Every weight loss program that is worth its money will tell you that if you want to effectively lose weight, and if you want to prevent that you gain all the weight back that you lose, you need to make two lasting changes in your lifestyle: You need to eat healthier, and you need to be more physically active.
Healthy eating means to consume fewer calories and especially to ensure that the calories you eat don’t exceed the calories you burn during your daily activities. Physical activity can be anything from taking your dog for a walk, riding your bicycle to work, climbing stairs, play soccer with your kids, go to the gym or enroll in team sports.
The most important thing is that you are physically active. It doesn’t really matter what kind of activity you do. Any additional activity in your life will help you to lose weight. Nevertheless, different activities or levels and duration of activities will have different effects on your energy consumption.
Muscle building and weight loss
An excellent activity to assist in weight loss is muscle building training. This can either be a pure muscle building training at the gym, or a sport that requires lots of muscle work. Riding a bike, for example, will build your leg muscles.
The great thing about building muscle is that one the one hand you burn calories whilst doing it, and on the other hand muscle is an excellent energy burner. Meaning that the more muscle you have, the more calories you burn when they come to work. And the more calories you burn, the easier it is to lose weight.
But it takes more to build muscle than just exercising them. You also need to feed them properly. You need to eat the right things at the right time.
How to support muscle building by eating right
Your muscles need energy to grow, and this energy they draw from carbohydrates. If you eat the right carbohydrates at the right time, then this will help your muscles to grow:
Eat complex carbohydrates before a workout
Eat simple carbohydrates after a workout
1. Complex carbohydrates before the workout
Complex carbohydrates are absorbed and metabolized slower than simple carbohydrates. Therefore, they provide a steady stream of energy for a longer period, giving you the energy to do your workout. They are stored in your body and converted to energy during your workout. So, you should eat more complex carbohydrate foods in general and especially before the workout.
Besides helping you to build muscle, eating foods rich in complex carbohydrates also prevents you from overeating, since most of these foods are also high in fiber, meaning they fill you quicker and for longer. Many also contain proteins but (in contrary to animal products) are low in fat. These are additional benefits for your weight loss. These foods should anyways be a main food group in your new healthy diet.
Foods rich in complex carbohydrates are:
- grains (wheat, barley, buckwheat, rye)
- whole grain products (whole grain bread/ pasta/ cereals)
- legumes (dried beans, lentils)
- potatoes
- rice
- corn
- bananas
2. Simple carbohydrates
Simple carbohydrates are excellent for giving you a quick energy boost, since they are absorbed and metabolized quickly. But they can’t be a steady source of energy. If you draw your energy mainly from simple carbohydrate foods, then you need to eat these fairly often and you could easily eat more than you should. And if you do, then all calories you don’t burn will be stored as extra fat. Not quite what you want when you’re trying to lose weight.
Yet, simple carbohydrates do play their role in our diet. After sports, for example, or in our case after your muscle building workout, your body needs energy quickly to replenish its glycogen level quickly. This will lead to an increased insulin level, and insulin is at that moment important to ensure a good absorption of nutrients by your body cells, which will feed your muscles and help them to build new tissue and grow.
So, eating simple carbohydrate foods after sports is a good thing. But you should then choose healthy foods like fruit which also contain fiber and many other nutrients, not chocolate or cookies.
Healthy foods rich in simple carbohydrates are:
- apples
- black-, cran-, rasp- and strawberries
- citrus fruits (orange, grapefruit, lemon)
- cherries
- kiwis
- melons
- peaches
- pears
- plums
Conclusion
For faster and easier weight loss and weight maintenance without much worries, include some muscle building activities in your exercise program - specific training or simply a sport or activity that makes your muscles work a lot (most sports will do that). Feed your muscles the right things: mainly complex carbohydrates for lasting energy and endurance, and right after your sports or training some healthy simple carbohydrate foods to restore your glycogen level and increase the absorption of nutrients so that your muscles get all they need to grow. This way, you can burn more calories (thus lose more weight) and bring your body into shape at the same time.
Related Posts
Read more...
