I have talked about this a lot lately with my clients and board members. Here is a quick run down of what fat loss is.
Fat loss is the removal of stored body fat from your body. In order to achieve fat loss you need to be in a deficit of energy. Meaning what it takes to run your body for a day, you need to consume less than that. If your body needs 2,000 kcal of energy to run, and you consume 1,500 calories, you are in the negative by 500 calories.
Take away the numbers and think about what that really means. Your body, in order to function properly, needs a certain amount of energy.
One could compare this to say, a flashlight. Oh, here comes another analogy!!!
A flashlight running 100% on charged batteries shines bright, is lucid, and performs perfectly when needed for a task. What happens when those batteries start to drain of energy?
The light is less bright, performance is shaky, and the crystal clear stream of light is now muddy.
You know how it is when the batteries are almost dead, you start to bang the flashlight to get those extra jolts of connection before that moment where the fat lady has sung, and no more power.
NOW, imagine your body if that flashlight. As time goes on your batteries are running low. How are you going to feel?
- Less lucid, foggy
- easily emotional
- fatigue
- hunger
- harder to wake up in the morning
- muscle soreness
- sadness
- insomia
These are not symptoms of overtraining. These are symptoms of fat loss.
Think about it folks – you are removing a physical substance from your body. It was once there but you are trying to take it away. You might say, “well, I put it on easily. Taking it away can’t be that hard. ”
When is the last time you glued something? How easy was that to get on? How much of a pain in the ass was it to get off?
Just fat loss alone doesn’t feel good, it shouldn’t feel good. Anyone that tells you that either doesn’t know, or doesn’t want you to know. That doesn’t mean fat loss can’t be good for you in the long run. It just means what you have to endure while getting there is a real task to be undertaken.
This is why I try to get my clients to lose fat as quick as they can, but as safely as they can. So that “The Drain Effect” doesn’t turn into what we are going to talk about in part 2.
Part 2: The Drain Effect
In the last section, we talked about how even smart fat loss can leave you not feeling great. Now we are going to talk about what happens when you take this effect to another level, or allow it to go on for too long.
Some clients have come to me having been on a diet, in one form or another, for the majority of their life. They have had short bouts of breaks, but for the most part life for them has been a never-ending cycle of starve and stuff. This would be fine is they actually achieved something with it. Usually, they take one or both to the extreme,and end up worse off than they began. Combine this with aggressive training in aerobics and lifting, and we receive a ticket to overtraining.
Now before I dive right in, yes, I am mixing the two together. This is not a conversation about just overtraining. Most of the following problems can occur by eating a low caloric diet for too long if you aren’t training, AND some of these problems can present themselves if you aren’t taking good training rests even if your feeding is on point.
Good? Moving on.
If you don’t feed your body well enough for an extended period of time what do you think is going to happen?
What if you decided to drive your car with little to no oil day after day after day? Stuff would start wearing down, wouldn’t it? It wouldn’t be functioning right.
The concept is really pretty simple. If you dirve hard, fuel hard. YOU CAN’T CHEAT THE BODY. Go ahead though, defy the law. Here is what to look for if you do.
- Sudden inability to complete workouts
- Feeling unmotivated and lacking energy
- Increased susceptibility to colds, sore throats, and other illnesses
- Extremely hungry or not hungry at all
- Decrease in performance
- Long standing Insomnia
- Aches or pain in the muscles and/or joints for longer periods
- Fatigue
- Headaches
- Elevated morning pulse
- Decreased body temperature
- Decrease lab levels in vitamins and thyroid
- Anxiety/depression
- Hair shedding
In short, you don’t feel so hot and why should you, your running on empty over and over again. Did I mention how not good for fat loss this is?
So what is the best method to assure yourself that you are training for fat loss, but not burning yourself out?
How do we gauge the middle ground that leads us to the ultimate goal we have?
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