Free The No More Excuses Diet by Maria Kang Page B

exercise uses oxygen, and therefore glycogen and fat storage, to meet the physical demands of your body. You engage in aerobic exercise when you perform long durations of light to moderate cardio activities. Anaerobic exercise , also known as strength training , doesn’t use oxygen for energy. Instead, it depends primarily on your glycogen storage (food) to provide quick energy to train at maximum exertion. You cannot sustain anaerobic exercise for a long period of time, which is why you need to rest between strength sets. Aerobic and anaerobic training are equally important when designing your fitness program.
    You need to create a strength-training program that works for you. I don’t like promoting the latest fadworkout DVD or exercise class, because a workout plan should fit your own strengths and weaknesses. If you can lift heavy objects and perform intense exercise without mental or muscular fatigue, you are strong in that area. If you notice imbalances in your posture, weakness in your muscles, tightness in your tendons, or irregular pain in a static position, then these are areas you need to improve.
    There is a lot of information to decipher on the Internet, especiallysome advice that is contradictory. As a general rule, I like to keep things simple. So here are some fundamentals to remember:
    1. MORE MUSCLE INCREASES YOURMETABOLISM. Unlikefat tissue, muscle is an active tissue that requires more nutrients to sustain itself. Having more muscle speeds up your metabolism, which allows you to eat more (who wouldn’t love that?). For example, see the following graph:
ORGAN OR TISSUE
DAILY METABOLIC RATE
Adipose (fat)
2 calories per pound
Muscle
6 calories per pound
Liver
91 calories per pound
Brain
109 calories per pound
Heart
200 calories per pound
Kidneys
200 calories per pound
    2. 1 POUND OF MUSCLE IS SMALLER THAN 1 POUND OF FAT. Muscle is more compact than fat and so, pound for pound, is nearly three times smaller than an equal amount of fat. This is important to remember when you’re weighing yourself and not seeing the scale budge while your measurements are dropping. Use other measurements for success and don’t be a slave to the scale.
    3. WOMEN HAVE A HARDER TIME BUILDING MUSCLE THAN MEN. Women who say they are afraid of looking like a bodybuilder don’t understand how a woman’s body works. Women don’t have the same amount of testosterone that men have to build incredibly large muscles. If you want to “tone up,” then strength training, or building muscle, is key. If you want to look lean, then decrease the fat on top of the muscle by following a balanced cardio and strength routine. In short, you can’t be lean if you have no muscle. Do you see the problem here? You need to weight-train or you can’t look toned.
    4. THERE ARE THREE WAYS TO CONTRACT YOUR MUSCLES. There are three ways to contract, and therefore challenge, your muscles: concentric, eccentric, and isometric movement. The concentric concentrates on shortening the muscle, which is the phase most lifters focus on. The eccentric decelerates the muscle. The isometric is static, when the muscle is held in a challenging position. For example, when you raise your body from a squat, you are performing a concentric motion; when you lower your body into a squat, you are performing an eccentric motion; and when you hold your body in a challenging squat, you are performing an isometric motion.
BUILDING MUSCLE
    When designing a strength program, you start with the basic body-weight exercises like push-ups, squats, and sit-ups; and you adjust the degree of difficulty as you become stronger. In my earliest training years I performed a whole-body circuit two or three times a week. When my body adjusted to that challenge, I focused on pushing exercises one day (chest/shoulders/triceps) and pulling exercises the next day (back and biceps). As my body continued to adapt, I switched to one major body part a day (this is when I also had more time) or I