"I've Had It!! This is the year I Lose The Weight!!" Hope you brought your A-game...

Ask 10 people for their #1 New Year's Resolution and at least 6 or 7 will say they need to lose some weight. Fair enough. About 70% of Americans are now considered overweight, with at least half of those being considered Obese. How's that sound?? About 1 out of 3 Americans now considered Obese. That should sound bad. Like really bad. The problem is that the majority of those that say they want to lose weight this year A) Have no idea how to go about it efficiently, and B) Won't ask anybody what an efficient way might be. This makes me sad. Many of these individuals will end up joining a gym and spending really inappropriate amounts of time on some piece of steady state cardio equipment working at an intensity level that might have them breathing once or twice more a minute than they normally would. This will continue for a few months, along with making only minor, and probably inconsequential changes to their diet, before they get frustrated with the results their not getting before they decide that their destined to be this way and quit to spend their time doing something less strenuous and more enjoyable, like watch TV or play video games. Bravo. This is how a country of 300 million people gets to a point where half of them are overweight to the point of early demise.

Clearly the issue of weight loss is one that can't be fixed with a few paragraphs on a blog. At least not all at once. But I'm going to attempt to break this down over a few of these to give you or somebody you know a few more tools to throw at this problem and finally get some results. The first thing I want to talk about is the relative intensity of your workouts, from an energy production and recovery standpoint. Your body has in place a series of systems to produce energy from both the food you eat, and the energy you have stored (hopefully fat). The one it utilizes most of the day and night is your Aerobic energy system. This system uses the oxygen you breathe to convert Fats, Sugars, and even Proteins into energy, and is extremely efficient at doing so. The other main energy system is your Anaerobic system, meaning that it does Not use oxygen, and is nowhere near as efficient. So why it even around you ask? Because it works much much faster than the Aerobic system does. (For those waiting for a discussion about the Creatine Phosphate or Lactate shuttle systems, I may touch on them in a different post, but it's not as relevant to this one.)

So we have one system that's very fast, but not very efficient, and another system that's not quite as fast, but extremely efficient. Efficiency in this case means how much energy you're getting out of a molecule of Fat or Sugar. The aerobic system gets a whole lot of energy out of that single molecule, whereas the anaerobic system gets just a little bit. Now in every day life, when you're just looking to survive, the efficiency of your aerobic system is perfect. However, when looking to burn fat, that efficiency is not what we're after. The harder your body has to work to produce energy, the more calories you'll end up burning. If the intensity of your exercise session is low enough that the aerobic system can cover it, you'll only end up burning a certain amount of calories. Generally at this level of intensity you're done burning calories as soon as you stop moving. However, if you drive up the level of intensity to the point at, or beyond where your anaerobic system has to kick in and start burning up a lot more fuel to keep you going. When this happens, your body begins to go into an "Oxygen Debt". When you finally stop exercising, your body will be forced to continue burning energy (fat for the most part) for as long after your workout as necessary to bring you back to an even status. The intensity, and duration, of your workout will determine how long this "Afterburn" will continue, but some studies have shown this effect to last up to 36 hours or more under the right circumstances.

So the choice here is to continue on doing the steady state cardio, and only burning calories while you're moving. Or turn up the intensity and continue burning calories for up to a day and a half afterward. If you're looking to lose weight, one of these options should look a bit more attractive to you than the other. Now just like anything else, the actual implementation of a good program based on this principle takes a bit of work, and necessitates the help of a knowledgeable fitness professional to design a plan just for you (or this one buddy of yours...) based on your current status and overall goals. All I want you to think about for now is how hard you've been working during your workouts, and how it's been turning out for you?? If any of you have heard of, or even tried, High Intensity Interval Training, or perhaps CrossFit, there's a reason why people can lose a lot of weight doing it. Done properly, these workouts are designed to tax your entire body extremely hard, driving you into a very very deep Oxygen Debt. In addition to some decent strength gains, your body will also have no choice but to burn off some of that stored energy around your midsection in order to restore your body's equilibrium, and perhaps your sanity.

Main point here, if you really want to make a drastic change in your body composition, you're going to have to work your ass off to do it. After all guys, Nothing in this life that's worth having comes easy. So this year, make the choice, harden up, and kick some ass!!