreme diets but have a hard time keeping it off--they lost fat, but never built up the muscle needed to maintain calorie burning.  Through my own personal experiences and that of my friends, I've determined that those with plenty of fat to lose, seem to lose fat first.  When I first started out, I lost a lot of weight right away--probably 10-15 pounds a month those first two or three months.  This was a great motivator!  But then, the inevitable stall comes along and the weight- loss slows...

The thing was, I could tell by my clothing that I was indeed getting more toned, though my weight may have stayed the same for periods of time.  I was building muscle.  One thing I definitely noticed was that my clothes fit differently than they had before.  As I've discussed before, most people are "built" a certain way--but exercise changes this unlike dieting alone.  As you build up more muscle, you also burn more calories more efficiently, and you start to lose weight a bit at a time again.

The interim time between muscle gain and fat loss can be frustrating for those in a hurry to lose weight, but trust me, the wait is worth it!  Here is a picture of my weight loss chart from LoseIt that shows the "staggered" nature of weight loss.  That's not a nice straight line (and still isn't!)

I had a friend ask me the other day if I've ever done a diet where you don't eat any bread in an effort to get a nice flat stomach.  I assume this is some offshoot of the Atkins/South Beach low-carb trend.  As I explained to him, this seems extreme to me.  People have been eating bread in some form, for thousands of years.  It is a main staple of sustenance for many of the world's peoples--why would someone diet by cutting it out?  Choose healthier, whole grain varieties instead and cut back on your intake of bread, but don't eliminate it all together--that just doesn't make sense.  And as someone who had done the low/no-carb thing before, it's just too hard to maintain and will wreak havoc on your metabolic system.  

Additionally, I'm a Midwesterner.  We're a meat and potatoes, hearty meal, put cheese on top of cheese, group of people--it gets cold here! So cutting out bread is simply absurd.  Yes, you might lose weight fast (these diets trick your body into turning to fat reserves for caloric energy because you're not consuming any carbohydrates), but you won't gain muscle.  You will also be extremely angry--I know from experience.  So, take a hint from common sense--the voice in your head, not Thomas Paine's version (well, ok, maybe both)--and eat sensibly and exercise regularly.  If watching the numbers on the scale is too frustrating, then don't do it!  Buy yourself a goal piece of clothing a size smaller than you normally wear, and try it on every now and again--it'll fit soon enough and you'll be glad you made it there the healthy way!