You've seen them in your gym, the girls who spend at least an hour on the stairmaster then they move to the elliptical for another 30 minutes and finally they end with 20 minutes of crunches. Almost two hours spent at the gym, but day in and day out they look exactly the same. Why? They should have dropped pounds with the amount of time they spend sweating right? Well, here's the problem. Cardio is by no means a magic wand, in fact it can be an inhibitor when it comes to weight loss. To put it in simplest terms, when you are doing any form of cardio activity your body will automatically use the stored glycogen in your muscles first as a fuel source, then go to your fat reserves. Now it could take hours before you burn through the glycogen and start actually burning fat stores. Not only that but your body is an efficient machine and as such doing the same activity at the same intensity for the same duration day after day your body will adapt to this. It will become so efficient that you will burn less and less calories. Not only that but on average a person may only burn 100 calories or less every 20 minutes, so these cardio queens are only burning a max of 320 calories. This is why these women's composition never changes!
.. ..You know if they spent half their time pumping some iron they would see a dramatic change in how they look and feel. With just two hours of weight training a week in a few weeks they can build 2 lbs. worth of muscle that burns through 100 calories a day, while they are sitting on their butt. Not to mention the calories they'll burn during their training session 150-350 calories. 45,000 calories are needed to go into protein synthesis in order to build one pound of muscle. That's 90,000 calories in one month! Eating the same, weight training and doing some cardio they are going to see a dramatic change in their body. In addition, cardio leaves you feeling hungry, and fatigued leading to over consumption when you return home from the gym. An average woman can add an additional 8 lbs. of lean muscle which would burn through 400 calories everyday without having to do a thing.
.. ..So are you ready to get past this plateau? Want to get started on an appropriate San Diego personal training program today? Contact me and I can help you learn how.
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