With spring break come and gone and students settling into their normal day-to-day routines, it is easy to forget that diet and exercise plan toward a bikini-ready body. However the best research suggests that short-term weight loss is very hard to maintain, and instead we should direct our attention toward the future.
“The recommended rate that seems to be sustainable to lose weight is about a pound a week, and much faster weight loss than that has not been successful in the long term,” said Dr. Gary Diffee, a kinesiology professor at The University of Wisconsin-Madison. In addition, vowing to lose a ton of weight within just a few weeks of spring break is not only unreasonable, but unhealthy. The goal is to find those small changes you can make toward a happier, healthier lifestyle that could result in weight loss.
Experts say that most women think they need to do an insane amount of cardio work with little to no strength training.
“We used to be at a place where most of the health benefits we saw were from cardiovascular exercise, and up until about 15 years ago, it was thought that endurance exercise—what people think of as cardio—is what you wanted to do,” Diffee said.
However, there have been two new ways of looking at exercise toward maintaining a healthier self. First, there is this recognition that regardless of how much you work out, most of your day is not spent exercising. Building and maintaining muscle, however, benefits you hours, even days after your strength training session.
“Muscle is a metabolic tissue in that it uses a lot of energy,” Diffee said. “So, an exercise program that strengthens and builds muscles has benefits even when you are done exercising. Muscle continues to use energy and helps with weight loss, and in turn fat loss.”
You will burn a minimum of 100 calories a day for three days following a strength session and an additional 120 calories each day for every three pounds of muscle you build.
Type 2 diabetes is becoming an epidemic in America, and how we maintain muscle mass is directly related. Muscle is the biggest part of the body that handles glucose (sugars). Therefore, increasing activity levels, both through cardiovascular and strengthening activities, can allow our bodies to better manage healthy glucose levels in the long run.
People associate being “toned” with gaining muscle mass. However, this is a myth. It really has to do with burning the fat above your preexisting muscle. When you lose the fat that covers muscle, your body then appears more defined.
“Another place we should adopt a long-term view is people’s overall energy expenditure,” Diffee said. “This will dictate how much overall fat you burn daily, versus the amount burned at the moment of exercise. If you intake more calories than you burn, they will be stored as fat.”
Many women on campus never even touch the weight room facility at the SERF.
“I could never go down there because of all the guys who lift in that room,” said senior Alyssa Grossmann. “It is so hard to feel like you belong because you just don’t, not to mention not knowing how to use the weights properly.”
This trend is most certainly not going to change overnight, but for those girls brave enough to hit the weights, there are a few key insights.
“One reason people are intimidated by weight training is that you can hurt yourself much more easily in the weight room than going on a run on Lakeshore path,” said Diffee. “But, if you start slow and are staying within your limitations for lifting, using lower weights and more repetitions, you will be just as effective.”
The rest just comes from experience and trying to figure out how much weight is comfortable for your muscles. Listen to your body. And for those who are still turned off by the idea of working out in a weight room, there is a greater appreciation for functional strength training.
“This is the idea that expecting everyone to develop the ability to go into the weight room and lift these oddly shaped devices is not exactly ideal,” said Diffee. “Instead, you can incorporate strength training into your day-to-day activities, in other words, using your body to weight train.”
Most of us weigh 100 to 200 pounds, which is a decent amount of weight to lift. Exercises that use your body as the lifting mechanism, such as push ups, pull ups, squats and lunges are the perfect way to strength train, sometimes even without having to leave your house.
If you fall prey to the 90-10 split between cardio and strength, don’t use spring break as a short-term motivator for attaining that toned body, but rather use it as a stepping stone to start this 50-50 lifestyle. Strength training is more than just the looks and the reputation behind “pumping iron.” It is about a healthier you.
