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10 Exercise Workout You Can Do At Home

Need a workout you can do at home in about 20 minutes? Do the following 10 exercises with 1 minute breaks between each exercise. Total time should be less than 1 hour to complete. Do each exercise for 1 minute.

All of these exercises require zero equipment, so they're extremely frugal.

#1. Knee Highs

#2. Jumping Jacks

#3. Squats

#4. Lunges

#5. Plank Leg Raises

#6. Climbers

#7. Bicycle Crunches

#8. Leg raises

#9. Knee pull ins

#10. Push-ups

Got extra time after completing all 10 exercises? Not tired yet? Start over again!

You can do the above workout once per week, once per day, twice per day - whatever fits your schedule and needs. You can do them at the park, at the beach, in a hotel room while on vacation. Because the above workout requires zero equipment it makes it very versatile.

You can also customize the workout and add / subtract things to it, design it to fit your individual needs. Need more help? Hire a personal trainer. If you live in the Leaside area Toronto consider hiring me as your personal trainer.

For more frugal exercises subscribe to Cardio Trek
 and browse our frugal exercises section.

Buff Vs Obese, Why BMI is confusing to muscular people

Yesterday I wrote a post on the topic of stubborn belly fat titled: Why is it so hard for skinny people to shed the last few pounds?

During the post I talked about how people get too obsessed with trying to weight a specific amount because they have been looking at BMI charts and think that they need to be a specific weight in order to be healthy / attractive.

On the right here you see two cartoon people, both are 6 feet tall and both weigh 250 lbs. Lets call them Dave and Bob.

Dave is extremely muscular and weighs a hefty 250 lbs. Bob in contrast, weighs the same amount but has a lot more fat than muscle. The trick here is that fat takes up more space than muscle, because muscle is actually heavier than fat. 1 lb of fat takes up lots of space, whereas 1 lb of muscle takes up very little space. Thus even though they look very different, Dave and Bob still end up weighing the same.

And having the exact same BMI measurement of 33.9. Which is so heavy it isn't even on the chart below, because this chart only goes up to 215 lbs.

But what we do know is that 33.9 is in the low 30s, so that is the lower half of obese which ranges from 30.0 to 39.9. 40.0 or higher would be extremely obese.

However there is an obvious problem. Nobody in their right mind would call Dave obese. He looks like a bodybuilder. Thus the BMI chart is flawed because it ignores the possibility that a person might have more muscle mass (or possibly even more bone density, which is a factor people often ignore).

Thus we need better ways of measuring body weight / obesity. Well luckily there are ways to do that.

The following three methods are recommended.

#1. Body Adiposity Index

BAI multiplies your hip circumference by your height. Although clinical studies have not shown any proof, it is widely believed that Body Adiposity Index is more accurate than BMI as the resulting figures are approximate. BAI is also useful in areas whenever scales are not be available.

#2. Waist Circumference Measurement

Ah, the old fashioned tape measure. By measuring the natural waist you can get a good indication of the amount of abdominal fat you are carrying. Knowing the circumference of your waist can help determine your risk of getting heart disease and other medical conditions. According to physicians, the following figures indicate individuals in the 'at risk' group:

Women with a waist circumference of 35 inches and over.
Men with a waist circumference of 40 inches and over.

#3. Waist-to-Hip Ratio

The waist-to-hip ratio is not only an excellent way of calculating how much excess weight you are carrying, it can also be used to indicate susceptibility to a number of health issues, including high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes.

Using a tape measure, take a reading from your natural waist line and the widest part of your hips. Now divide the circumference of your waist by your hip circumference measurement. The World Health Organization considers abdominal obesity is represented by a waist–hip ratio above 0.90 for males and above 0.85 for females.

The following two methods are NOT recommended.

#4. Hydrostatic Weighing

Hydrostatic weighing is NOT an effective way of calculating body fat. The weighing process takes place underwater on a chair that is placed on a zeroed out set of scales. You then sit on the chair before exhaling all the air from you lungs and then placing your head underwater. Once the scales stabilize, your weight is then noted down. The resulting figure is then passed through a series of formulas which, ultimately, produces a body-fat reading based on the buoyancy of your body fat. That is a hugely inaccurate way of measuring body fat however as it ignores muscle buoyancy, ignores bone density, ignores how much air might be in your lungs, etc. So don't bother.

#5. Body Fat Measuring

By using a special set of callipers skin and fat measurements are taken from the waist, shoulder blades, biceps and triceps. The resulting readings, in millimeters, are added up to produce a single figure. The figure is then plotted against a chart that takes the patient's sex, age and measurement into consideration to determine the body-fat percentage figure. In theory the higher the body fat, the higher your risk of suffering from obesity-related conditions. However this method also suffers from inaccuracy as it also is confused by measurements due to saggy skin / very elastic skin, a more muscular physique, and even factors like disproportionate body shape.



Conclusions? Maybe stop worrying about the numbers and just exercise because you enjoy feeling healthy. It doesn't matter HOW you do it. Just enjoy doing it.


Why is it so hard for skinny people to shed the last few pounds?

Q

"Hello! I have lost a lot of weight over the past 3 years - over 50 lbs - and my friends now describe me as skinny. However I still don't have abs. I have checked out other websites and articles on this topic, but nobody seems to have a proper answer for why is it so hard for skinny people to shed the last few pounds so I can see my abs? These days when I lose weight I only seem to lose muscle weight instead of fat, so I am definitely doing something wrong.

- Anonymous"

A

Hey there!

Many people have the same problem you do. They get down close to their desired weight and then they have difficulty attaining the desired number and the feeling / look of physical perfection they were hoping for.

Often people lose weight due to a combination of healthy diet, exercise and lifestyle changes, but when they try to get something specific - like great looking abs, they find that everything they try doesn't seem to get rid of that last bit of fat layer on top of their abs. The stubborn fat that just won't leave.

Part of the problem is that your body composition has changed dramatically... and to explain this I am going to need to use an example:

Bob started off weighing 250 lbs and was overweight. He lost 50 lbs and now he weighs 200 lbs, but he still has some stubborn belly fat that he just cannot get rid of. He tries dieting, he tries jogging and other cardio activities, but the stubborn belly fat just won't leave. Indeed, he does lose weight during these attempts, but what he discovers is that he seems to be getting weaker, not thinner. His body is cannibalizing muscle tissue instead of using up his fat reserves.

This is because his body composition has reached a point where he has very little fat left to choose from but he has plenty of muscle his body can cannibalize for energy. Thus when Bob loses weight due to doing lots of cardio, he loses a lot of muscle weight and his body fat doesn't seem to change.

Bob also has it stuck in his head that he wants to weigh 180 lbs because he is 6'0" tall and he has consulted a BMI chart that states that being 200 lbs and 6'0" tall means that he is overweight because he has a BMI of 27.

So how should Bob fix this problem?

#1. Bob needs to stop worrying about his BMI and stop trying to weigh a specific amount. There is no "cruise control" for your weight. Everyone is different. Some people are not meant to weigh the amount they think they should weigh. Instead they need to change their focus to being healthier and worry less about the numbers.

#2. Bob needs to try a new way of exercising, one that won't decrease his muscle tissue. In Bob's case he should try weightlifting instead of cardio - and building muscle instead of trying to shed fat. He can do this one of three ways:

  1. Switch his cardio regimen to a purely weightlifting regimen.
  2. Split his exercise regimen to half cardio and half weightlifting.
  3. Gradually change from a cardio regimen to a weightlifting regimen, possibly 10% more weightlifting per week and gradually reduce the amount of cardio by 10% per week.
 By building muscle instead of trying to reduce fat, especially in combination with abdominal exercises if his goal is to have more pronounced abdominal muscles, Bob would end up building up muscle tissue and restricting his body to using ONLY fat stores for energy instead of using a combination of fat and muscle for energy. I recommend starting off with a gradual approach (eg. option 3 above) and focusing on core muscles (chest, abs, back muscles) first to build a strong foundation.

#3. It is possible Bob might also have a high cholesterol problem that is clogging arteries and preventing energy from being transferred in a healthy manner from fat tissue to his muscles during exercise. A low cholesterol diet might be beneficial to see if it helps make Bob more energetic, give him more endurance and change his blood sugar levels.

You can get those "six pack abs" you are looking for, but it will take extra time and effort to shed those stubborn last few lbs of fat - and it might mean you have to build up lbs of muscle during the process, just so you are not accidentally cannibalizing muscle tissue.

That means that in Bob's case he might actually put on weight and become a more muscular 220 lbs instead of his desired weight of 180 lbs and skinny. Maybe Bob is meant to look more like a muscular caveman than he was hoping for.

And this goes the same for the ladies out there. Many women have it stuck in their heads that women with muscles is unattractive. Absolute nonsense. Amazons are beautiful. Thus for women, sometimes the answer to shedding those last few lbs isn't more cardio. Maybe it is time to accept that you are an Amazon at heart and that your ideal body isn't a skinny mini, but a strong and beautiful Amazon.



Training Montages - What they get right and get wrong

"There is a saying, a very old saying: When the pupil is ready the master will appear."
- Zorro, played by Anthony Hopkins, in The Mask of Zorro

Movies in my experience are the worst ways to learn anything. They trivialize the act of training for months or years down to a training montage that lasts less than 4 minutes. Like in the montages below for The Mask of Zorro, Rocky Balboa and Captain America.

The Mask of Zorro Training Montage


Rocky Balboa Training Montage


Captain America Training Montage


Now how many things in the above 3 montage videos did they actually get right?

#1. Attacking in anger is apparently something not to do, and a bit of a trope.
#2. Lots of physically challenging stuff.
#3. Stay aware of your surroundings.
#4. Use brains over brawn - the flagpole exercise in Captain America is actually supposed to be a team building exercise, wherein they form a human ladder to get the flag.
#5. The videos work as motivation inspiration for people who want to exercise / train for a specific sport or activity.

Watching the videos won't make a person a better swordsman, a professional boxer or a super soldier - that much is clear. Most of what you see in the videos are just there for entertainment purposes - designed to look good, funny, impressive, all the while ignoring the long training process it actually took to get there. After all - they can't bore the audience with 3 months worth of footage. They have to boil it down, which is why training montages typically last 3 minutes, the amount of time that a typical audience can watch something without getting bored.

In contrast some TV shows actually get more real exercises into their shows, mostly because of two things: 1. They are not crippled by a 120 minutes of normal film run time and instead have perhaps twenty 44 minute long episodes to work with. 880 minutes means they can get a fair amount of training time in, a little bit in each episode. Take for example the compilation video below from the TV show "Arrow", in which they often mix training scenes with dramatic dialogue in order to convey the idea that the hero is continuously training, and they save time regularly by mixing the training scenes with dialogue. Bonus - Many of the training things, like handstand pushups for example, are actually doable by people looking for a challenge.

Compilation of Workout Scenes from the TV show "Arrow"


There is one issue that many training montages either skip over or pay only lip service to:

The need for an instructor.

Some training montages skip having an instructor entirely, some manage to have one but take more of a "wax on, wax off" approach (as per The Karate Kid franchise), and then wanders off while the student trains alone.

In The Mask of Zorro, we have Don Diego De La Vega, who takes a more hands on approach - but apparently also spends half the time drinking wine and smoking cigars.

In Rocky Balboa he has multiple people helping him train, but they're not really teaching him anything new that he doesn't already know.

In Captain America the instructor is replaced by an army drill sergeant who really spends more time yelling at and insulting his troops rather than teaching them anything.

In Arrow, the hero has multiple different instructors - who all inevitably seem to end up dead, and then he ends up training others.

The "dead instructor" is even a bit of a trope in films, as they often train the hero of the story and often ends up dead either after training the hero, turns out to be the villain and then dies, dies halfway through the story, etc. In films meant for children the instructor is often injured or kidnapped instead of dying, as death is considered to be too much of a downer for kids.

Examples:

Obi Wan in Star Wars, dies after he only partially trains Luke Skywalker.

Yoda in Star Wars, dies after he finishes training Luke Skywalker.

Splinter of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise, is kidnapped during the first film.

It is basically classic storytelling: The master / instructor / teacher is kidnapped / injured / killed and then the hero(es) must go and rescue / avenge their fallen master.

Now in real life, if you get a trainer / instructor, they don't normally die unless it is of old age*. (In which case, if they are that old, why haven't they retired yet?)

They train you, often once per week or maybe several times per week, and the only negative part of this relationship is that they send you a bill for their services once per month roughly.

In conclusion training montages are really only good for motivating yourself to go exercise, train, perhaps even have fun while training - but you aren't going to learn anything truly valuable from them.

Most of the value and wisdom you gain will be from having an instructor, a personal trainer, your own personal Jedi master essentially. So regardless of whether you are hoping to lose weight, train in a sport, or become a superhero - having an instructor certainly helps.



* The example I am thinking of is the case of Awa Kenzo, who kept training people in Kyudo despite becoming old and sick. He probably should have retired, but he kept training his students anyway. There is a story told by his students of how he went for a walk one wintry day with several of his students and they noticed he was dripping blood in the snow. He responded by saying:

"This too, is training."

DIY Boxing Equipment

Boxing can sometimes be an expensive sport to get into. But it doesn't have to be. There are a multitude of ways to do boxing more frugally and save a bundle on equipment you either a. Don't need; or b. Can make yourself.

Below are a few examples of how you can make your own boxing equipment.





I should also note that it is possible to purchase used boxing equipment via Craigslist or Kijiji.

I still recommend purchasing new boxing gloves. Same goes with mouth guard.

Strange Sports you can do in Toronto

There are many sports a person can do in Toronto, and many which are quite unusual for those people who are seeking something different and exciting to do.

For example: The husband of one of my clients does competitive fencing. He recently won a bronze medal for his age category. He also has an impressive collection of antique swords, sabres, epees, etc. Fencing, Japanese Kendo, Korean Gumdo, Chinese Swordfighting, European Medieval Swordfighting, and even Jedi combat acting (I call it that because it is not real swordfighting) are all available in Toronto.

Also I should note that there is no age barrier to swordfighting. Judging by the photo on the right it doesn't matter how old you are. (They do however seem to have a 66% chance of growing a beard... Hmm. And a 100% chance of looking Awesome!)

So if you are looking to get into fencing or other forms of swordfighting you might consider contacting the following organizations, listed alphabetically:

AEMMA - Academy of European Medieval Martial Arts
The Beaches Sabre Club of Toronto
The Canadian Haidong Gumdo Association
The Dragon Fencing Academy
Fighting Arts Collective Toronto
The Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre, Kendo Dept.
Kendo Ontario
Metro Blades Fencing Club
My Fencing Club
Ontario Fencing Association
The Ryerson Kendo Club
The Toronto Fencing Academy
The Toronto Fencing Centre
The Toronto Fencing Club
The Toronto Kendo Club 
Toronto Kenjutsu
The University of Toronto Kendo Club


However there are also many other unusual sports in Toronto you might try:

Axe Throwing

The Backyard Axe Throwing League offers axe hurling, performed competitively and for recreation at one of their multiple locations. The sport is growing so fast they have new locations appearing every few months. Axes are thrown at four by four foot wooden targets from 15 feet away, and points are tallied to determine the winner. There is also league play for more competitive people.

Bike Polo or Bicycle Polo

Bike Polo is basically a mix of polo, hockey, and cycling, and it's played in teams on an iceless hockey rink. The BPTO meets as often as four times per week, usually at either Dufferin Grove or Scadding Court shinny rinks. BPTO has a beginner night once a week, with extra mallets on hand to lend out to new players.

Unicycle Hockey

The Toronto Unicycle Club meets regularly in Toronto (usually in the west end) to practice their peddling and often a game of unicycle hockey. The game is usually played with five players on each team and a lack of full body contact for obvious reasons. Always open to new players.

Pillow Fighting (All Girls)

What was once called the Pillow Fight League is now Bedlam Pillow Fighting. The all girl league uses pillows in WWE style combat, with the intention of winning my pinfall or surrender. Professional pillow fighting has an attitude akin to roller derby or amateur wrestling-acting. No men allowed.

List of Archery Clubs in Ontario

Notes

I may update this list over time as I locate more clubs or new clubs are created.

Many private archery ranges also operate small archery clubs in order to promote members.

Many high schools operate small archery clubs that are not listed here.

Many hunting-oriented clubs also do archery, but they are not exclusively archery.

List of Archery Clubs in Ontario

Almonte - Gobble 'n Grunt Archery & Outfitting

Amherstburg - AMA Sportsmen Club

Ancaster - Hamilton Angling & Hunting Association

Astorville - Jim-Bows Archery

Beamsville - Mackies Mountain Archery

Belleville - Quinte Bay Archers

Caledon Village - The Archers of Caledon

Corbeil - Wilderness bowhunters and archery

County Lambton - Lambton-Kent Archers

Markham - The Marksmen Den in Markham

Mississauga - Ontario Centre for Classical Sport

Newmarket - York County Bowmen

Niagara - Archery Niagara

North Bay - North Bay Bowhunters & Archers

Ottawa - Kanata Archery Club

Ottawa - Ottawa Archers

Ottawa - RA Centre Archery Club

Penetanguishene - Huronia Family Archery

Richmond - That Hunting & Fishing Store

Sault Ste. Marie Soo North Archery Club

St.Catharines - St.Catharines Bowmen Archery Club

Sturgeon Falls - West Nipissing Archers

Thamesville - Kent County Bowhunters Assoication

Thunder Bay - Lakehead Archers

Toronto - AEMMA Traditional Archery

Toronto - Hart House Archery Club

Toronto - The Humber Valley Flintknappers Guild

Toronto - Toronto School of Archery

Toronto - The Toronto Archery Club

Toronto - University of Toronto Archery Club

Utopia - Wolfs Den Sporting Supplies

Waterdown - Waterdown Rod and Gun Club

Waterloo - The Bow Shop

Waterloo - University of Waterloo Archery Club

Windsor and Lasalle - Lasalle/Windsor Sportsman Club.



Using Negativity to Challenge Yourself - Coaching and Motivation

One of the biggest tricks to getting better at something is to come up with new challenges - new ways of making it interesting, partially so you are motivated to try and achieve that goal during the process.

From a coaching / personal training perspective, knowing how to challenge the athlete / client in front of you means trying to get inside their head and understand what makes that individual person tick - what motivates them to try harder. Is it pride? Anger? Shame? Possibly even greed? Or (egad) narcissism?

A person who doesn't have any of the seven deadly sins is truly content and doesn't really want anything. Such a person must be sublimely happy, so why would they bother to hire a personal trainer? They're already found contentment and happiness. The only reason I can think of such a happy person wanting a coach or personal trainer is because they are amused by the idea of it. They want to do something and they're doing it for fun*. I will come back to that idea later. See the * further below.

It is the person who is yearning for something who really needs help achieving it. They are struggling for whatever reasons to achieve a goal that is beyond their reach. Perhaps it is a very common goal, like losing weight, and they are struggling because of their diet and lack of exercise, but also because they lack willpower - and quite possibly other factors as well. This is a quite common goal. But why do they want to lose weight?

Vanity? Pride? Anger at people who bullied them about their weight? They feel ashamed of their appearance? Or maybe they made a wager with a friend as to which one of them could lose the most weight, and thus they are motivated by greed?

Knowing what motivates yourself, what the primary reason you decide to exercise - especially if it is on the spur of the moment and you get the sudden urge to exercise, think carefully on that experience. What was it precisely that caused you to get the urge to exercise?

And don't be afraid of negative emotions. To paraphrase Darth Vader, let your negative emotions out and let them give you power - the power of your dark side! Mwahahaha!

People rarely get the urge to exercise because they are feeling charitable or humble - although it would be awesome if more people were so easily motivated. "Oh look, a marathon that is raising money for charity. I think I will start jogging regularly so I can help raise money." How is rare is it that people take up marathon running just for charity? Extremely unlikely. More likely they were already into running marathons and they saw one that was raising money for charity and wanted to join.


Back on topic, once you know what things motivate you - truly motivate you - then you can use those negative emotions to focus your mind on the activities you want to do and get better at. Over time those negative emotions will fade and be replaced by feelings that are more positive, and you will eventually be doing the activity hopefully because you just plain enjoy it.

Which brings me full circle back to the Asterisk...

* Recreational activities are awesome in my opinion because most people do them without any goal in their mind beyond having fun. Take recreational archery for example. Recreational archers don't go to competitions, they don't bowhunt or bowfish, they simply do archery for the fun of it. I argue that recreational archery is actually the purest form of archery - because it is archery for archery's sake. Not for ego. Not for food. Not for bragging rights about bagging a "big buck". Purely for the enjoyment of the activity.

For example, I enjoy writing - but sometimes I am suffering a bit from writer's block and I have to find inspiration to write. One way for me to combat that and find inspiration is to find something funny to write about. In this case it was because I was thinking about Star Wars and Darth Vader memes while I was writing. It not only gave me some inspiration, it helped motivate my writing.

So it isn't just for exercising. It could be for doing any number of activities you should probably be doing. It does not have to be yoga while dressed like Darth Vader, but hey, nobody is stopping you from having a little fun.


Essential Fat Vs Non Essential Fat

Lets start with some definitions!

#1. Essential Fat

Essential fatty acids, or EFAs, are fatty acids that humans and other animals must ingest because the body requires them for good health but cannot synthesize them. The term "essential fatty acid" refers to fatty acids required for biological processes but does not include the fats that only act as fuel.

So for example, omega-3 fatty acids is a chemical your body actually needs for brain function and other activities.

#2. Non Essential Fat

Non-essential fatty acids are important for the body too. Saturated fats are considered to be non-essential fatty acids because they are not required by the body and instead may cause harm - hence the name. Trans fatty acids, although these are a kind of unsaturated fat, are also non-esential fatty acids and should be avoided in the same manner that we should avoid saturated fats because of findings that increased consumption of trans fats is proportional to an increase in the risk of coronary heart disease. It is also used in supplements when used as development enhancements. Meanwhile, there are non-essential fatty acids which are simply classified as such because the human body can synthesize them from other nutrients like carbohydrates and other unsaturated fatty acids. These are the omega-9 fatty acids, which can lower bad cholesterol, increase good cholesterol, and control blood sugar. However, since the human body can create its own omega-9 fatty acids, there is no need to include them in one’s diet.


As shown in the above graphic men need dramatically less essential fat than women do, however their composition of non-essential fat is roughly the same.

People seeking to lose weight by dieting would be advised to add more eggs and fish to their diet, but cut back on sources of saturated fat. This way they are getting the fat that they need, but they are reducing their consumption of extra fat that their body doesn't actually need.

Understanding your Body's Composition

You have probably heard that the human body is mostly made of water - and this partially correct. But all that water is held together using carbon and other atoms. Some fad diets even try to reduce a person's body weight by reducing their use of water, and thus reducing a person's water weight - which makes a person dehydrated, long term lack of water can cause mental illness and a host of other problems. So those fad diets do work in the sense that person does lose weight, but because it is mostly water they end up regaining the weight as soon as they go back to a normal diet and have normal amounts of water again.

Attacking your body's use of water however is not the solution however. While water is found in both fat cells and muscle, it is not the cause of a person being overweight.

We should note also that fell cells never actually disappear. They just get bigger as they store energy or smaller as they expend energy. Eating healthier foods, getting lots of exercise causes the fat cells to store less energy and to be expending more energy than they are storing.

Your body's composition comes down a number of factors:

Bones and Bone Density

The more you exercise the stronger your bone density becomes. Thus bodybuilders and athletes often have surprisingly strong bone density. Not unbreakable, but still amazingly strong. (Although the film "Unbreakable" starring Bruce Willis suggests that it would be theoretically possible for a person to have unusually strong bones.)

Bone density can fluctuate due to diet, amount of exercise a person is getting, and genetic factors.

Muscle Weight

Muscles weighs more than fat. Try weighing some lean meat sometime and note how much little space 1 lb of lean muscle actually takes up space. Now compare that to 1 lb of fat further below. A person who is very muscular might not look very big, but they might still weight quite a bit. So someone who weighs 250 lbs, but it is all muscle will still look pretty impressive with their shirt off - but might look like a proverbial Bruce Wayne when they are dressed in a suit and tie. For fun see my past article about Christian Bale's muscle gains and losses. When preparing for the role he once weighed 210 lbs, but had to back it down a bit because he ended up looking too beefy.

Muscle weight can also go up or down quite suddenly and rapidly. Being sick for a week, a person could easily lose 10 lbs of muscle. When "Spring Training" athletes can often gain back 20 lbs of muscle in the first 2 to 4 weeks because they have been slacking off during the winter. I myself have a tendency to take it too easy during the winter and often put on 20 lbs of muscle every Spring when I get back into exercising outdoors. This year I am planning to put on extra muscle this upcoming winter.

Body Fat

Fat takes up a lot of space in your body. By volume it actually does not weigh very much, it is light weight - but it is HUGE. A lb of fat is roughly the size of an adult fist. So 5 lbs of fat is about the size of fists. All that space however is basically just for storing energy - energy for exercise, energy for keeping the body warm, and also acting as insulation against the cold.


During the Autumn, as temperatures drop and humans start getting less Vitamin D from the sun we start storing more energy inside our fat cells. Around Christmas time we store lots of food, not just because of traditions, but because our bodies crave more food when we are low on Vitamin D. This storing of energy as fat is hard-wired into our DNA, part of our "caveman genes" and is used as a survival mechanism to keep you alive during the long cold winter. Learn more about Vitamin D by reading "Can Vitamin D help you lose weight?"

Genetics

Speaking of caveman genes, lets talk about genetics in general. Your body's composition of fat, muscle, bone density, etc is effected by your body's genetics. The same thing that makes your hair black and your eyes green also effects how much fat you store, how easily you build muscle, your bone density, metabolism, etc. However it does not CONTROL it. Just because you might be genetically predisposed to having more muscle, does not mean you will automatically be muscular. It will still take years of exercising, weightlifting, helping friends move into new homes and carrying their furniture, working at the construction site, etc. In other words you still have to work at it. Nothing comes easily in the world of weightlifting.

The same thing goes for the reverse. You might have a genetic disorder that makes it difficult to lose weight. But that does not make it IMPOSSIBLE to do so. It simply means it harder than an average person trying to do the same thing. You might have to get it 150% effort compared to your peers in order to see changes, but you will see changes if you keep making the effort.

Organs and Metabolism

Some of your body's weight is made up of all your organs. Brain, heart, lungs, liver, spleen, cardiovascular system, endocrine system, digestive system, etc. These things are all necessary for life. Thus you can't really do anything about the weight of such things, and you shouldn't worry about them.

Sometimes people do get "fatty organs", such as a fatty liver which can lead to liver damage, cancer, fatty liver disease, etc. However such things can be prevented by exercising regularly and eating healthy. Your body's organs consume / produce chemicals that are used as building blocks to repair your body, and energy for both repair and for activities - all of which are necessities.

Definition of Metabolism: The chemical processes by which cells produce the substances and energy needed to sustain life.

CONCLUSIONS

There isn't much to worry about regarding your bones, organs and genetics. Those things will continue to do what they are meant to do. However the balance between muscle weight and body fat can be altered by the individual. How you choose to do so is up to you. You might choose to focus more on diet over exercise, or more exercise over diet, or some balance of the two - but in reality it is always a balancing act, because you have to eat and you have to move. How you choose to achieve your ideal balance might depend on whether your goals are to lose weight, build muscle or combinations of the two.

If you live in the Leaside area of Toronto and are looking for a personal trainer, you know who to call.



Looking to sign up for archery lessons, boxing lessons, swimming lessons, ice skating lessons or personal training sessions? Start by emailing cardiotrek@gmail.com and lets talk fitness!

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