Hit the track and pump the iron.

Hey everybody. I had a really hard time choosing a topic for this post. I had a few good suggestions but I decided to tackle the misconception that running is the key to weight loss.

There’s no doubt about it. Running will help you burn calories. You can easily burn 1,000 calories on a long run, but that is where it ends. Weight training has a longer lasting effect. Allow me to explain the difference. When you run your body will take any fuel it has available. If you have food in your digestive tract your body will convert that into energy. After that‘s been burned, your body will indiscriminately take stores of fat and muscle alike to sustain itself during a run. When you train with weights your body is tearing muscle and then rebuilding it over time. This rebuilding process takes quite a bit of energy. Once your muscle is torn it will be rebuilt tighter, bigger, and stronger than before. This new muscle will burn more calories throughout the day to sustain itself. Weight training is also a nice excuse to eat carbs. I’ve already advised you to cut back on carb consumption for a healthier body, but when you lift weights you need to eat carbs to maintain and rebuild the muscles you’re training. Just remember to eat your carbs before and after your workout and keep your consumption limited throughout the rest of the day.

Essentially, the more muscle you build the easier it is to lose weight and maintain muscle. There’s a lot of opposing research on both sides of the argument of cardio vs. weight training. Let me make myself clear. I support a strong cardio program on top of a prominent weight training regiment. If you’re going to run 5 miles every day you will slim down rapidly. You’ll lose a lot of fat and have a very healthy cardiovascular system but you‘ll probably lose a little muscle mass as well. If you’re not willing to run quite that far and you want a tighter upper body then I think you need to add weights to your exercise regiment.

From my own experiences talking with men and women I’ve found that they just want to lose some inches on the waist, lose the flab on their thighs and underarms, and just get a bit more toned. The average person doesn’t want to bench or squat 300 pounds. I’m here to tell you that weight training is not going to get you huge by itself. The gargantuan guys and girls you see in competitions eat up to 6,000 calories or more per day and they take supplements of every kind to maintain their bodies. A weight training routine consisting of light to moderate weight and high repetition will result in a toned body. It will add lean muscle mass to your body and this muscle will burn more calories throughout the day. Even when you sleep your body will burn more calories if you weight train. So please don’t just hit the treadmill or the track when you want to tone up. Make sure to pump a little iron too. Toning up your body will become so much easier than simply attempting to decrease fat stores.

Wrapping it Up.

Just remember to have a nice balance of both cardio and weight training. Tone up those muscles to burn the calories throughout the day and then pound the pavement to keep up the health of your heart and lungs.

Restaurant Blip. Panera Bread has just added a detailed nutrition calculator on their website. I am extremely impressed by their initiative. They have a detailed breakdown of all their food products and the individual stats of all the major ingredients. You can now combine multiple items off the menu so you know exactly how many calories you're consuming. Bravo Panera Bread!