Before we look at the Super Health 7 exercise system, here’s why strength building is so crucial. First of all, without resistance exercises, studies tell us that between the ages of 20 and 30 we begin to lose muscle, and this continues with aging. Loss of muscle slows our body metabolism, leading to fewer calories burned naturally by the body.
Keep in mind that one pound of muscle is thought to burn about 35 calories a day! So, typically, as we age, we lose muscle and gain fat simultaneously, often without noticing it. We may eat the same number of calories and just keep adding the pounds, because of the change in our body composition and progressive loss of digestive efficiency.
Think about it. In an over-simplistic world, there are 3,500 calories stored in every pound of fat. If you were to gain 10 pounds of muscle or lean body mass through exercise, you increase your metabolic rate by about 350 calories a day (10 x 35 calories). Over a period of just 10 days, those 10 new pounds of muscle will burn off one pound of body fat naturally. Think of the new you that’s possible and how much better you would feel, and it all happens naturally. Even if you add only five pounds of muscle, that’s 175 extra calories burned a day and 63,875 calories or 18 pounds a year. Moreover, when you follow the Four Corners Program, along with my other Golden Keys, you will greatly compound the results! Superfood nutrition and optimal protein intake is also a necessary component to successfully growing new muscle. (See “The Dynamic Role of Protein in Weight Loss” and “The Four Corners of Superfood Nutrition.”)
The second reason why strength building is so crucial regards what happens when you are overweight or obese and are carrying a high percentage of body fat. Despite your body fat, your body has built up strong muscles in order to carry the extra weight. If you are able to retain all of that muscle mass while you are losing body fat, you can maintain all the benefits of the high metabolism that comes with lean muscle. However, if you only rely upon a diet, you’re going to lose existing muscle mass, which is a primary reason why so many diets fail. And most cardio exercises do little to build or retain muscle mass.
I can’t stress this enough. If you lose muscle mass, your metabolism will slow. Lean body mass burns calories day in and day out, even when you’re asleep. As I explained earlier in the book, many faithful dieters lose a considerable amount of weight and are lighter for a time, but in the process they have lost so much muscle mass that it is suddenly much easier to put on body fat. Almost inevitably they end up putting back on more weight than they lost, so they launch into another diet, only to get heavier while losing more muscle mass.
The solution to this dilemma is to utilize the Super Health 7 strength training exercises to maintain your existing muscle mass while you are losing weight. Increasingly, you gain a higher proportion of lean body mass to body fat and help your body achieve its natural, God-given strength and fitness. If you’re a man, those muscles will show. If you’re a woman, using these exercises you absolutely will never bulk up or become muscle bound like a man because of the lower level of testosterone that women have in their systems as compared to men. You will gain strength, but your muscles will be pleasing to the eye. On the other hand, you can get ripped, toned, and add to your muscle mass in a natural-looking way that will get heads to turn.
Your goal is to keep your metabolism at its peak. If through dieting alone you lose four pounds but one pound of that is muscle, you’re losing when you think you’re gaining. The scale isn’t lying, but you’re being tricked nevertheless. Absolutely, you want to lose four pounds, but there’s no reason why you need to lose muscle in the process. You’ve simply got to challenge your muscular system through some body-weight resistance exercise along with following the Four Corners of Superfood Nutrition, including protein nutrition, in this book.
The third reason that strength training is essential is that it will accelerate the speed of your weight loss effort. It can as much as double the effectiveness of your weight loss program, and it is the key to the future. Some people can keep weight off just by modifying their diet alone, but keep in mind that exercise is not just about weight loss; it is about Super Health.
The fourth reason is that the Super Health 7 system of strength training delivers superb results while protecting your joints, ligaments, tendons, and muscles, in contrast to lifting weights. Your body is designed to be healthy; it’s not supposed to hurt. If you use and mobilize all your joints in a natural way, as these exercises do, they will not hurt. If you’re not using those joints, then you’re going to lose their range of motion, which will bring on pain. Many people who say that chronic pain is related to aging are really confusing cause and effect. It’s not the fact that we’re aging; it’s that we’ve stopped using our entire body.
By the way, if you think that lifting heavy weights is essential to building muscle size, it’s simply not true. The August 2010 journal of PLoS ONE published a study by a team of researchers from McMaster University (Ontario, Canada) that counters this prevailing notion. Nicholas Burd and colleagues assessed the effect of resistance exercise intensity and volume on muscle protein synthesis, anabolic signaling, and myogenic gene expression, enrolling 15 men to lift light weights that represented a percentage of what the subjects could maximally lift. At 30 percent, the team observed that subjects could lift that weight at least 24 times before they felt fatigue. The researchers report that: “These results suggest that low-load high volume resistance exercise is more effective in inducing acute muscle anabolism than high-load low volume or work-matched resistance exercise modes.”126 In other words, low tension/weight with higher volume/reps is more effective in growing muscle.
KC Craichy
Author
The Super Health Diet
