Getting into fitness can be scary when you don’t know what you’re doing. Understanding the basics of what you need to know when starting can ensure that you don’t make mistakes along the way. Here are 6 Basic Things You Should Know About Fitness:
Calories
They’re our fuel source, like gas for a car. They are what we need to get through the day and burn off as we release energy.
1 pound of body fat = 3500 calories.
So, if you wanted to lose 1 pound of body fat in a week, you would have to be in a 3500 calorie deficit.
Everyone has their own maintenance of calories which is the amount of calories that are just enough to get you through the day and sleep. (Usually around 2500 for men)
Caloric Deficit – shortage of calories relative to the regular maintenance caloric intake.
Caloric Surplus – excess of calories relative to the regular maintenance caloric intake.
Want to gain weight? Eat more calories than your body usually burns.
Want to lose weight? Eat less calories than your body burns so it can start burning the fat instead.
Diet
The key to fitness. If you aren’t dieting, but you want to change your body, it’s going to be very difficult.
80% of getting fit is diet while 20% is actually going to the gym.
You need the proper nutrition to give you the right calories and nutrients to recover.
There are 3 main nutrients for dieting:
- Protein (1g=4 calories) – The main building component to grow and repair muscle
- Fat (1g=9 calories) – Important for cell, hormone, and energy production. Absolutely necessary
- Carbohydrates (1g=4 calories) – The main source of energy for our body and helps protein build the muscle
Metabolism
The process of digesting food and turning it into energy. The faster your metabolism, the easier you can burn fat.
There are foods such as the ones in the picture above that help speed up metabolism.
The best way to speed up your metabolism is to eat more often. You need to be eating at least 5 meals a day in smaller portions rather than 3 big meals.
Drinking a lot of water is very important for metabolism as well.
Check out 20 Foods That Boost Your Metabolism
Cardio
Cardio is very healthy for the body and more specifically the heart.
It can help you get rid excess fat faster, but can get rid of some muscle as well if you are generally lean.
HIIT Cardio (High Intensity Interval Training) – It involves exercise that is done with very high intensity, but in very small increments.
For example, running on the treadmill very fast for 30 seconds and then walking for 30 seconds and repeat.
This is known as the most effective form of cardio for burning fat and getting that heart rate up.
Doing cardio on an empty stomach after waking up combined with HIIT cardio is the most effective thing you can do to lose weight faster through exercise.
Your carbohydrates are burned first, then your fats, and once both of those are used up, your body starts to feed off of your body fat and that’s where you start to lose the fat.
The Gym
You should only be in the gym for about an hour. Too much or too little time and you will just be wasting your energy.
You won’t get shorter by lifting weights, unless you lift things over your head that are too heavy. You usually would only do that for shoulders, so just lift with light weights.
Work on form first before going all in on heavy weights. It’s important to increase weight as you go, but the wrong form is worse.
Related Post: 6 Back Workouts for Beginners at the Gym
8-12 reps are usually appropriate for most workouts. Keep in mind that reps were only created to give us a number of when we should be tired. So adjust the weight according to the amount of reps you can do.
Abs should never take you longer than about 7 minutes.
A mix of body weight, free weights, and machines is important in your fitness regimen.
How Muscles Grow
When we workout, our muscles are being contracted which creates tension in the muscle.
This tension can cause micro tears in the muscle and blood starts rushing to that area. That’s why your veins and muscles might look bigger when you’re getting a pump.
These micro tears cause the muscle to stretch slightly and get a little bigger every time.
It can only be done efficiently when the necessary proteins and other nutrients help repair the micro tear.
Over time those tears and repairs add up, causing your muscles to grow over time.
Remember, this is only 20% of the process, it mostly dieting to get this to happen.
Check out more fitness tips on How to Grow Muscle Here!
I hope you guys learned something new today and can implement this into your fitness ventures.
If you have and questions or comments, let me know down below!
