Kergaard's Korner
8-16-02
by Dave Kergaard
special to Delaware Sports
Build Muscle! Burn Fat!
It is a myth that cardiovascular exercise is the best way to get rid of unwanted
body fat. Although you need aerobic exercise to strengthen your heart, lungs,
veins, and pump nutrients through your system, it is still not the best way to
lose body fat. You must incorporate weight training into your exercise regiment
in order to lose body fat and even more importantly to look the way you always
wanted to once you have lost that fat.
The secret to fat loss is not in how many calories you burn while exercising or
how many calories you neglect to eat in order to force yourself into a deficit.
The secret is in how many calories you burn the other twenty-three hours that
day and in the next twenty-four hours or so you spend not exercising on your off
days. How much muscle you carry regulates your fat burning. Muscle burns
calories for your body to use as energy and fat does nothing, but look bad. The
more muscle, even if it is just a little more, the more fat you will naturally
burn while relaxing between gym sessions or while hanging out with your friends
at the local coffee house.
High intensity weight training burns fat after exercise well beyond what
researchers originally believed. Studies have shown the metabolism to remain
elevated for sixteen hours following resistance exercise. In a new study by Dr.
M.D. Schuenke, he and his colleagues at Ohio University put seven healthy men
through an intense half- hour workout consisting of four circuits of bench
press, power cleans, and squats. Each set was performed using the athlete’s
own predetermined ten repetition maximum and continued to failure. The
researchers found post exercise oxygen consumption (a good measure of the
metabolic rate and calorie expenditure) was significantly elevated for at least
thirty-eight hours post exercise. These results suggest that post exercise
oxygen consumption duration following resistance exercise extends well beyond
the previously reported duration of sixteen hours. Bottom line, hit the weights
hard and consistently and watch your waist line melt away. It seems simple
doesn’t it? All you have to do to burn body fat is to develop more muscle.
Whatever you know, think you know, or believe you know, the fact remains, we
need more muscle in order to burn more fat. But my advice is not what everyone
else teaches. The routines I will offer in later columns will specialize in
short cuts to achieve specific goals, in reduced periods of time, all completely
drug free. You see, muscle burns three times the amount of calories that fat
burns. The more muscle you can develop; the more fat you will burn. It is very
rewarding to see the plan in action.
One of my clients, Tina, a forty–six year old mother of three, tried for years
to reduce her 193- pound body weight with aerobics and various diets. A year
ago, Tina started lifting weights thirty minutes a day for four days a week.
Tina now weighs 133 pounds. Tina knows that this is not short term and she will
be a weight trainer for life. I want to emphasize the importance of eating
plenty of good food. Calorie restrictive diets do not work, because they remove
as much muscle as they do fat, and that only makes you look fatter, although
with clothes on, you may look smaller. Muscle is the only engine that burns fat.
The more muscle you lose, the less fat you burn. The goal then, is not to lose
weight, but to burn fat, which to occur, means gaining muscle.
Studies show that after we turn thirty, unless we lift weights every few days,
the body naturally loses almost a pound of muscle a year, and replaces it with
almost a pound of fat. But if 120 pound woman gains four pounds of lean muscle,
drops four pounds of fat, she increases her caloric requirements by as much as
20 percent and can lose a pound of fat in under a month with no additional
exercise. But she has to continue to weight train to build muscle while
maintaining her lower body fat. You can not resort back to bad habits and expect
your body to stay healthy. It is a life long matter. The amount of muscle mass
we carry is also a good indicator of our immune system, the strength of our
bones, and the ability to with stand stress as long as we keep our fat levels
down and maintain ourselves.
Dave is a personal trainer at Gold's Gym
who recently retired as assistant superintendent at Kent County School in
Maryland. Dave is a former Mr. Maryland. He is the former Head football Coach at
Kent County and was a fullback at Miami of Ohio under Bo Shembechler.
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