Of course there’s nothing wrong with using the gym or trainers if you want to build muscles that burn sugar. But if you want to build muscles that burn fat, you need to take a different approach. And of course some trainers know how to do this properly, but very few.
(If you are a trainer and would like to learn how to help people build fat burning muscles the right way, contact me and I’ll be glad to teach you. If you complete my training successfully, I’ll gladly refer patients to you.)
First, let’s look at three of the arguments FOR using a trainer and lifting weights, and why these arguments are misguided:
1) You build more muscle which has a higher metabolic rate than other tissues, allowing you to burn more calories each day just by having more muscle mass.
2) Working out hard at a high heart rate causes an “afterburn” effect, raising your overall metabolism for many hours after the workout is over.
3) High Intensity Interval Training (“H.I.I.T.”: working out at maximal effort for short bursts) has lots of scientific studies that prove it is healthier and more effective than “aerobic” workouts.
Debunk 1) More muscle does raise your resting metabolic rate, but burning more calories does not lead to weight loss because you will just accidentally eat more food, it’s not fully under your control. Eating is a hormonally driven function that you can’t control effectively enough to make a difference in your weight over the long term. Working out hard releases a hormone called cortisol that increases your appetite and causes sugar cravings.
Debunk 2) The “afterburn” effect is true, but again, burning more calories will just make you hungrier and you will invariably just eat more, keeping your weight about the same.
Debunk 3) The studies that show HIIT is better for you than “aerobics” are misleading. They compare one group of exercisers doing HIIT for a total of twelve minutes per week to another group of “aerobic” exercisers who run for several hours each week. The problem with this is that most runners train at too high of an intensity to be considered true aerobics. In other words, the runners were actually doing a lot of anaerobic exercise. Anaerobic workouts tear down the body. So in this case, the HIIT group did better because they were only tearing down their bodies for 12 minutes each week, whereas the runners were tearing down their bodies for 2-3 hours per week.
Of course micro-trauma to the muscles is what helps them grow. But the key term is “micro.” If you get sore from your workout, you did more than micro-trauma, you did unnecessary damage to the muscle and put unnecessary stress on your adrenals. But there are two types of muscle: fat burning and sugar burning. You can build the type you want by following specific guidelines. “No pain no gain” is a myth.
So building muscle is bad?
No. It depends on what kind of muscle you build and what purpose you are building it for. If your purpose is to burn fat, lose fat, and improve your health, then you have to build fat burning muscle, not sugar burning muscle. Building sugar burning muscle would not only be counter productive to your goal but the process of creating it would make your health worse.
What do you mean? How do we avoid building sugar burning muscles?
Exercising only a small portion of your body, like most weight training, stimulates the adrenals to overproduce cortisol and adrenaline, turns the sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight system) way up, and specifically stimulates one set of nerves that turns the muscle being exercised into a sugar burning muscle. Literally.
Or if you are exercising the whole body at once like running, if you push too hard and put your body into oxygen debt, it has the same effect on the adrenals, sympathetic fight/flight system, and all the muscles turn into sugar burners.
So to prevent this during a workout is two fold:
1) workout the entire body at once, don’t spot exercise,
2) exercise at your “Goldie Lox” heart rate, not too fast, not too slow, so that you avoid building sugar burning muscles and instead build fat burning muscles. To do this you use the 180 formula.
But planks and sit ups and crunches and squats are all important and necessary to be healthy and strong right?
No, they are not necessary except temporarily in very rare circumstances.
But they are okay to do just for fun right?
Not really. These spot exercises create sugar burning muscles that fatigue after a few minutes. The core muscles, like the abdominals, need to contract almost continually all day long as you walk, bend, and otherwise move around. Building six pack abs that fatigue in 2 minutes won’t help you much in real life. They actually make it more likely to hurt your back.
When I test frequent gym goers who lift heavy weights at the gym, they almost all have damaged muscles that are less stable than most old ladies. Don’t get me wrong, body builders are very strong in short bursts, but very weak when asked to perform slow and steady tasks, the ones that are required to prevent injury during daily life. It sounds unbelievable, I too am surprised every time I examine a body builder.
So how do I build fat burning muscle with lots of stamina?
1) Do whole body exercise like walking, running, swimming, rowing, or biking.
2) Use a heart rate monitor to make sure you are at the optimal aerobic fat burning intensity. It’s called the 180 formula. Part of the 180 formula includes a 10 minute warm up and a 10 minute cool down, without which it won’t work.
How does diet affect the type of muscle I build during my workout?
If you eat lots of simple carbs, sugars, and high glycemic foods that stimulate insulin release (like most runners), you will build sugar burning muscles even if you exercise correctly. If you eat low glycemic foods and good fats, you will build fat burning muscles even if you don’t exercise that much.
What are some of the other dangers of exercising even a little bit too hard?
For those with a history of health problems, exercising too hard often can trigger a relapse of old symptoms, sometimes ferociously.
Every month or two a patient, whom I had previously helped recover from illness, will return to my office with a major relapse. When I question in detail the circumstances, the relapse happens after starting a new workout routine, often at the gym or with a trainer. They were feeling so good and wanted to take their health to the next level.
But unfortunately they were stimulating too much adrenal and sympathetic fight/flight and building sugar burning muscles. The adrenals produce large amounts of cortisol at first, in order to compensate for all the damage being caused to the muscles. The cortisol makes them feel really good. But after 3-4 weeks of this, their adrenals can’t keep up and cortisol levels drop.
At this point the proverbial turds hit the fan: the immune system kicks in high gear trying to repair all the muscle damage, but it goes overboard and starts to attack the remnants of their old health condition, flaring up the symptoms again. Often part of the precipitation is re-emergence of sugar ingestion sparked by the initial cortisol spikes (cortisol increases appetite and sugar cravings).
So is anaerobic exercise like lifting weights ever a good idea?
Yes, if your goal is to win bodybuilder’s competitions, if you are training to run the 100 meter dash, and certain sports require it.
Also, once you spend 3-6 months building your aerobic muscle base, you can safely begin to add in anaerobic stuff like weights or sprints. But I can’t really see the need for the average person to do this. The risk of injuring yourself is high. But if you really want to, here’s an article that walks you through how to do this safely and sanely: here.
So bottom line for trainers is:
1) build up the person’s aerobic base first using the 180 formula with a heart rate monitor for 3-6 months
2) if you still want to add weights, do it after the aerobic base is completed
3) do as much stuff with the whole body working in gravity as possible
4) err on the side of free dumbells or kettle bells while standing rather than machines sitting or lying down.
5) weights and anaerobics (anything that isolates muscles or gets the heart rate over the 180 formula is usually anaerobic) should only be about 10% of total workout time each week.
Looking Forward!
Yours in health,
Dr. Campise
Fresno Chiropractor
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