Just Keep Swimming

When life gets you down, you know what you've got to do?  JUST KEEP SWIMMING!  

Instead of being Mr. or Mrs. Grumpy Gills, when something hard comes our way, let's pray, and then make the choice to look for the good and focus less on the bad. KEEP on KEEPING on, and remember this is just a season, and all seasons, thankfully, come and go.  

JUST KEEP SWIMMING!

Muscle vs. Fat: Conclusion

In conclusion and to hopefully help answer your fat vs. muscle questions, take a look at some quick summaries:

Quick Summary of Fat:

• Fat can not become muscle and muscle can not become fat.

• Fat can only be reduced if the number of calories expended in a day exceeds the number of calories consumed in a day. Fat will be gained if the opposite occurs.

• If you stop training, but compensate for this with a slight reduction in diet, your body fat will not increase.

• If you begin training but also increase your dietary intake, you can gain fat.

• Fat cells act as one, meaning you can not choose where you lose it or gain it.

Quick Summary of Muscle:

• Changes in muscle size, density and/or efficiency cause an increase in strength; however, these changes only result if the muscle is stimulated beyond what it is accustomed to.

• Weight training is the easiest way to control and monitor the changes in your muscle physiology. By manipulating your sets, reps and weight lifted you can achieve various responses. Because of this, it is possible to increase your strength without adding bulk, and it is also possible to increase both.

• When you stop stimulating the muscle, your muscle composition may return to normal or, depending on your regular routine, it may simply stay as is.

• Unlike fat, each muscle can be specifically targeted, so you can choose the specific area you would like to improve. With that said, realize that while you can work your abdominal muscles, for example, you may not see the enhanced shape and form if you have a thick layer of fat covering them up.

As you can see in this picture, the 250 lbs. of fat is much bulkier than the 250 lbs. of muscle… A 250 pound pile of fat will take up more space (volume) than a 250 pound pile of muscle. A woman weighing 150 pounds with 19% fat will look much smaller (and be much healthier) than a woman at 150 pounds with 35% fat. They weigh the same, yet the composition is different. Because muscle is denser than fat, the person with less fat and more muscle will look smaller. Once you understand this, you will stop being so concerned with body weight and start paying attention to body composition. How much body fat do you have compared to muscle?

If you want to look slimmer, the key is to build more muscle and to burn more fat! And remember, when it comes to fat loss, exercise is the method that can be most easily manipulated… the more active you are, the more fat that you will burn!

Here's to happy fat loss!

Understanding Body Fat

Body fat is completely related to calories, and the amount that we have is directly influenced by the number of calories consumed versus calories expended. Calories consumed obviously come from the foods we eat. It is important to recognize that when we consume any type of food in excess, whether it is carbohydrates, protein or dietary fat, it will be converted to body fat.

The flip side of the equation is calories used or expended. This brings exercise to mind, however, your body also expends calories in other ways. We focus on exercise because it is the method that can be most easily manipulated. Any form of exercise, at any intensity—aerobic training, resistance training, going out for a walk or performing a spring workout—burns calories and is, therefore, better than doing nothing at all. With all of this in mind, let's look at an interesting statistic:

Our bodies store energy in some 30 billion fat cells, mostly beneath our skin and around our abdomen. If we are overweight, we have more of these cells and each is larger. The very obese may have 75 billion cells with about 50 percent more fat in each one. When an obese person loses weight, the fat cells shrink but their number is unchanged.

Based on this fact, it is important to understand that those thousands and thousands of individual fat cells that give us those nice love handles act as one unit and essentially have three options:

• to grow and possibly divide;

• to rest as is; or

• to shrink in size.

The option your fat cells will choose completely depends on the calories you consume versus the calories you burn in your daily activity.  Personally, I want to do everything in my power to make sure all my pesky fat cells SHRINK, don't you?!?

Muscle Metamorphosis

To begin our discussion on Muscle vs. Fat, it is essential to clarify that it is a complete myth that you can turn fat into muscle with training. Body fat and muscle are two completely different tissues. They have different structures and functions, they react to training in different ways and, simply put, one does not have the capability to turn into the other. Let’s look at each individually, starting with my personal favorite:  MUSCLE!

Unlike fat, strength gains are not related to calories; changes in the muscle physiology and the resulting increases in strength do not occur as a result of dietary intake. Assuming you are eating a well-balanced diet, changes within your muscles are most influenced by the direct stresses that you place on each of them individually. These stresses can be through job-related activity, daily chores, aerobic activity or strength training. The key factor is that the muscle will only react if the stress placed on it exceeds the everyday stress it is accustomed to.

Again, this doesn’t necessary mean you need to get to the gym and start lifting weights three times a week; however, muscle is often associated with weight/resistance training because this is the easiest way to control and monitor the stress being placed on the muscle. Strength training is also very effective because you can isolate any muscle and do so in a safe environment. If you’re interested in a personalized strength training plan, consider meeting with a Personal Trainer, or... (shameless plugh for the Twin River's Y) if you’re around the Eastern Carolina area and would like to try weight/resistance training in a group with a certified instructor, check out our Be REAL! Boot Camp or Morning C.R.U.N.C.H classes… We have a lot of ways for you to start building muscle the right way!

Muscle vs. Fat

Have you ever wondered how long and how intensely you would have to train to turn all that loose body fat into toned muscle? When you stop training, how long will it take before the muscle turns back into fat? Do sit-ups and crunches truly get rid of your belly and leave you with a firm six-pack? Is it possible to lose fat but not bulk up from weight training?

As health educators, myself and our Health & Wellness team at the Y hear questions like this often. In fact, they have been asked so frequently that we’ve recently realized there is a significant lack of knowledge relating to how training truly affects body composition. To be able to answer any of the above questions we need to first understand the different roles of body fat and muscle.

The next series of posts will attempt to shed a little light on the muscle vs. fat debate. But for now, consider this truth: If you want to look slimmer, the key is to build more muscle and to burn more fat! And remember, when it comes to fat loss, exercise is the method that can be most easily manipulated… the more active you are, the more fat that you will burn!

Seasons

Well... I'm back! Patrick was scheduled to deploy at the end of of October, but his deployment got moved up 2 months and we found ourselves with only 9 days to prepare for his early departure. My husband, along with countless other husbands and wives who are part of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, deployed aboard the ships of Kearsarge Amphibious Ready Group in late August responding to an order by the Secretary of Defense to support Pakistan flood relief efforts. As of now, we don't have a solid return date- some sources estimate 9 months, but Patrick and I are praying and believing for him to be home *SAFE & SOUND* within 7 months.

This photo above was taken of Marines with 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit and sailors aboard USS Kearsarge as they "man the rails" as they deploy from Naval Station Norfolk, Va., Aug. 27, 2010.

As I looked at these pictures, amazed by how this HUGE ship was literally lined with men and women (one of them- somewhere- my husband) I couldn't help but wonder how many other wives were looking at the same photos....

It's never a fun thing to be torn apart from the one you love. Days get lonely and the security of having that other 1/2 next to you is gone. It's long, lonely, overwhelming and sometimes it just plan SUCKS. Let's face it: Deployments are hard.

Life is hard.

But life is also good.

We may not have a choice in this deployment, or whatever other hard situation life has thrown our way, but we do have a choice in how we handle it; how we react to it, and how we live through it. Make the choice today to look for the good and focus less on the bad. Remember, no matter what you're going through, this is just a season, and all seasons, thankfully, come and go.