WeightLifting

Nutrition and Fitness In Ramadan

During Ramadan, you’re body lacks in carbohydrates and essential nutrients to feed the cells and maintain your metabolism, but it does have healthy benefits for example stops the growth of cancer cells etc. Your body during ramadan is going through a process that a ship goes through when it’s sinking. When a ship is sinking, the sailors and the crew members start to throw off the things that they don’t need in the ship to lessen the weight. Well your body is going to be doing the same during Ramadan, it is going to throw away your muscle. Your body is constantly manufacturing glucose from fat or protein if necessary through a process called gluconeogenesis. During this process, no one can halt it, we all have to live with it.

In order to maintain our muscles during Ramadan, we have to break our muscle fibers more while not loosing most of the fat around it. The best way to accomplish this goal is by lifting higher weights that you can only do in a rep range of 5-6. During your rest period, you should intake as much protein you can get, maybe the amount you weigh and also drink at least 2.5 liters of water during the night. When breaking the fast, you must not eat lots of carbohydrates because your body will have high blood glucose level, your body will produce lots of insulin, so your cells will be constantly exposed to high levels of insulin as a result of a persistent intake of glucose. The problem is our cells will adapt to this by reducing the number of receptors on their surfaces to respond to insulin, causing insulin resistance, in other words you will get type 2 diabetes. So refrain yourself from eating a lot of carbohydrates. Eat lean meats, get protein and the bulk of the diet should be fats!

How can exercising benefit you for your future?

“One doctor who focuses on prevention of disease is worth ten doctors that focus just on treatment of disease.”

This blog is short and straight forward, if you read it throughly, you will gain lots of knowledge from it and also don’t forget to share this knowledge with you colleges, friends and family. Most people overlook at the importance of regular exercising, they either don’t know the benefits, or they lack the will power to make a change in their lives. Well I am going to ask a question first and then encourage you why you should value the importance of exercising.

Many of us always make an excuse, for examples; I don’t have transportation to go to the gym, well then walk. Some say they don’t have time, well how long did you watch TV today? Did you gain something out of it for the long run? Some might even say, I don’t know where to start, well read my previous posts. Others say I don’t understand the purpose for exercising and that’s the biggest question I will answer in this blog.

Would you like to live longer?

Fact: Every minute of exercise can lengthen your life expectancy by 7 minutes. If you spend money on a physical trainer, don’t be discouraged to do so because for every money spent into exercising, you’re gaining something back, a longer life. For every dollar you’ve invested into exercising, you’re gaining back in the longer run, doesn’t that sound good? I encourage at least 2.5-5hrs a week for beginners to exercise, that’s if you’re normal weight. If you’re obese, you need at least one hour daily with high intensity. Which brings me to my next question.

Would you like to become obese and get a risk of getting diabetes?

If you have type 1 diabetes, you should not do high intensity exercising only if your body is high in ketones in your blood and urine. Type 1 diabetes causes your body to have high blood sugar and if so, your body may produce a good amount of ketones which is like described in my other blog, “another sugar like energy source for the body that is converted by the liver from the fat”. It could be very lethal for one with diabetes to do strenuous workouts because it could cause them to have high sugar and also high ketones level, resulting in sickness.

Exercising can limit your body from getting most of diseases such as various cancers and cardiovascular disease. Other medical conditions include; high blood pressure, stroke, sleep apnea, osteoarthritis and even infertility.

The secret to burning more calories!

This blog isn’t for people trying to gain mass, this one is for people that are simply trying to cut fat and produce lean muscle! In order for you to cut fat, you must understand the formula. If calorie intake equals the amount of Basal Metabolic Rate calorie amount, then you are not burning any fat and are desperately relaying on just exercising to loose fat. The truth of burning fat is to burn all the calories you’ve consumed for the day and more. That “more” part is where science comes in. You see when the body doesn’t have enough calories (glucose) to supply the body with energy, its going to try to burn the stored energy (fat) and convert it into energy (glucose). Vice versa, if you did not burn the calories for the day then guess what? Those calories are stored into fat, as a form for your body to use it later. Our bodies always store fat because it thinks we will starve it later when winter comes, just like the stone age times, but now we have food in front of us and we are never starving ourself, when will we ever use that left over energy (fat)? Only at the gym. It’s crucial for one to burn the calories one has consumed for a day or else the fat will add up overtime.

Now the part on how to burn calories quickly as the gym, well its simple. The more muscle groups you use at once, the more calories you will burn. You will see people sweat more during bench pressing, dead lifting and even squatting. That is because these excercises are compound exercises, they require the body to use 2, 3 or even 4 muscle groups at once! It is better to use more muscles at once, rather than isolating just one muscle group because now your body isn’t working that hard. Always remember to perform compound exercises, they’re the most beneficial ones at the gym. Also while doing any other exercise, remember to tighten your core, it helps you contract your muscles in your core, resulting in abs over time.

 

What is a diet?

Dieting is the first word that comes to one’s mind when thinking about loosing weight. Understand that there are two type of dieters out there, one that are ignorant of what a diet actually is, while others that are very intelligent about what goes in their stomachs. You see a diet is when one’s retstrcit themselves from eating something like milk, rice, bread etc. You can still eat a lot of food while on a diet, you just have to be careful what exactly you’re going to eat. Ignorant dieters try to restrict every food group and they try to only eat a short amount of food in the day which isn’t healthy. Your body can’t produce essential amino acids on its own, it has to get them from some place, but you’re restricting the production, in the long run putting your body in danger. The best way to diet is to understand your body, know which food groups you need to focus on and know exactly how much calories your body needs for basal metabolic rate. BMR calculates the amount of calories one needs throughout the day based on their height, weight and age. Once you have figured out your BMR, you could start dieting. You could figure out how much calories you need throughout the day and start restricting yourself from 100 calories a day and eventually you will meet your goal by dieting the proper way. You will have to eat 5-7 meals per day but they have to be small, you could eat a big breakfast, eat a snack, get a good lunch, eat a snack again, get a small portion of dinner and then small nutritious snack to end the day. This plan is laid out in a course of one day, so don’t eat everything just at once! The point of eating small but a lot of times throughout the day is to keep you metabolism on its toes. The more your metabolism has to work, the faster it will learn to metabolize your food quicker. Once your metabolism increases it’s response, you’re no longer a victim of slow metabolism, but trust me, it takes time for that to build up and you have to be consistent and persistent.

I have laid out a picture of different food groups, I will elaborate more on which to focus on for which type of people.

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Body Builders vs Power Lifters

If you want to become a body builder, you have to start believing in yourself, you have to start thinking like a body builder and have to be disciplined. If you have no fat, in other words, you’re very skinny and want to gain serious mass, you want to start with eating lots of food everyday. I don’t mean junk food but healthy food, I will talk about which food is good for which type of person later. Your calorie intake needs to be more than the calorie you use. That unused calorie will sit in your body and eventually become fat, your body will automatically use that fat as a new source for energy when needed, for example building muscle. When starting weight lifting, always start with low weights for at least a week. You have to work on your form, because If your form is perfect, you won’t get any injuries in the long run. You can tear a ligament, tendon, muscle, break a bone etc, so the form has to be perfected before you can start to lift higher amounts of weight. When I train friends or family, I have them start on 15 lbs max and as the month passes, they reach up to 20lbs, that’s only if their form is good. For beginners, I suggest not doing fast reps since your form might be a little off and you need to focus, so slightly decreasing the the speed of each rep and gently focusing on the weight and your joints to get a clean rep. For people that are skinny, you are looking at doing 8-10 reps max on a certain weight, if you can do more reps on a weight, then you need to increase your weight. The purpose of this type of training is that you don’t burn fat, you’re mainly focusing on tearing up your muscle fibers as deep as you can and only muscle fibers. I will tell you which foods one should eat to gain mass, but for now, remember to keep the reps in the minimum range.

Now, for the people that have a lot of mass and want to loose weight as soon as possible by weight lifting and make muscle. First of all, it’s not easy. You have to be committed, you have to be disciplined and you MUST be patient and very optimistic. It requires a lot of support from family and friends in order to stay persistent. The only way you will get to the goal you want is by remembering your goal 24/7, never sleeping on it and understanding why you want to achieve it. To start, I suggest doing a circuit as soon as you get to the gym. A circuit is doing 2-4 sets of each muscle exercise 15-20 reps. You will get up from one equipment to the next after 5 minutes, don’t wast time! The purpose of doing a lot of reps is to burn as much fat your body possibly can, while still trying to tear muscle fibers. It’s easier to make muscle, than loose fat around the muscle, so you have to work harder than most people that are only building muscle and trying to gain weight.

Introduction to Weight Lifting

There are two types of people you will see at the gym; one that are body builders and others that are power lifters.

The sole purpose of body building is maintaing a desirable amount of muscle while still being shredded and toned. Body builders have strict diets along with 5-7 meals per day to maintain a high metabolism, I will elaborators more on metabolism later but for now, remember that body builders have a goal of creating lean muscle with the lowest amount of body fat possible.

 

Next we have power lifters. These people are physically unattractive and don’t care about physique. Their main purpose is to solely pick up as much weight their body possibly can. These people will have goals such as curling and benching lots of pounds in one heavy set. Power lifter  are very enthusiastic about increasing bench max.

I will elaborate more on both but for now get the bigger picture, body builders want to have a good body physique while power lifters want to lift higher weights.