What is The Body Unlimited Fitness Journal?
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We have set you up with the best trainers around, now it's time for you to monitor your progress! This will not only be a teach tool, and educational aide, but also valuable in recording which exercises a client has performed as they strive to reach their personal fitness goals. So what's our goal with all of this?

Losing fat and building muscle, plain and simple. One concept that many people seem to have a problem with is the idea that in order to keep fat off of your body you need to put on muscle. While at first glance this may seem counterproductive - gaining weight in order to lose weight - it's all about metabolism.

Metabolism can be summed up as all of the chemical reactions that take place within an organism. In terms of weight loss and fitness, metabolism basically means all of those calories that your body burns throughout the day. Your resting metabolic rate would be the amount of calories your body is burning when you are at rest. Our goal is to add lean tissue and in turn elevate our resting metabolic rate.

Muscle creates metabolism. But how?

As we add lean muscle to our bodies that muscle will require extra calories to survive. Imagine adding a bunch of plug-in space heaters into your apartment during the winter. As we keep adding heaters, the energy demands go up and our electric bill rises. More heaters, more heat. Similarly, as we keep adding lean muscle, our body must use more calories to operate that new muscle... Just like the space heaters. More muscle equals more calories burned.

Now let's take it one step further and consider the future. As we are adding lean muscle over the coming weeks and months your body will burn more and more at-rest calories. Let's look at our analogy of adding the heaters inside of our house. There is a certain point where you have enough heaters going to keep you from getting cold, and then you can set all of the heaters to their lowest setting and they will still keep your house warm, no matter how cold it is outside.

This is what we are trying to do. We want enough lean muscle on our bodies so that the fat we have lost can't come back. There is a tipping point when you are working out, where you have developed enough lean tissue (somewhere between 6 and 15 pounds) that the fat you have lost can't come back because you're burning so many calories throughout the day. Maybe you are eating a 1500 cal. per day diet, but your body is burning 1,500 calories. Well, you've got yourself a nice balance.

Think of pounds of fat in terms of the calories they represent. A single (1) pound of fat is roughly 3500 cal. In general terms, a pound of lean muscle will add an additional 20 to 30 cal. per day to your metabolism. That means if I were to put on 10 pounds of lean muscle I would be burning an extra 200 to 300 cal. each and every day. You will hear some trainers and gyms quote numbers as high as 50 cal. per day, but that's ridiculous nonsense. I tell my clients to assume every pound of lean tissue can burn 25 cal. extra per day. So if I have 10 pounds of fat to lose (35,000 cal.) that I need to put on enough muscle to compensate for that fat so that once it's gone I don't have to keep stressing about it.

A reasonable workout should burn between 500 and 1,000 calories in a given day (weight training plus cardio, CrossFit, extreme cardio, etc.). If you are working out 3 to 4 days a week - which you need to be - you are burning an extra 3000 to 4000 cal. per week. That would burn a pound of fat each week. But we want our metabolism to take over so you'll need about 15 pounds of new muscle so that the fat you have lost stays gone.

We're about to teach you how, and let you track all of your workouts. So grab your water bottle, get your towel, and let's wage war on fat.
About the Author: Nicholas Black is a writer and Trainer (Strength & Conditioning, Diet Coaching, Brazilian Jiu-jitsu, Boxing & Muay Thai Kickboxing).

He fought professionally for several years in MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) while developing Strength and Weight management techniques for several large Gym Corporations (24-Hr. Fitness, LA Fitness, etc.).

He now works both with gyms and private clients in Los Angeles (Sherman Oaks) where he helps to develop training and management teams to run successful gyms.

He also trains a handful of clients who are still losing weight! If you're in LA, drop by and train with Nicholas (nicholasblack60@gmail.com).

Also check out some of our other work at:
www.NicholasBlackBooks.com