Are you ready for swim suit season?

Who out there is ready to be in a swimming suit strutting their stuff this summer?

She's certainly struttin' it!

I know I am excited to do so, but I'm still working on that six pack!

I found this workout today and I wanted to pass it on to y'all (Don't judge me because I just wrote y'all. Seriously of all the weird contractions out there this one makes sense: You+All=Y'all).
Anyway, this workout actually mentions something else I wanted to tell you about...

http://www.womenshealthmag.com/fitness/best-bikini-body?cm_mmc=Twitter-_-womenshealth-_-content-fitness-_-bikinibodyworkout

BMR, Basal Metabolic Rate. The BMR is the rate at which your body burns calories while you are doing nothing. Remember in one of my last posts how I mentioned that you could burn calories while you sleep? It's true, and here's how. In order to stay alive your body has to work, right? Lungs breathing, heart pumping, brain working, blood flowing, etc. Well, your body burns calories just to do those things. While it isn't a huge amount of calories, you are still burning calories simply by being alive.

Obviously, you need to eat to survive as well. So the goal, in order to lose weight (or maintain, if you're lucky enough to already be at your desired weight) is to burn more calories than you consume and not to consume too many more calories than you need to simply survive.

So how do we figure out these numbers? You can do the calculations yourself (see equation at the bottom of this post), or you can go to this handy calculator I found. Just enter your info and voila, you have your BMR:

http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/


OK, to help you out a little let me illustrate how this equation looks for me...

My BMR is 1500. That means if I sat in this chair all day and did nothing, I would still burn 1500 calories.

Now the average person needs to create a deficit between 500-1000 calories a day to lose weight. So I eat between 1250 and 1400 calories any given day (Usually you could pick a number 1250 OR 1400 or somewhere in between, but I am doing the "Zig Zag" method. Check back later for my explanation on that. It can help you get over a plateau). Then I work out 3 or 4 times a week to burn off the rest of the calories to create my deficit.

Looks like this:

    1500 BMR
-  1250 Calories consumed daily
_______
    250   Deficit
+  500   Calories burned during workout (Average)
_______
    750   Deficit

It's important to keep your deficit between 500-1000 calories (It depends on your activity levels, size, etc). If you drop your calories too low, not only are you not going to have the energy to keep moving, but your body could go into starvation mode, i.e., your body panics thinking you're starving and stores everything you eat as fat in order to survive (Also where the "Zig Zag" method comes in handy. Stay tuned for more info).

"So where does this burning more calories while you sleep thing come in", you ask? It's simple. Muscle burns more calories than fat. Say there are two people, both weighing 160 lbs. One of those people is 160 lbs of solid muscle. The other is a normal ratio of muscle to fat. The one that is 160 lbs. of muscle is going to burn more even just sitting around than the other 160 lb. person. Like the workout (see link above) says, you could continue to burn a higher number of calories even 24 hours after a workout just by having more muscle!

So how do you burn more while you sleep? Burn more calories than you take in daily to create a deficit, and lose more fat and gain more muscle!!!

Look for upcoming articles on building muscle, and ladies, don't be afraid to build muscle too!


Deficit in the economy = Bad! Deficit in your calories = Good! Get to it!


English BMR Formula  
Women: BMR = 655 + ( 4.35 x weight in pounds ) + ( 4.7 x height in inches ) - ( 4.7 x age in years )
Men: BMR = 66 + ( 6.23 x weight in pounds ) + ( 12.7 x height in inches ) - ( 6.8 x age in year )