Learning a little science will help you understand your body better and help you achieve your desired goals.
First learn our different types of muscle and their role:
We have three muscle types:
1. skeletal muscle
2. cardiac muscle
3. smooth muscle
Smooth muscle (digestive muscles and arteries) and cardiac muscle (heart pumping) are involuntary, meaning that we do not have think and concentrate to make these muscles move.
Skeletal muscle (muscles for movement) is controlled voluntarily, meaning that we have control over these muscle when we want use them.
Muscles perform four essential functions: They maintain body posture, stabilize joints, produce movement and generate
heat we need to survive.
Second, learn about body heat.
Your body heats up when muscles contract. So when you move and exercise, when your heart pumps, and when we digest food, our bodies are using energy to produce heat. Sometimes we feel cold after eating, but that is just because blood is rushing to your gastrointestinal tract and away from your skin. ...And you are probably sitting there in a food coma after eating too much!
Working muscle produces heat in two ways:
- The chemical energy used in muscles contracting is not efficiently turned into mechanical energy. (It is about 20 to 25 percent efficient.) The excess energy is lost as heat.
- The various metabolic reactions (anaerobic, aerobic) also produce heat.
Your body needs to remove this excess heat. The heat produced by exercising muscle causes blood vessels in the skin to dilate, which increases the blood flow to the skin. This elevated blood flow to the skin and the large surface area of the skin allows the excess heat to be lost to the surrounding air. Also, receptors carry the message of excess heat to your body's thermostat, the hypothalamus in the brain. Nerve impulses from the hypothalamus stimulate sweat glands in the skin to produce sweat. The fluid for the sweat also comes from the increased skin blood flow. The sweat evaporates from the skin, removing heat and cooling the body.
Third, understand that it takes a lot of energy to move your body, to move food through your body, to pump blood to your organs, muscle, to and away from the skin and just keep you functioning. So where does all this energy come from? Energy comes from food we eat, and stored food (fat).
When you are trying to lose weight there are bunch of things you can do to use energy (burn calories/create heat).
Use your muscles!
Get your heart pumping to a greater degree than normal.
Use your skeletal muscles (which also gets your heart pumping)
Contrast baths (hot and cold contrasts, so your body has to heat up when cold and cool down when hot)
Now how do you get the smooth muscle to contract even when they are involuntary?
Eat more food! Eat more often in smaller quantities to keep the smooth muscle constantly working.
To lose weight you must use all three muscle types to burn large amounts of calories. This is how you do it:
Exercise: Strength train. Stress the muscles to a greater degree than they are used to. I am talking about the big muscles that cross many joints like the legs, core and arms (yes, total body strength training, not just your bi's and tri's)
Eat: Eat fiber, mostly plants (vegetables) for energy. Plants take a long time to grow, they take a long time to digest, they fill lots of space in your guts, they are low in calories, they require smooth muscle to move through your body, they are cheap, they look good, they taste good, and they are full of vitamins. Eat meat. You need some building materials for all that muscle you are breaking down lifting weights and sprinting. Eat fat. If you eat meat, you are probably are getting decent amount of fat. Fat gives you a full feeling, keeps you full, and tastes so good!
Get your heart pumping: Eating and exercising are both going to get your heart rate up. Exercise is definitely going to get your heart rate up higher than eating. 'Cardio' is fine, but high intensity strength training is going to keep your heart rate elevated even after you are through exercising.
Sample Breakfast:
-2-4 eggs with 2-4 cups green peppers, onion, zucchini, mushrooms (1 serving of protein source to ~1+ cup of vegetables)
-water
Sample snack:
protein shake
1/2 banana
Sample Lunch:
-3-6 oz. meat, 3-6 cups of vegetables
-water
Sample snack:
-carrots+hummus
-water
Sample Dinner:
-3-6 oz. lb meat, 3-6 cups of vegetables
-water
Sample Workouts:
1. 20 squats, 10 push ups (six rounds as fast as possible)
2. 8 lunges, 8 sit ups, 8 overhead presses (repeat for 20 minutes)
I recommend eating meat and vegetables and drinking water. If I were a caveman, or a man of the paleolithic era, I would hunt for food, and gather a variety of edible plants. This method of eating is absolutely the best way to eat.
Paradoxical caveman with fast food tray.
