Fitness myths: weight loss and “dead metabolism”

Girls often worry that they are no longer losing weight, and some even seem to gain weight on a diet, all because of a “dead” or “broken” metabolism.

What is the essence of the problem? It is believed that as a result of a long starvation diet in combination with frequent training, the metabolism cannot withstand and breaks down, that is, it becomes so slow that no effort anymore helps to lose weight, and a person begins to gain weight from just looking at food. Is it so?

In fact, we are not talking about a breakdown of metabolism, but about the natural adaptation of the body to the diet, because its goal is to preserve life in difficult conditions for survival (a lot of physical work and little food - these are just such conditions).

There are several mechanisms due to which weight loss stops and looks like a “killed exchange”, but it is not. But in the beginning about more frequently occurring and simple things.

Carbohydrates, salt and water balance

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The most common reason for the slowdown in weight loss and what is considered a “metabolic breakdown” is this. Typically, a person will easily and quickly lose 3-5 kg in the first couple of weeks of the diet, which is very encouraging. But dramatic weight loss occurs due to getting rid of excess water and swelling.

A typical diet for weight loss involves limiting carbohydrates (especially simple ones - flour, sweets) and completely avoiding canned foods (sauces, pickles, marinades), sausages, sausages, cheeses, chips, pizza and other high-calorie foods full of salt.

Carbohydrates and salt are what keep water in the body. Reducing them easily relieves a person who has just started a diet from the first few kilograms due to the removal of excess water.

After this, the rate of weight loss quickly decreases, because adipose tissue is activated, which disappears much more slowly - 300-500 grams per week can be considered an excellent result.

But not only has the rate of weight loss dropped significantly, but after a person eats carbohydrates or something salty, he or she will experience weight gain—again due to water. Hence the thoughts about a broken metabolism and weight gain out of thin air.

Less weight - lower metabolism

As soon as a person loses weight and becomes lighter, his metabolism naturally decreases - he needs fewer resources to maintain a lower body weight.

Metabolism (what a person spends calories on) consists of four components:

Basic metabolism - the minimum calories needed to maintain life.
Digestion of food. On average, 10% is spent on this on a diet.
Household daily activities: moving around the city, cleaning, buying groceries, etc.
Fitness and different sports.

Once you start the diet, each of the components decreases.

Basic metabolism decreases because the person has become lighter. A lighter person burns fewer calories at rest.

Less food means fewer calories spent on its absorption. This is simply a “technical” fact, since the amount of calories spent on digestion is proportional to the calories received, and it is impossible to speed up the metabolism with more frequent meals - fractional meals.

Household activity also decreases on a diet. This occurs due to a decrease in the activity of the nervous system. A person becomes more lethargic during the day, moves less, and gets tired faster. Where he can sit down, he sits down (transport, queues). He no longer climbs escalators and stairs on his own and walks less, using transport, cars and elevators much more often. On the day of training, a person outside the gym moves even less, because there is little energy left for activity. All this affects the total calorie expenditure during the day. All this is also an adaptation of the body in conditions of hunger: moving less and spending less if you have limited resources is very useful for survival.

Training also suffers. I no longer have the strength to maintain the same intensity, be it strength training or cardio. Previously, a person ran every day for 30 minutes at a good speed, spent 300 conventional calories per session and 2100 per week. After several weeks on a diet, workouts become less vigorous and intense - there is simply no strength for fast running, and the person switches to walking. If earlier he had the strength to exercise every day, now he begins to walk every other time. The duration of the workout itself may also be reduced. And as a result, despite the fact that subjectively the workouts have become harder (from which one can draw the wrong conclusion that calories are being burned as before), now a person burns only 600 calories per week, which is half as much.

As a result, all this makes servicing the body less expensive (calories). Previously, with the same weight and activity, it was a conditional 2000 calories, now - 1600, and if this is not taken into account, then weight loss will stop for obvious reasons.

This is not a breakdown, but an adaptation of the body to hunger in order to survive if there is very little food and there is a threat of starvation. If your salary suddenly drops, you will start spending less to get by.

Fitness for losing weight: typical misconceptions

So diet doesn't help. Or it helps, but not for long. All that remains is the good old method: combining diet with training. But how exactly do you exercise to lose weight? There are a number of misconceptions about this.

First: The load must be serious

The subtitle for this statement could be: “The camel has two humps, because life is a struggle.” Many people believe that if they have already declared war on excess weight, then they must fight to the death, as if the Germans were already near Moscow.

The only problem is that the higher the load, the more time you will need to recuperate. Even if you strive to “work out” so much that you crawl out of the gym on all fours, this is unlikely to speed up your weight loss. Doctors say that the optimal training schedule is no more than once every two days.

It is also important that the load must be increased gradually: just as any workout begins with a warm-up, any decision to get serious about fitness should be implemented gradually. If your body has been deprived of physical activity for a long time, don’t rush off the bat: start with one lesson a week. After a couple of weeks, switch to two workouts a week - and only after that can you get back into a normal schedule.

Second: After training, the muscles should hurt

There is a common belief that if your muscles don't hurt after a workout, then your time was wasted. This statement requires clarification. Muscle pain for beginners is inevitable. But pain for those who exercise regularly raises questions: if you can barely stand on your feet for several days after training, this could mean one of two things. Either you have the wrong technique for doing the exercises, or your muscles are overworked: the benefits of such exercises are zero. After retraction, there should be no pain after playing sports.

And lastly, especially for hypochondriacs: do not confuse unnatural sharp pain with natural muscle discomfort.

Third: The more intensely you run or swim, the faster you can get rid of excess weight.

In fact, it is not the pace, but the time of training that affects the fat burning process. The point is that the load on the body matches the capabilities of the heart. If your goal is to lose weight, then an hour's walk at a fast pace will be more effective than a ten-minute jog at the limit of your capabilities.

Fourth: If you stop training, your muscles will turn into fat.

This is actually a funny misconception. Have you ever seen meat turn into lard? Hardly. These are completely different types of fabrics. So muscles are separate, and fat is separate. True, both are capable of increasing and decreasing in volume.

Fifth: If you exercise intensively, you can eat anything, including fast food.

The situation is like in the joke: “I can’t eat meat and flour, so I have to eat dumplings.” As a result, it turns out that fast food, which you “can afford” along with training, contains a gigantic amount of completely unnecessary calories. And to lose weight, you need to burn more calories than you consume.

A beginner, starting to systematically engage in sports, may encounter various appetite disturbances during training. Intense exercise can leave you always hungry, and moderate exercise can leave you inexplicably full. Try to eat within two hours after exercise: this is when the so-called “protein window” is formed in the body - when protein is absorbed especially well. To regain strength after a workout, you can eat just a little sweet - cookies or chocolate - this is called “carbohydrate loading”.

Sixth: In order to burn as many calories as possible, you need to train on an empty stomach.

Actually, this is harmful: the body needs energy during physical activity - and where can you get it if you haven’t eaten anything? A few hours before class, it’s still better to eat something (but not much) - this will give you strength.

Seventh: aerobics will save everyone

Many people believe that aerobic exercise plus diet is a panacea for excess weight. Everything seems to be so, but there is a detail: a significant increase in aerobic activity slows down the metabolism. If you ride several tens of kilometers on an exercise bike every day, then the body turns on the so-called emergency defense mechanism: internal processes slow down so that all fat, amino acid and other equally important reserves are not immediately lost.

Metabolic slowdown

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Is there anything else that further reduces metabolism besides what is described above?

Yes, the slowdown in metabolic rate is often slightly greater than what would be predicted based on the reduction in body weight and activity. That is, there is an additional expense “on top”, but the figure is very modest - only 5% due to a decrease in hormonal activity (leptin and thyroid hormones).

The biggest figure that could be found in research is an additional 10-15% reduction in metabolic rate.

But this was the notorious Minnesota “hunger” experiment, when subjects were brought to a state of exhaustion. After six months of fasting (very low calorie intake), the participants' body fat percentage was incredibly low, but few modern weight loss dieters would achieve such a significant reduction in metabolic rate.

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Leptin

The main role in the additional drop in metabolism is played by the hormone leptin. Its role is to tell the brain how much energy is stored in the body.

Leptin levels directly depend on the amount of fat in fat cells. When there is a lot of leptin, the brain understands that the body has enough fat (energy), so there is no point in urgently replenishing its reserves. As a result, there is no strong feeling of hunger, and the metabolic rate is at a good level ().

When there is little leptin, this is a signal to the brain that fat reserves (energy) are low, the person eats little, which means hunger and possible death. As a result, it reduces metabolism and increases hunger.

So when leptin drops on a diet, a lot of things happen: your metabolic rate slows, hunger increases, thyroid hormones drop, testosterone levels drop, and a lot of other things start to go wrong. Almost everything bad that happens on a diet is controlled by leptin. Refeeds partially solve the problem with a drop in leptin.

Can lowering your metabolic rate while dieting stop weight loss completely? The last 80 years of research on the topic (in humans, not animals) says no. No studies in humans have shown that fat loss stops under a controlled calorie deficit. Metabolism decreases, but never enough to completely stop fat loss, much less cause fat gain.

Which cardio should you choose?

Daniel:

A good example is cyclic types of cardio training. For example, running or cycling, where the same movements are repeated for a long time. Intense interval training, which involves the maximum number of muscle groups, is also suitable. They are performed without additional weights in order to accelerate the heart - for example, jumping, lunges or Tabata training. The last type of exercise involves 20 seconds of intense work, which is followed by 10 seconds of rest. This is a good option at home.

Hunger, meltdowns and poor calorie counting

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One of the body's well-known adaptations to diet is an increase in the feeling of hunger. The reality is: becoming very “dry” means being constantly hungry. Not everyone endures hunger steadfastly, and many experience breakdowns - uncontrollable eating of junk food almost in the heat of passion.

Nobody likes to talk about breakdowns out loud. Moreover, people quickly and honestly forget about them as something unpleasant, continuing to sincerely believe that food strictly corresponds to 1200 calories. However, a breakdown can easily reset the entire deficit created during the week and stop weight loss. Of course, this has nothing to do with a broken metabolism.

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Another problem that looks like a dead exchange: slim people who want to become even leaner and leaner are often inaccurate in calculating their calorie intake. They are used to eating little, so they measure portions by eye, do not keep a food diary, rely on memory (and memory is very selective, and you can forget about something eaten in the morning by the evening). Let's add to this that the person does not track the decrease in activity and does not notice that he is spending fewer calories than before.

Most of those who have stopped losing weight and are sure that they have killed/broken their metabolism, unknowingly deceive themselves and incorrectly count (or do not count) calories. Typically, when the poorly controlled 1,200 calories turn into a well-controlled 1,250, weight loss magically resumes.

Often people simply eat more than they need for their new metabolic rate, which has become lower on the diet for the reasons described above. Once every 2-3 months, you should recalculate your calorie intake, correlate it with the level of daily activity (do not overestimate it), the number of workouts and new body weight.

Glute bridge in the simulator

One of the best exercises for the buttocks

Initial position:

sitting in the exercise machine with a fastened belt. The exercise can be done with different positions of the legs, it depends on the structure of the body. But basically – wide stance of the legs, toes and knees to the sides. You can try placing your feet in different ways and see in which case your buttocks feel better.

While performing the exercise, we lower ourselves down, strain our buttocks when we reach the end point, push out and also squeeze our buttocks. During the exercise, do not roll your knees inward or bend your lower back. We must perform it with a straight body. We do 25 repetitions in three approaches.

Cortisol and swelling

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Most of the problems with the combination of very low calories and excessive cardio are related to one more thing that goes well with the adaptive slowing of metabolism: the stress hormone cortisol and the water retention it causes. Cortisol is cross-reactive with receptors for aldosterone, the main hormone responsible for water retention in the body ().

It turns out:

A calorie deficit increases cortisol levels.
Cardio increases cortisol levels.
Psychological stress increases cortisol levels.

That is, tons of training and a starvation diet increase cortisol. Often a personality trait adds to the problem when a person is constantly stressed because he needs it quickly!!! urgently!!! even more!!! lose weight right now!!! And when the weight loss stalls, these people not only further cut calories and add cardio, but they also begin to panic even more about the lack of results, causing cortisol to become chronically elevated and the body to retain water, which masks the fat loss.

A typical girl losing weight can lose up to 300-500 grams of pure fat per week. If her stress (mental, dietary and physical) is the reason she retains 2-4 liters of fluid, then she will not see the results of her diet for a very long time. The fat goes away, but the swelling masks it.

But very often, after she eats heartily one day, especially carbohydrate food, and skips a couple of workouts, cortisol finally drops, and literally overnight you can “lose weight” by 2-3 kg due to getting rid of “stress” swelling .

That is why, on a diet with a large calorie restriction, it is recommended to arrange carbohydrate loadings - refeeds - once every few days.

Increased cortisol also causes brain resistance to leptin. As a result, leptin does not send enough signals to the brain - with all the consequences that follow from a decrease in leptin that you read about above. There may still be enough body fat to supply enough leptin, but cortisol prevents the brain from seeing it.

A set of circuit training exercises for weight loss

This type of training is optimal for beginners, as it allows you not only to lose weight, but also to effectively work out all the main muscle groups in one session. The essence of circuit training is that the entire set of exercises is performed in a circle for 50 minutes. At the beginning of the program there is a warm-up on a treadmill for 10 minutes, then the exercises themselves.

Circuit training:

squats with weights - 2 sets of 20 times;
backward lunges – 2 sets of 20 reps;
overhead pull-down - 3 sets of 15 reps;
Bent-over arm abduction (delta pumping) – 2 sets of 20 reps;
Cardio exercise – jumping rope for 10 minutes;
“Hammer” dumbbell curls for biceps – 3 sets of 15 reps;
leg raises on parallel bars – 3 sets of 20 reps.
abduction of the arm from behind the head – 3 sets of 15 times;
Cardio load – orbitrek 15 minutes.

Beginners usually do 2 laps, but it is advisable to do 3 laps. After 50 minutes, a cool-down is performed: stretching the working muscle groups, walking in place to restore breathing.

conclusions

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A typical scenario: at the beginning of a diet, weight comes off quickly, but after staying on it for 1-2 months, a person sees that the rate of weight loss has decreased greatly, even to a complete stop, despite strict nutrition and a lot of training. There are several reasons:

A sharp loss of water at the beginning of the diet and the belief that the weight will drop so quickly all the time.
Nutrition does not take into account the decrease in metabolic rate as you lose weight, and calories are not recalculated for the new weight.
Unnoticeable decrease in daily activity.
Disruptions that are quickly forced out of memory, but reset the created deficit.
A careless attitude towards calories, eating by eye, without a diary, as a result there is no calorie deficit, and there is no weight loss either.
Eating too fast, exercising too much, worrying too much about weight all cause the body to retain water and mask fat loss.

Based on an article by Lyle McDonald, bodyrecomposition.com

Plank

When performed correctly, almost all muscles

Initial position:

standing on your forearms, which should be parallel to each other.

We tense our abs, don’t bend in the lower back, don’t lift them high, but don’t lower our pelvis either. We hold the position so that visually the body is parallel to the floor. We bring the shoulder blades and lower the shoulders. Using our legs, forearms and shoulder blades, we seem to be pushing the floor apart. This exercise is good to do at the end of your workout. We perform three approaches for maximum time.