The fight for a perfect look is like a river, long and endless. Certainly one of the topics to be addressed, and which still arouse a lot of controversy is cardio physical activity, which aims to help us lose weight, but also fight for our muscles, so whether we burn the fat then? Can we combine cardio with the gym? How does it all look in practice? How should you train and act to be slim but at the same time muscular?
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When we start to lose weight, due to energy deficiencies in the human body, the catabolic processes have an advantage, and are responsible for the use of their own energy resources that occur in the form of carbohydrates and protein fats. Losing weight, we want to burn body fat, which is under the skin, as well as the abdominal tissue that surrounds our internal organs. Unfortunately, if catabolic processes are involved, they do not only work for what we want to destroy, that is fat, but they act primarily on our entire body, including our muscles. By burning the muscles we are not able to look as we would like, right? The body in order to look good must be muscled. So what should we do to have both? How to proceed to lose unnecessary fat, but at the same time not to make our work in the gym in vain?
To protect our muscles from burning, follow these tips:
- We can not use fasting – if we do not provide our body with carbohydrates before 1-2 days, it fully exhausts the glycogen stores in the muscles and in the liver. It lowers the blood sugar level, and the brain and heart do not work as they should. The body begins to catabolize proteins, including but not limited to these muscles. Carbohydrates are therefore extremely important and should be put in our daily diet, even if we are on reduction. If we eat healthy and wholemeal foods, and we supply the right amount of calories, our muscles will certainly not suffer.
- The protein in the diet is extremely important and you can not forget about it, both in terms of animal proteins as well as vegetables. The protein retains muscle mass as well and allows the muscles to shape properly. You should consume 0.8 – 1g of protein for each kilogram of the body, and when active, 1.2 – 1.4 g for each kilogram.
- Training is the foundation, but we must remember that in order to burn our fat, we need to provide the body with carbohydrates. If, for example, we run to lose weight, in the first hour the body uses energy from glucose in 80% and from fatty acids in 20%. During the long run, these proportions change. The longer the effort, the fat consumed is greater. It is not without reason that it is better to bet on a slower gear but in a longer time than on a short and fast one, where energy goes from glucose.
To sum up – if we want to run or do other physical cardio activities, we should primarily provide our body with the right amount of carbohydrates, preferably up to 30 minutes after the workout. It’s also good look at branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) that are used both before and after exercise. The better the diet, the greater the chance that cardio training combined with strength are the most right and are able to guarantee us both the right weight, as well as perfectly-presented muscles.
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