Weight Management: Understanding Your Shape

It’s Not Just Your Weight. It’s Your Body Composition.

Understanding your shape is the first step to getting control of your weight management efforts because your body shape is relative to your body fat. It’s of utmost importance to know that where this fat is located determines how you will lose that fat and what your personal shape can be. Basicly we have two shapes that is the shape we are right now at present and the shape we desire to be.

Healthy target weight is based on your lean body mass, which includes your muscles, bone, minerals and other nonfat tissue in your body. The more muscle mass you have, the more calories your body burns. Remember, you need a certain amount of body fat for good health. It stores the energy your muscles need and serves as your body’s shock absorber. Too little body fat can be as unhealthy as too much.

Upper Body Fat: Upper body fat is the fat carried around your face, neck, chest and waist. This includes women and almost all men.

• Upper-body fat is usually caused by diet and lack of exercise.
• Fat around the waist usually means that there is also internal fat, which may cause serious health problems.
• Reducing internal fat can dramatically improve your health.
• Cutting calories alone will not eliminate upper body fat.
• To lose upper body fat, you have to remodel your percentage of lean body mass with calorie management, protein intake and exercise.
  

Proportional Body Fat: When you put on weight, it is spread proportionately throughout your body. You may not notice weight gain because it’s spread throughout your body. This also suggest overall body conditioning.

When it comes to fat distribution, every body falls into one of three body shapes:

• The Upper: Face, neck, chest and waist.
• The Lower: Hips and thighs.
• The Proportionate: Throughout the upper and lower body.

Find your body shape below and take action to obtain your desired shape that will improve your overall wellness.

Upper:

Usually caused by lack of exercise and the wrong diet. The bad news: Excess weight around your waist can put your health at risk. The good news: with appropriate diet program can help remodel your lean-to-fat ratio to improve both your shape and your health.

Usually caused by lack of exercise and the wrong diet. The bad news: Excess weight around your waist can put your health at risk. The good news: With appropriate diet program and lifestyle change can help remodel your lean-to-fat ratio to improve both your shape and your health.

Lower:

Often partially inherited. The bad news: It can be the toughest fat to lose. The good news: This shape is not associated with specific health risks. Increasing your protein intake with the appropriate diet program and incorporating lower-body workout routines in your exercise program are keys.

Proportionate:

Usually caused by the wrong diet. The bad news: Too much weight, even if it’s evenly distributed, can put your health at risk. The good news: With the appropriate diet program can help improve your lean-to-fat ratio for a leaner, healthier you.

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Lean Body Mass

What is Lean Body Mass?

Your lean body mass includes everything in your body tissue except storage fat such as muscles, bones, organs and skin. Lean body mass is made up of structural and functional elements in cells, body water, muscle, bones, and other body organs such as the heart, liver and kidneys. Lean body mass is important because it will determine your rest metabolic rate (RMR) or the number of calories you burn per day at rest. At rest the lean body mass allows you to burn more calories. As your lean body mass increases, so does the number of calories you burn at rest.

It is of utmost importance to increase your lean body mass and decrease body fat percentage. Now understand that there is no such thing as zero fat in the body. It is detrimental to your health if you have zero fats in your body, therefore caution must be taken so as not to drain the body of fats. As a matter of fact it is weight training, personalized protein intake, elimination of hidden fats, sugars and starches that effectively builds and enhances your lean body mass.

Upper body fat is the fat located in the upper body and it is the cells in this region that acts differently from the once located in the lower body such as thighs and hips. The main purpose of the upper body fat cell is to help withstand periods of starvation. It is important to know that muscles weigh more than fats per unit volume hence it is very well possible to lose fat and not weight if you are on a weight management program. It is important to understand that there are two kinds of people, those that need to lose body fats and those that need to gain lean body mass.

For your weight management program to be effective, it is important to find out what constitute body weight or their proportion. It is either lean body mass or body fats. When this is taking into consideration it will go a long way to deal with the problems of individuals losing body mass when in reality it is body fats they ought to get raid of.

Protein and Lean Body Mass

• Lean body mass is all non-fat tissue in the body including bones, muscles, body fluid and connective tissue.

• The more lean body mass you have, the higher your metabolism and the more calories you burn.

• Daily intake of the right amount of protein for your body helps to support the maintenance of your lean body mass.

• Soy protein is one the highest quality plant protein. It is an excellent source of amino acids, in addition to containing antioxidant to help maintain healthy cells.

Some Tips on Increasing your Lean Body Mass

• Measure lean body mass Vs. body Fat

• Understand your rest metabolic rate

• Manage your calorie intake

• Understand the role of protein

• Improve your burn rate

• Learn to balance your energy levels to lose weight

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