A big mistake that lots of people make is skipping meals. They think they are not eating much so they should be losing weight. Wrong!

Your body was designed with the idea that you have to expend energy in order to get food. If you think back a hundred or more years ago, if you wanted to eat something you had to either go hunting everyday or grow your own food. And that’s a lot of work – that’s a lot of physical activity. And even though we no longer have to do this, it doesn’t change the fact that our bodies are still designed this way. So when you skip a meal, your body actually thinks that you’re out in the wild and, for whatever reason, food is hard to come by. This is a built in survival mechanism that all of us have – it’s built in. So when your body thinks food is hard to find, it does two things to protect you from starving. First it slows your metabolism causing your body to slow down and burn less fat. Second the meal you eat after you skip a meal will be converted almost entirely to fat and stored - to protect you from starving. So if you skip breakfast, almost all of what you eat for lunch is converted to fat. We think we’re taking in less food but in reality were causing our bodies to store fat.

Your metabolism is totally controllable by you. You can lose weight easily If you speed your metabolism up naturally and safely.

Increasing your lean muscle mass enables your body to burn more fat as it takes more effort to sustain muscle than it does fat. Therefore, the more lean muscle mass you have, the faster your metabolism is likely to be. Therefore, your exercise regime should include not only fat burning exercises but also some muscle building exercise. Women should note that this does not mean you have to get ‘beefy’ but just tone up your muscles.

Protein also plays an important part in this process. Women should generally consume about 100 grams of protein per day and men 150 grams. This can be quite difficult to achieve unless you take a protein supplement. You then know exactly how much protein you are consuming and it is much easier to control.

So the message is:

1. Don’t skip meals – you will end up putting on weight.

2. Build lean muscle mass by doing a combination of weight training as well as fat burning exercises. 3. Make sure you are consuming the right amount of protein per day to aid in building lean muscle mass.

Copyright 2005 Sheridan Woodcroft

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