Fitness

Muscles make you look better, perform better, age better, and live longer, even if you don’t plan on being shredded. However, building muscles can be challenging for some, especially skinny or ectomorph men and women who have very high metabolism to begin with.

Many people believe that if you work out regularly, you’ll eventually lose weight. Or, if you eat a donut, you should walk for about an hour to burn equivalent calories. Or when you put in some extra time at the gym, you can afford to splurge a little. Unfortunately, none of these are true, and it’s just not that simple.

Often, pictures of physique transformations you see online don’t show the sacrifices it takes to get them. Every year, millions of people aspire for such transformations. Most of them fail or regain their weight by falling back to old habits. Have you wondered what it takes and whether you can stick to it for life?

You’ve been working hard, cutting calories, exercising, and weight lifting. You’re doing everything right, but suddenly, you stop losing weight. Or every time you manage to lose the weight, it rebounds. What went wrong? It could be something called metabolic adaptation.

One of the reasons for the perpetual failure is that they’re only focused on weight when they want to look better.

Many people tend to overlook the importance of nutrition when it comes to their muscle-building efforts. They focus on strength training, but not crucial anabolic (muscle-building) factors like eating enough calories and protein, vitamin D optimization, and sleep quality.

A lot of people are very emotionally attached to their weight when they’re trying to lose weight. When Matt and Wade were personal trainers, they saw a fair share of people cry after weighing themselves.

When you try to lose weight, your body fights back, making it harder to lose and keep weight off. Once you understand how your body fights back for its survival, there are things you can do to mitigate the effects so you can finally lose weight and keep it off. Here are a few theories of how our survival mechanisms work.