Bodybuilding to Fight Excessive Weight

• Whether you want to lose weight, build muscle, or both, you need to begin with an appropriate bodybuilding schedule
• Your workouts need to be designed to incorporate mass building exercises to make sure you don’t end up gaining weight while you are building muscle
• Every good bodybuilding workout program should also focus on good nutrition – that’s even more important when you’re trying to lose weight

Bodybuilding essentially involves destroying the muscles by lifting heavy weights numerous times and then regenerating those muscles and making it stronger by proper nutrition and rest. After the muscles recover, certain exercises are applied for further toning and sculpting.

Some Basics about Food Needs & Body Building

As a general rule, the more you exercise the more food you need to eat in order to sustain the level of activity that you are undertaking. However, this is not the case for those people who are trying to lose weight through a bodybuilding workout program.

For those individuals looking to shed some pounds, it is important to note that there should always be energy deficit. This happens when the energy consumed in food is less than the energy expended in the exercises.

There is a complexity in the weight loss-body building set up because the human body is unaccustomed to losing fat and gaining muscles simultaneously. Once the body feels that more energy goes out as fuel for activity than the energy that comes in via food intake, it goes into starvation mode and your metabolism declines. Simply put, this will make you add on pounds. To prevent this from happening, it is best to include mass building exercises in a weight training program of your choice.

What is Weight Training?

Weight training is an exercise that forms part of a bodybuilding workout program and it aims to assist you in your weight loss but at the same time, prevent you from losing your muscles. It is specifically designed to develop the size and the strength of muscles using the force of gravity in the form of weighted bars, dumbbells or weight stacks.

Ideally, the bodybuilding schedule must be short (roughly around 1 hour long) with minimal rest periods in between. The number of sets and repetitions must vary for different cycles to facilitate the “destroying” of the muscles (high intensity/high weight load), the repair (lower intensity or fewer repetitions) and recovery. The actual workout itself burns a lot of calories but more than that, the after effect of weight training on your metabolism is significant. The body’s metabolism rate increases well after you have finished your workout. So if you are looking at long term weight loss effects, weight training is the way to go.

The Nutritional Aspect of the Program

As with any exercise program, an integral part of bodybuilding is the nutritional regime. A bodybuilder’s food intake and nutrition is no different from the average athlete’s diet. A typical healthy diet consists of plenty of fruit and vegetables, increase in protein (like lean meat, chicken, fish, low-fat dairy products and egg whites), decrease in salt and sugar intake and plenty of water.

However, certain changes do take place when it comes to the quantity and meal timing. For example, a bodybuilding schedule that involves a high intensity/short rest period workout calls for an increased intake of protein and carbohydrates to sufficiently address the required energy needed for the workout. On cycles when there are greater rest periods in between exercises or when there is a decrease in the number of reps or sets to be done, then the dietary requirement is diminished too.

The information supplied in this article is not to be considered as medical advice and is for educational purposes only.