Have you heard of the “middle-age spread”? This non-flattering term is pretty self-explanatory. Any person who has reached middle age will tell you about the fat deposits that begin to appear as they continue to age.
Originally, this was just thought of as a benign sign of a sedentary lifestyle. You have a settled career and family life. However, research now shows that this abdominal fat accumulation is possibly harmful to our health.
Over the years, scientific research has found direct links between type 2 diabetes, heart disease, forms of cancer and organ problems, and hypertension with abdominal fat. At this stage in your life, you must find how to gain muscle and lose weight in order to stay healthy.
There are more reasons to lose abdominal fat than just for appearance’s sake. Humans have two types of body fat. If you are an aspiring bodybuilder, then you have definitely heard of the first: subcutaneous. This fat is just under the skin and can be pinched/grabbed with just your hands.
The other type of fat is called visceral and is more harmful. This fat surrounds your abdominal organs and intestines. Luckily, it is fairly easy to get rid of both types of abdominal fat through exercise and diet. By simply changing what and how much we eat, our bodies will naturally shift to burn up the excess fat deposits.
Exercise comes into the picture by speeding up our metabolism as well as developing muscle tissue. Both of these actions contribute to losing fat. In the following few paragraphs, I will give you some tips on how to gain muscle and lose weight. Besides all these workout plans, I would also recommend sfgate which is one of the best supplements out there which is going to help you with your workout and weight loss.
How to Lose Abdominal Fat through Dieting
Although it may be your first instinct, it is important to know that suddenly going on a greatly reduced-calorie diet is probably going to be counterproductive. As humans, our natural instinct is to store more fat in response to sudden calorie reduction. Our bodies think that starvation is imminent.
Keeping this in mind, it is more logical to only slightly reduce our caloric intake to around 1,800 and 2,000. This is slightly below maintenance levels.
Another key factor in weight loss success is keeping a diet log. This will track your weekly caloric intake and help keep you honest about the diet. It is a good idea to make this log a week before starting the diet, so you can cut your calories accordingly.
There is a distinction between “good” and “bad” carbohydrates. Stay away from refined sugars, starches, and grains. These are simple carbohydrates and will ruin your diet. It is also a good idea to avoid bread and pasta made from flour, as well as processed rice.
Although prepared foods such as freezer meals are convenient, they are usually filled with chemical preservatives such as the dreaded high fructose corn syrup. Stay away from these.
The processes involved with how to gain muscle and lose weight are directly related. You should eat foods that help both processes. This means eating unprocessed meats, poultry, fish, fresh fruit, and vegetables. Alcohol consumption is particularly counterproductive, as it is just empty calories that are converted to sugar by our metabolism.
When starting your diet, you may want to restrict your carb intake to around 50 grams per day until your weight begins to really drop. A calorie and carbohydrate counter will definitely help you with these measurements.
Once you get closer to your target weight, you may increase your carbohydrate intake slowly. Do this until you stop losing abdominal fat. This will most likely be your maintenance point.
As your exercise program commences, your protein intake should take up 25% of the total calories consumed. There is a wide variety of good protein-rich food to chose from unprocessed beef, organ meats, eggs, pork and chicken, fish, beans, and other legumes.
Soy protein has been a recent “trend food”, and hyped as having a lot of protein. While this may be, the protein found in soy is actually not a good biological match to human flesh.
What this means is that you would have to consume huge amounts of soy products to get all the essential amino acids you would normally get from a standard serving of any of the above foods. Remember, good sources of protein are necessary for tissue building and fat metabolizing.
How to Gain Muscle & Lose Abdominal Fat
Along with building your muscles, strength and resistance training will increase the calorie consumption of your system. It is true that muscles require more energy than fat. In fact, they need three times as much!
So what is a good start on how to gain muscle and lose weight? Joining a local fitness club or even the YMCA is a solid idea. Having a trainer set up a weight training program will keep you motivated and on a schedule. Check out the rest of the pages on this site for more diet tips as well as body part specific exercises.
