In today’s issue of FUN, HOT, NO B.S. Fitness Magazine!…
VFT’s Featured Fitness Expert Sue Heintze – Transformation Coach, Mum and Natural Figure Athlete shares her Top 10 Tips on how to Get a Drop Dead Gorgeous Figure… If you want to start transforming your body but don’t know how to begin… then check out these 10 essential steps.
I hope you enjoy today’s edition. PLEASE leave your feedback in the COMMENTS box below! I love hearing from you.
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In this day and age, if there is one thing EVERY woman wants, it’s to have a hot sexy body that is toned, shapely and drop dead gorgeous!
So how do you get a drop dead gorgeous body at any age?
It’s done via a two pronged approach – by increasing the amount of lean muscle tissue you have and burning off your excess body fat.
This process is not called ‘losing weight’ – it’s called Body Recomposition.
Whether you are a professional fitness model or a stay-at-home mum, if you want a nice firm backside, shapely arms and shoulders, a slim waist and some abdominal definition – your goal should not be just to lose weight; it should always be to improve your body composition.
So today I bring to you My Top 10 Tips for Body Recomposition.
TOP 10 TIPS FOR BODY RECOMPOSITION:
1. Train with challenging weights in the 6-12 rep range
Adding lean shapely muscle (called hypertrophy) is best achieved with challenging weights in the rep range of 6-12.
Hypertrophy is the process of increasing the size of cells within an organ or tissue (such as muscle tissue), thereby increasing its overall size.
If you train with higher reps you surpass this stage and train your muscles for endurance rather than lean muscle gain. But, DON’T be afraid of building huge many muscles – it simply can’t happen as women don’t have enough of the male hormone testosterone.
2. Train at least 3 x week with weights
You need to stress the muscles often enough to elicit the adaptation response. The muscle then gets stronger and bigger, due to the stresses placed upon it. Therefore challenging weight training 3-5 x per week is recommended.
3. Eat plenty of protein
Protein will also help keep you fuller for longer and it has a thermic effect within the body, meaning that it takes additional energy/calories in order to break down the protein to be digested and used. So it’s great for muscle building, recovery AND fat loss.
4. Reduce your intake of carbohydrates but don’t eliminate them
You can’t burn fat in the presence of insulin and every time you ingest sugars or carbohydrates, your body releases insulin.
Yet carbohydrates are beneficial for brain fuel and for muscle recovery and are your body’s preferred energy source – so don’t eliminate them completely. The best time to eat carbohydrates is around your training times – before, and especially after a challenging workout. If you do this, you can be sure your carbs won’t be stored as fat.
5. Eat more veggies
Not only are fibrous veggies low in calories and packed with nutrients but they also have a high thermic effect so use up a lot of energy just to digest. And, cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts even help to counteract estrogen dominance, an insidious hormonal condition that many ladies suffer without even knowing.
6. Eat enough food
One of the biggest mistakes women make is not eating enough to fuel their body and assist with their fat loss and lean muscle gain goals.
You need to eat regular meals packed with protein, some complex carbs, lots of veggies and some good fats. Starving yourself is only going to slow down your metabolism and see you gain
weight long term, making it harder to get it off and keep it off. Not to mention, it’s no fun being hungry all the time.
7. Get enough rest and sleep
Many overlook the importance of sleep, but if you don’t get enough sleep you can’t function properly – and this has two negative outcomes.
The first is that you are unable to work to your full potential or hard enough in your training sessions. The second is that when you are tired, it messes with your hormones making it much harder to resist cravings.
8. Don’t overdo the cardio
If you want to lower your body fat and gain lean muscle too much cardio is counter-productive – especially the popular long, slow kind such as long distance running or cycling.
Muscle wastage occurs when performing a lot of long duration cardio, so instead try 2-3 short, high intensity sessions and only add longer, more moderate sessions as a last resort. Metabolic resistance training is a great option especially if you don’t have a lot of time.
The aim should always be to do as little cardio as possible if body re-composition is your goal.
Excess cardio also makes you hungry, and you’ll start to compromise your diet by over-eating.
9. Throw away the scale
When you change your body recomposition for the better, you add lean muscle weight (while reducing fat weight) so you may not see a huge drop on the scale but you will definitely see it in the mirror and by how your clothes fit.
10. Be patient
If you’re wondering how long it takes to transform your figure, an excellent time frame to give yourself is 12 weeks. If you are looking for rapid ‘weight’ loss, you will most likely find yourself losing a lot more precious muscle tissue than fat, becoming unbearably hungry and wrecking your hormones in the process.
Sue Heintze is Owner and Managing Director of Body Transformation company www.idealbodiesonline.com. As a Body Transformation Specialist, Sue has an absolute passion for helping others achieve their fitness and fat loss goals. As Australia’s premier online training facility, the Ideal Bodies Online team has helped an enormous number of people from all walks of life totally transform their bodies and lives.
Sue has competed at State and National level as a natural figure athlete for the past 10 years, and at the age of 41 recently became a first time mum. She writes regularly for Australian Oxygen magazine. Sue recently developed a cutting edge range of instantly downloadable fat loss programs at www.idealbodyblueprint.com.
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