According to the National Center for Health Statistics, the average weight for an adult female in the United States is:
• 5 feet 4 inches tall and weighs 162.9 pounds (1)
• The average American consumes 3,750 calories PER DAY! (2)
(1) This statistic for the average height and weight for an adult female is from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) conducted from 1999-2002.
(2) http://www.diet-blog.com/archives/2006/12/27/do_americans_eat_3790_calories_per_day.php
A pound of body fat equates to approximately 3500 calories. So if you have a calorie deficit of 500 calories (meaning that you burn 500 calories more than you eat each day) you would lose approximately one pound per week:
500 calories x 7 days= 3,500 calories per week
It's easy to see that a calorie deficit of 1000 calories would mean that you'd lose approximately two pounds per week. And that's a good number to remember, because two pounds a week is commonly accepted as the maximum rate of weight loss that is healthy.
For the average women in the US, you should weigh between 111 and 132 pounds. That’s 30 to 50 pounds you MUST lose in order to GAIN health. This means you’ll need to burn an extra 1283 calories EACH AND EVERY DAY to lose 30 pounds!
In today’s busy world, how do you take the time to burn off 1283 calories per day? Actually it’s pretty easy. The first is start with your diet. Eating healthy well portion meals and having healthy snacks throughout the day is first, next is having a structured fitness program that mixes weights and cardio and provides a “multiplier” effect to keep the calories burning for at least 12-24 hours after the work out.
Let’s focus on the physical training.
Burn NINE TIMES More Fat.
Essentially, we are going to combine weight training (using medicine balls) exercises with proven rapid fat loss High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) protocols.
Interval training is a form of exercise where you alternate between bouts of high-intensity maximum effort and low to moderate-intensity active recovery. In 1994, researchers for The Metabolism Journal discovered the following: each calorie you expend during high-intensity exercise burns nine times more fat than the same calorie expended during steady state aerobic exercise! HIIT accomplishes this in the following ways:
- Embraces the Carb-Burning Zone: High-Intensity exercise rapidly reduces muscle glycogen (stored sugar) during training, promoting enhanced total body fat-burning at all other times of day.
- Burns a TON of Calories Both During AND After Exercise: This phenomenon is due to the post-workout “AFTERBURN” know as EPOC which describes the number of calories your body expends in the recovery of your metabolism back to pre-exercise levels from high intensity training. The best part about EPOC is that you control it, meaning that the harder you work during training the more calories your body will burn BOTH during your workout AND for up to 24-48 hours after completing your workout!
- Creates the Optimal Hormonal Environment for Fat Loss: High-Intensity exercise puts your body in a “fight or flight” mode that forces your body to CHANGE as a means of survival. More specifically, your body releases catecholamines (primarily adrenaline) in response to interval training that directly mobilizes stored body fat so that it can be burnt off as energy during activity.
So, what’s the best interval training protocol to use? Well, there is really no BEST interval training protocol but there are a lot of good ones. One of our favorite interval protocols are Tabata Intervals where you alternate between 20 seconds of work and 10 s of rest for a total of eight times for a fat-smashing four-minute workout. This workout is scientifically proven to promote greater fat loss and fitness gains than 60 minutes of the long, slow, boring aerobic training alternative:
Breakthrough Interval Training Study- The Tabata Protocol
Tabata I, Nishimura K, Kouzaki M, Hirai Y, Ogita F, Miyachi M, Yamamoto K.
Department of Physiology and Biomechanics, National Institute of Fitness and Sports,
Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan. PMID: 8897392 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
- Greater Fat Loss: ONLY four minutes of intervals burned just as much fat as 60 minutes of moderate aerobic training. This means that for every second of exercise performed, interval training burns EXPONENTIALLY more body fat than the moderate aerobic training alternative.
- Greater Fitness: Interval Training results in maximal improvements in both aerobic and anaerobic capacity, where moderate aerobic training only causes improvements in aerobic capacity. In addition, the aerobic improvements were greater with the interval group. In other words, Interval Training offers greater improvements in both anaerobic AND aerobic capacity in much less time than the aerobic alternative.
Mile High Karate and Unlimited Success is offering a FREE informational class on Saturday October 24th at 11AM to 12:30 PM. RSVP to Mark McGee (972-390-7161) or reply privately to secure your place at this event. Bring some clothes to work out and a notebook to take notes. This highly educational event will cover trends in obesity and how we as parent’s can counteract this disturbing trend.
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