FITNESS

Workouts

Daily workouts are very important. 4-5 days a week 45-60 minutes of workout a day will help in the following ways:

ü  Maintains your body weight

ü  Maintains body composition

ü  Improves your blood movement

ü  Helps burn fat and build muscle

ü  Helps in maintaining body fat percentage, muscle mass, BMI (Body Mass Index), BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate), Waist-Hip ratio, Total body water and so on.

ü  Improves your strength

ü  Keeps off laziness

ü  Improves your immunity

ü  Normalizes blood sugar, salt, cholesterol level in the blood

ü  Circulates more oxygen all throughout your body

ü  Normalizes your blood pressure

Facts and Myths about Exercise

Why and how much is cardio exercise important?

      Firstly I would like to mention that alone cardio exercise won't help you maintain your body weight or fat percentage. It is always important to do cardio along with weight training. Cardio alone never helps one to lose fat. So here I will be listing out the facts and myths about fat burning process and how to lose weight effectively for long term.

FACTS:

•     The first 40 minutes of any workout session is only water that we release.
•     To lose fat effectively one needs to do 20 minutes of cardio exercises.
•      HIIT & LISS

HIIT stands for High Intensity Interval Training and LISS stands for Low Intensity Steady State Cardio.

      HIIT consists of short sprint intervals coupled with low-moderate intensity work. An example of this would be a 30 second sprint followed by a 4 minute steady pace walk to cool down and bring your heart rate back to normal and then repeating it. LISS consists of purely low-moderate intensity work. An example of this would be walking on the treadmill or riding the bike and being able to hold a conversation.

      MYTHS:

     

JUST RUNNING WON'T HELP

          Well, coming to the story let me tell you women need to LIFT weights to LOSE weight.

         It is a myth that we have built in our mind since years that women should always carry on with cardio exercises, lose litres of sweat and lose weight. But that doesn't help in any way. One might think "I am shedding so much of sweat" then let me tell you the truth, that your are losing only water mass and muscle mass. This is because the fat metabolism has a totally different phenomenon. Just give a thought, you run, jug, do cycling for an hour, get drenched and sweat like a pig but you still look the same, right? You don't lose fat. You only lose water mass, muscle mass, and sugars. Here I will explain you the fat metabolism.

FAT METABOLISM

Fat is stored as Triglycerides in our body in the adipose tissue. Well, all cells contain some fat. But the bodies main fat storing cells are in the adipose cells as TRIGLYCERIDES. We also have fat in our muscles known as INTRAMUSCULAR TRIGLYCERIDES. The adipose tissues compose the MAIN BODY FAT, the fat we want to lose.

Each adipose tissue is divided into individual cells called adipocytes which hold the triglycerides. 1 droplet of triglyceride is made u of 1 glycerol molecule bound to 3 fatty acid molecules. This is the source of energy for the body. It makes up to 95% of adipocytes' volume.

LIPOLYSIS is the mechanism by which fat breakdown happens. Lipolysis splits triglycerides into 1 molecule of glycerol and 3 separate fatty acid molecules. After these fatty acids diffuse from the adipocytes, they bind to plasma albumin, a protein in the blood and transported in  the active tissue to be burned. This is important during exercise when energy requirements are heightened. Low blood flow leads to accumulation of fatty acids in the vessels. This blood reaches the mitochondria in the muscles and are thus completely broken down. Thus it is very necessary for one to build muscle and replace fat. So WEIGHT TRAINING is a must for long term and proper fat burn. Your body burns fat even when you are at rest.

Now one might be thinking what if women build up like a heavy muscular woman just like "HULK" then let me tell you the 

TESTOSTERONE STORY!

The hormone testosterone is responsible for the large increases in muscle mass seen when men lift weights. Women’s testosterone levels are a fraction of men’s testosterone levels. Normal testosterone levels in men are 200-1200 ng/dl while 15-70 ng/dl are normal in women. As you can see, men’s testosterone levels are SIGNIFICANTLY higher than women’s. Even if a man is at the LOW end of the men’s normal testosterone range (200 ng/dl), he still has more than twice the amount of testosterone as a woman at the HIGH end of the women’s normal testosterone range (70 ng/dl). If we look at the median or mid-range testosterone levels in men and women, men = 700 and women = 42.5. So on an average, men have 16.47 times more testosterone than women! It is clear that women do not have the hormonal support (testosterone) to gain muscle mass like men. 

But there are still female body builders who are hugely muscular right? What about them?

It is all because they take steroid testosterone injections for building up!

I hope now the myths about working out and exercising properly is enough clear!