Dispelling the Myths - Women and Fitness

One of my clients recently reminded me of some of the myths about women and diet and exercise that are so prevalent in our society. One of which is the idea that women need to starve themselves to lose weight, when in fact, women need to eat to boost their metabolic rate to burn fat.

Metabolism is simply the way your body uses energy and there are three factors involved. Your basal metabolic rate (BMR) burns calories sustaining vital functions like heart rate, breathing and cellular repair and accounts for about 60-75 percent of your daily expenditure. Physical activities, known as the thermic effect of exercise (TEE), account for 10-25 per cent of your daily rate. And the final 10 percent is used to digest and process (transport, metabolize and store) the food you eat.

This phenomenon is known as the thermic effect of food (TEF) and it is influenced by how much, how often and what you eat. Processing protein requires about 30 percent of the calories you burn, dietary fat accounts for about 2 or 3 percent and carbohydrates burn somewhere between that of protein and fat. So 10 percent is generally used to account for the total thermic effect of food.

When you eat too few calories, your metabolism slows down in an effort to conserve energy and the fat you take off may begin to creep back on, over time. You'll also be more likely to crave calorie-rich foods - foods that are high in carbohydrates and fat - if you reduce your caloric intake too much.

The best way to boost your metabolism, through diet, is to start the day with a healthy breakfast - breakfast helps to fire up your metabolism after a full night on a slow simmer. You also want to eat about every four or five hours - a regular meal schedule keeps your body working to digest and absorb foods. And, make sure you eat protein with every meal.

All foods contribute to the thermic effect but protein, in particular, has the greatest thermic effect of all. And, protein can increase your metabolism by helping to maintain and build lean body mass.

The idea that women will get "too big" if they lift heavy weights is another myth. The truth is that women need to lift an appreciable amount of weight to change their body.

Women don't have the hormones to bulk up. Men produce 10 times more testosterone (the hormone responsible for increases in muscle mass) than women and women produce 10 times more estrogen than men. So it's just not possible for most women to get big muscles, except for a very small percentage of women who have a higher level of testosterone.

If you want a lean, toned physique (like most of my female clients), then lift heavy weights. Get yourself on a well-designed weight training program which includes exercises with free weights and exercises that use your body weight for resistance. Both men and women should include these in their training, and women should train at the same intensities (rep ranges) as men.

Your training program should emphasize foot-based lower body exercises such as the lunge, step-up and squat. Women should also include upper body exercises that employ multiple muscle groups such as the push-up, pull-up, and overhead press.

A well-rounded training program would also include exercises that work your muscles in all three planes of motion, (front-to-back, side-to-side and rotational) and exercises that develop proprioception and balance.

A third myth is that women need to do a lot of low intensity cardio (aerobics) to be lean and improve body composition. The truth is that performing excess cardio will only make you fatter in the long run.

One of the reasons is that too much aerobic exercise increases stress hormones, which leads to overeating, and down regulates growth hormone, the hormone that signals your body to build muscle and burn fat.

High volume aerobic training also converts your fast twitch muscle fibers into intermediate and slow twitch muscle fibers, and decreases your total muscle mass, which slows down your metabolic rate, so you expend less energy (calories), at rest.

The best way to burn fat is high intensity interval training (HIIT), especially when combined with high intensity (low rep) weight training and proper nutrition. Interval training burns more calories than aerobics and elevates your metabolism significantly more after you finish exercising, while your metabolic rate recovers back to pre-exercise levels.

In a recent study, researchers Trapp & Boutcher put 45 overweight women through a 15 week study where one group was a control, one group did intervals (20 minutes of eight seconds of sprinting on a bike followed by 12 seconds of recovery at a slower pace), and one group did 40 minutes of aerobics.

The researchers found that the interval group lost an average of 2.5kg in the 15 weeks and the steady-state group gained .5kg. In other words, the interval group lost three times as much fat doing half as much exercise.

These results really speak for themselves!

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Article by Mikki Reilly, BA, MFS, of FitnessTransform. Visit her web site, http://www.fitnesstransform.com, and her blog, for the the most up-to-date news, information and tips that will help you transform your health, fitness and overall quality of life.

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