Staying Toned After Weight Loss

Staying Toned After Weight Loss ——————————-
Following significant weight loss, it is vital to have an
exercise routine to keep your muscles firm and help to tighten
the skin. One of the biggest drawbacks to significant weight
loss is the flabby skin that is visible that often can take
months to disappear.

First the pectoral muscles ————————– First of
all, we recommend performing any exercise that works the
pectoral muscles will help tone the chest, but be careful not to
do exercises that work the breasts directly. Breasts are not
muscle tissue, they are fatty tissue, and therefore do not
respond to weightlifting or resistance exercise of any type. In
cases where the breasts are small, toning the pectoral muscles
will lift the chest and possibly the breasts along with it, but
if there is a lot of breast tissue, the exercises will not lift
it. This tissue may disappear over time, or it may not. Your
only option would be surgery.

How much will my skin tighten? ——————————
How much your skin will tighten depends on your age, length of
time the skin was stretched and how much it was stretched, how
much weight you lost (and to some degree how fast you lost it),
the amount of elastin in your skin, and genetics. Exercise can
help as it will tighten the skin, plus it will tighten and tone
muscles under the skin, which can have an affect on your
appearance. We generally ask people to wait 8-12 months to see
how much the skin tightens. If after this time the skin is
unacceptably loose, then surgery may need to be considered to
correct it. In some of these cases, when it is deemed a health
risk, insurance may cover the surgery.

What about my stomach? ———————- For the stomach,
the bottom line to weight loss is to burn more calories than you
consume. If you eat 2,000 calories in a day and only burn 1,500,
you’re going to gain weight. On the other hand, if you eat 1,500
and burn 2,000, you’ll be in caloric deficit by 500 calories.
Given that scenario, at the end of the week, that would be 3,500
calories, and 3,500 calories equals one pound.

Diet and exercise —————– The combination of modifying
your diet and exercise is a good plan. Aerobic exercise will
burn lots of calories and help you stay healthy and fit
(independent of body weight), and resistance exercise will tone,
strengthen, and increase your muscle mass. More muscle mass is
important for weight control because it is the engine on your
body that burns calories. Not only that, but when you lose
weight, you can lose up to 25% of your weight from muscle, so
you want to keep as much of it as you can.

You can lose weight without exercise, but…
——————————————– It is important to
note that you can lose weight without exercise by modifying your
diet. People lose weight all the time without exercise by
reducing caloric intake. In fact, in virtually all studies of
weight loss, people who diet ALWAYS lose more weight than people
who exercise. If you ask those same people to diet AND exercise,
they lose a little more weight than the dieters alone, but not
that much. Why is this? This is due to muscle weights more than
fat. With more muscle mass, your body will turn to fat as its
energy source and burn the fat for energy. As a pound of fat can
be five times the size of a pound of muscle, you can keep the
same weight, yet look trimmer and healthier, as lean muscle
gives you a sleek, toned physique.

People who are most active are most successful
———————————————- In virtually
every study of weight maintenance, the people who are most
active are most successful in maintaining weight loss. Most
scientists agree that exercise is the single best predictor of
weight maintenance success.

So the bottom line is to burn more calories than you consume, by
either reducing your caloric intake, and then increasing your
activity as you lose weight so by the time you get to your goal
weight you can keep it off because you are active.

One final point: Aerobic and resistance exercise are also both
very important for health. In fact, you can be healthy and fit
if you exercise independent of body weight. In one very
important study, overweight, fit people were healthier and lived
longer than lean, unfit people. That’s a very important point
because weight loss can be slow, frustrating, and not everyone
gets to an “ideal” weight. So keep up the exercise, watch your
caloric intake, and results will follow.

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