Ignoring a balanced diet and simply reducing food intake to lose weight can lead to a decline in muscle and bone. This may result in weight loss but not in the reduction of fat levels. This is a danger of medically-induced weight loss or "diet plates" which have no accompanying exercise program.
Furthermore, when you eat less for an extended period of time, your body will slowly reduce your metabolic rate until it has matched your reduced caloric intake.
So even though your weight goes down, your resting metabolism is reduced making the body more prone to putting on fat. Repeated dieting and regaining weight leads to increased visceral fat levels It is easy to regain weight after sudden diets.
This regained weight tends to appear as visceral fat rather than subcutaneous fat. Increased visceral fat levels are thought to increase the likelihood of common diseases. Repeated dieting and subsequent regaining of weight leads to increased visceral fat levels (subcutaneous is fat 'beneath skin' and visceral is fat buried in your body's tissues).
A starvation-like diet produces rapid loss of weight but disrupts body mass and lean muscle, whereas a healthy weight-reduction food plan, even with little exercise, will mostly reduce body fat and little lean muscle. With exercise, and an appropriate food plan including plenty of protein, muscle mass can be increased even as total body weight drops through fat reduction.
The key idea for fat loss is to concentrate on the "calories out" side of the equation not the "calories in", by boosting your metabolic rate and burning far more calories than usual.
I'm asked about losing belly fat and reducing waistlines and the age-old question: "Can I lose belly fat building abs?" The answer is no, as in food plans and other parts of a balanced approach to managing diabetes, you need a holistic approach to exercise, and focusing on abs to reduce belly fat and waistline won't get you there.
You must combine full body exercises into a workout that maximizes your metabolism. If you wish a certain amount of exercise can be directly targeted at the abs and more particulary the core, but these should only be a small part of your workout as your time is better spent focusing on the full body exercises that stimulate the greatest hormonal and metabolic changes within the body. This is particularly important for diabetics.
The most important factor for losing belly fat - to see your abs or at least your flat stomach - is actually in the nutrition arena, your food plan. There is no alternative but to combine your hard workouts with a healthy food plan, and again even more so for diabetics.
No matter how hard you workout, if your diet has too many unhealthy foods, or just plain too much food, then your abdominals will be covered with fat.
A diet high in lean protein sources coupled with lots of nutrient rich fruits and vegetables will help you retain muscle and lose body fat in the early stages of your exercise program. The diabetic difference is to pick the right proteins and the best combinations of fruit and vegetables which will not adversely effect your blood glucose, which you can best decide by measuring yourself against your preferred combinations.
Nutrition is without a doubt the number one priority for gaining control of your waistline, and ultimately showing some abs if that's a motivation for you. Keep in mind that your abs are probably the least important of your core muscle group, and for older diabetics rebuilding the core muscles provides lots of lifestyle advantages irrespective of visible abs.
To build those core muscles don't waste so much of your time focusing on all the usual abs exercises such as sit-ups, crunches, etc.etc. These won't develop the other more important core muscles. Instead focus on high intensity full body lifts using combination multi-joint exercises (compound movements) all strategically combined into highly effective fat-loss, core muscle-strengthening, metabolic-stimulating workouts.
You can keep a few simple strategies in mind to get the best out of your gym exercises: aim for compound movements; do as much pulling as pushing; get form right before weight; change your program every 6 weeks to beat muscle adaption; vary the types of repetitions you do; and warm up.
Coming back now to the theme of this post - a food plan - you have to plan your post-workout nutrition. The basics are to get some protein into your body as soon as possible after the workout, and even as a diabetic you'll need some carbs as otherwise your muscles deplete more than they gain.
Your muscles have to rebuild, and without the proper protein and carbohydrate raw materials, this rebuilding can't take place. As your post-workout feeding should be designed to promote the most rapid delivery of carbohydrates and protein to your depleted muscles, fats should be avoided during this time.
So what's the best diabetic post-workout nutrition?
Generally speaking you don't need and shouldn't take the blast of sweeteners, such as dextrose, that the body builders use. Here's the kind of idea that you can build on for a post-workout shake:
- 1/3 cup plain organic yogurt;
- 1/3 cup low fat cottage cheese;
- 1/2 banana;
- 1/2 cup fruit (blueberries, peaches, cherries, or strawberries);
- 1/2 scoop protein isolate;
- Tbsp flaxseed meal;
- Add water to make correct thickness, or add soy milk.
Then, its said, that for best results eat a full food meal between 1.5 and 3 hours of your workout, which again should include a good balance of protein as mentioned above.
The above seems to relate mainly to resistance exercises - how about if you are focused on aerobic exercise at the moment. Well that's a good question and it brings into focus that you need to balance your nutrition including any post-workout nutrition with your whole food plan and exercise plan.
If you are in a maintenance-mode food plan with mainly aerobic exercises you may only need to keep up lots of water pre and post exercise. If you are doing intense aerobic/endurance you may need more specific muscle-recovery post-workout nutrition. If you are just starting out and still unable to bring your calorie consumption down to where you need then you also need to carefully balance your post-workout nutrition calorie uptake with your overall food plan.
Everything has to be kept in balance with what you're consuming, and what you're expending, and the type of things you are eating and the type of energy you are expending.
The focus of this post is about maintaining muscle while losing fat through dieting and exercise.
The aim is to develop a sustainable and enjoyable food plan and in combination with a well-balanced exercise program and then you'll soon be depleting visceral fat, rebuilding muscle, and heading towards control of your diabetes. If you're just starting out, aim for a 5% reduction in body weight through a combined food plan and exercise program.
Is there a adult diabetes item that you think we should feature? Email tips@diabetorati.com. Thanks!
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