Exercise tips

PHysiology

Muscle declines starting around age 30 and after if muscles are not actively being built and so does bone density. This affects your longevity.

To build muscle and keep up bone density, you need to do resistance exercises or lift weights that are challenging enough that you feel the weight.

When you lose muscle, you burn less calories at rest.

The less muscle and lean body weight (organs and bones included), the less calories you burn overall.

When you lose weight without building muscle, your body will take some of the energy from existing muscles to use as fuel.

Small muscles (like muscles in the arms) tend to need 24-48 hours to recover and larger muscles (like leg muscles and glutes) tend to need 48-72 hours to recover.

Muscle mass is approximately 76% water (cell hydration / intracellular water). Quality of muscle also matters and this includes hydration. Water helps to carry nutrients, oxygen, helps for muscle contraction, joint lubrication, temperature regulation through sweat, and is needed for protein synthesis (meaning repair and building the muscles).

Changing your diet and exercise can change you at the cellular level pretty quickly, but it’ll take a little time to feel it and even more time to see noticeable results. Rest assured that if you made changes, you will eventually see results. It takes time.

When you lose a pound, you can’t designate to lose a pound of only fat. Water, fat and muscle are all things that can be lost when you lose a pound on the scale.

You can’t spot reduce fat from one part of your body without affecting others, but you can build more muscles in some parts of your body but not others.

tips

Rest is just important as doing the exercise and getting good nutrition.

Training is doing the same exercises over and over and performing more over time.

When you train, you should be able to feel the muscles working. If you do not, you aren’t challenging your muscles.

Muscle time under tension and doing the reps correctly is more important than doing reps fast. In fact, you are much better off taking your time and performing the rep slower (under more tension).

If you don’t know where to begin with exercise, as long as you do not feel any pain and your doctor cleared you, you can’t go wrong with increasing your overall step count by going on walks or just moving more, including chores.

If you have not been exercising, it is wise to start slowly by gradually increasing your exercises. This will help prevent injuries (which can set you back even further).

(Always listen to your body and know your limits. If anything ever hurts, please consult with your doctor and be aware if you have higher or lower blood pressures to be careful about positions and how fast you are changing positions.).