How to do more work on fewer calories
Doing more while eating less will result in increased fitness. To most of us this is obvious. The only question is how can we really pull it off.
Getting fit requires that you do more work on fewer calories. To many this is obvious but to others it seems impossible.
Both groups are right. You do need more calories than a desk worker if you are doing two mile per day swims or twenty mile per day cycle workouts. You simply cannot keep going if you have not consumed enough food or if you have no fat reserves. But very few of us are really at this point.
Most of us have excess stored energy,
which has accumulated around our waist. In other words, we are fat. This is largely because we have taken in more calories than we have used to empower our lifestyles. The same is true for those who are in the early stages of a workout routine. It takes a long time, at least six months to start burning significant amounts of stored excess.
Assuming that a person stays with a daily routine, the body does becomes accustomed to the increased demands place on it. That results in the ability to do more and to do it more easily. We just do get stronger with practice, resulting in increased speed and endurance.
But that is counter-intuitive to some. Perhaps because of the rest and relaxation focus of the medical profession, one which assumes that you are best off refraining from exertion, we think that persistent working out causes us to wear out. Nothing could be further from the truth. We simply get better with time as the incomparable Jack Lalanne has so amazingly demonstrated. He still does a two hour per day workout at 95.
Being able to do half of what Lalanne does is where most of us are at. We would love to do what Lalanne does, in spite of how we may devalue his efforts by implying that he is a freak of nature or more kindly the result of exceptional genes. Therefore we keep at our workouts, losing the excess and carefully consuming only those amounts which are necessary to keep up the pace and rebuild tissue. Or, that is what we should be doing.
Performance enhancers such as heavy B-vitamins help to maximize our nourishment. They enable us to get more food value from fewer calories. Green tea capsules help to cut down on our appetite. Together, both help getting us to the levels we all envy.
