Fat loss and fitness tips from Rudolf
Feeling weak or tired during workouts, or not being able to lift as much weight, or muscles becoming exhausted faster than usual, are usually indications that muscle is being lost.
Having gotten on board to help the Boksburg public meet their fitness goals by sharing his knowledge on everything fitness, Boksburg respected bodybuilder Rudolf Koen has offered a second set of tips as continuation to the initial article the Advertiser ran regarding the matter.
Rudolf’s tips on weight loss vs fat loss
• Drink more water: Because is involved in many metabolic processes in your body, being dehydrated has the potential to slow down your metabolism which hamper weight loss.
• Avoid sugary drinks, snacks and refined carbohydrates: When hunger strikes, dieters can often fall off track by opting for sugary snacks and fast food to curb the cravings. Having healthy snacks ready, and planning your meals can prevent this.
• Make green tea part of your diet: This had been of growing interest for dieters because of its ability to stimulate oxidation. Green tea is one of the healthiest beverages on the planet, and is loaded with various anti-oxidants and substances that are beneficial for health.
• Exercise more: Adding more activity to your daily routine (walking, or simply being more active) is a sure way to aid weight loss.
• Weightlifting is also important to stop the body from losing muscle mass.
• When you introduce a calorie deficit into your diet and your body notices low energy levels over a prolonged period, it may enter ‘starvation mode’ where it might start breaking down muscle for energy – which leads to slower metabolism.
• Lifting weights and other resistance exercises will prevent loss of muscle mass and speed up metabolism.
• Exercise for fat loss: Exercise is often advised for weight loss but people should really aim for fat loss. If you simply reduce your calories to lose weight, without exercising, you will probably lose muscle as well as fat.
• Four reasons why you are losing muscle and not fat:
• You are not eating enough protein
• So while you should be in a calorie deficit diet, whole foods, with a healthy amount of protein, is vital.
• To help maintain or build muscle, fish, lean meat, chicken, eggs, tofu and low fat dairy, are recommended.
• You are not using your muscles. Not using your muscles leads to muscle wasting; to avoid this, include resistance training. In short: use them or lose them.
• You are not allowing for recovery. While many people believe too much cardio is the main reason for muscle wasting, not insufficient recovery is certainly as big a factor. It is believed that ‘If you consume some protein in your cardio recovery, and do resistance training at least two to three times a week, there should be no reason to lose muscle’.
Not enough sleep
Not getting enough sleep raises cortisol levels in the body. In short, this imbalance can mess with growth hormone production which increases the chance that the carbs you consume will be stored as fat; it also slows muscle growth which leads to more fat.
Signs that you are losing muscle and not fat
You are losing too much weight too fast. Your body can only shed a certain amount of fat before it starts turning to muscle. Doing your body fat percentage or assessment is a valuable tool engaging this. What you’re looking for is for your body fat percentage to decrease and your muscle mass to go up.
You feel more tired than usual.
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