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Toning with Weights

The combination of weight training, aerobic exercise and sound eating habits have shown to be the most effective for fat loss and toning. Toning is simply the simultaneous decrease of fat and restoration of muscle. Every year after the age of 25, the average American gains one pound of body weight yet loses one third to one half pound of muscle. Consequently, our resting metabolism decreases approximately one half of a percent every year. Proper exercise and sound eating habits can reverse this process.

While aerobic exercise burns fat during exercise, anaerobic exercises, like weight training or sprints (such as high intensity interval training), utilize fat hours after exercise. Weight training can also increase the metabolic rate a second way. It restores muscle tissue that had been lost over the years from a sedentary modern life-style, thus improving the aesthetics of the body by accentuating its curves and shape. Furthermore, one pound of muscle burns approximately 30-50 Calories per day. In contrast, a pound of fat only burns about three Calories per day. This may not seem significant considering one pound of fat contains 3500 Calories. Although, over the course of years, it adds up.

Weight training exercises that use large muscle groups (e.g. Gluteus Maximus, Quadriceps, Hamstrings, Chest, and Back exercises) with a progressively greater resistance have the most potential for restoring lean body weight and raising the metabolism hours after exercise.

Most people do not have to be worried about getting too big when training with weights. Evidence suggests that less than 20 percent of men and very few women can develop large muscles even if they wanted to, regardless what program they follow. Bodybuilders seen on TV typically, have trained for years, poses a certain degree of genetics, and most likely, have used anabolic steroids sometime in their careers.

When beginning an exercise program, muscle mass increases may initially out pace fat loss, resulting in a very small temporary weight gain. When exercise can be increased over time, more significant fat loss can occur. Unless an exerciser is highly motivated, actual weight loss (i.e. as numbers on the scale, as opposed to simply fat loss, which is visible or can be mesaured through a body composition test) is usually only seen with particular dietary improvements.

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Dietary Guidelines

Eat small meals every 2.5 to 4 hours or eat 3 meals and 2 or 3 snacks distributed throughout the day
- Eat 3 food groups every meal
- Eat 2 food groups every snack

Plan meals around moderate or intense exercise
- Plan snack or meal 1 to 2 hours before
- Eat high carbohydrates meal very soon after exercise: carbohydrates and quality proteins in approximately a 4:1 ratio, 10 – 20% of total daily caloric intake

Eat protein and carbohydrates every meal or snack

Eat lower fat Meat or Meat Substitute or Milk every meal or snack

Eat Starch or Fruit every meal or snack

Combine foods to compliment proteins (optimizes amino acid ratio)
- Eat legumes (beans, peas, lentils, peanuts) with grains, seeds, or nuts
- Eat grains with milk or cheese.

Eat a variety of fruits and vegetables daily

Eat vitamin C rich foods
- At least 1 serving a day
- Citrus fruit, tomatoes, fresh melons, strawberries

Eat cruciferous vegetables (cabbage family)
- At least 3 servings per week
- Cabbage, broccoli, brussel sprouts, kohlrabi, cauliflower

Eat vitamin A rich foods
- At least 1 serving every other day
- Dark leafy greens, and dark yellow foods

Eat foods with fiber
- whole grains, vegetables, fruit, and legumes (beans, peas, lentils)

Eat calcium rich foods
- Milk, yogurt, cheese
- Green leafy vegetables, tofu, canned salmon, sardines, or jack mackerel (with tiny bone particles), figs, almonds.

Make lower fat and healthier fat choices
- Cook with little or no oil
- Roast, bake, broil, grill, poach, steam, or boil instead of frying

Keep saturated fat intake low
- Eat leaner meats or meat substitutes
- Remove skin from poultry
- Lower fat milk and yogurt
- Choose lower fat snacks
- Limit hydrogenated fat (used in products to increase shelf life)

Consume moderate poly-unsaturated and mono-unsaturated fats
- nuts, olive oil, salad dressing, mayonnaise

Limit refined foods
- White bread and cereals, soda pop, sweets, alcohol
- Eat whole foods whenever possible

Limit cured and smoked products
- salt-cured, smoked, nitrite cured foods

Eat a variety of foods from each food group every day
- Try new foods

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Hehe, I kind of like that lol

Yeah this can be a difficult area for women. Interestingly, it's mostly hormonal - the more estrogen a person has the more likely that fat will be stored there (which is why you don't really see it on men too much).

Basically our bodies are pre-programmed from birth with hormones and genes as to where our fat will be stored. You can't really target fat loss (what they call 'spot reduction') - that code tells your body where it will put on fat first when it starts storing fat, and consequently where the last place it will lose that fat. (For most women, those stubborn places are the abs, the butt/thighs/hips and the triceps.)

But it's only through bringing your body fat levels down *in general* that that stubborn fat will finally go away. Basically, that just means watching your diet, and doing some cardio (which I know you do lots of already ). Obviously weight training plays a big role in this too because more muscle = faster metabolism = faster fat loss.

So, it's kind of a two-sided coin: because of hormones/genes and fat loss, working your triceps won't necessarily cause you to lose the fat there. Rather, any kind of weight training will help to speed up your metabolism and, combined with diet and cardio, help you lose fat all over. However, working your triceps muscles WILL make your triceps bigger, which means you have to lose less fat to make them show up. So definitely keep working your triceps - the best exercises for this are dips (where you kind of stretch yourself across 2 benches with your feet on one and your arms on the other and your butt hanging mid-air, and then you dip yourself down using your arms and then lift yourself back up - if this is too easy you can put a plate on your lap, or if it's too hard most gyms have assisted dip machines too), and dumbbell or barbell tricep extensions (linked above).

The 'spot reduction myth' is the reason that people can do 100 crunches everyday but do no other exercise and not eat well and never, ever see those abs. They might have a very nicely defined midsection, it's just covered by a layer of fat. Or, you probably have really nice triceps at this point, it's just that stubborn last bit of fat to lose that's covering them up.

Unfortunately, the other factor in this part of the body is SKIN, right? The skin gets really stretched out and even after you lose some fat it takes it a while to shrink down. But it will shrink down to fit the muscle/fat that's left. It will just take some time. You can buy some creams and such that purport to help speed up the process but I'm not sure how effective those are.

Shell had/has this same problem and I think there's a thread either on this or the living room board that goes into it (basically she was trying to avoid surgery because hers were so bad). Laurel YOU ROCK... you cover so much, it is great!! Here is the thread on MY flab!! hehehe web page

Whew! I didn't expect that reply to be so long...! lol HTH!


Edit: here's a pic of the bench dip exercise I was trying to explain (not very well!): web page

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