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Fun and Fit: No Hulk, No Bulk
Dear Fun and Fit: I recently joined a gym and started doing 40 minutes on the elliptical and walking five miles on the treadmill each day. I want to lose weight, not bulk up and build muscle. Should I still do this daily elliptical routine to lose weight, or just stick with the walking so I don’t bulk up and build muscle? Thanks so much!
— Chelsey, Effingham, Ill.
Kymberly: Good news, walking wonder woman. Not only can you tread the light fantastic, but you can work the elliptical until you shrink so much you have to run around in the shower to get wet. Unless you’re actually lifting the elliptical machine above your head until muscular fatigue sets in (probably around one repetition), you’re in cardio land, not weight or strength training land.
An “aerobic” or “cardio” activity is one defined as systemic (using many muscles in the body, mostly the major ones in the lower body), with an elevated heart rate at a pace you can sustain for 20 minutes (even if you go longer or shorter, you could sustain it at least 20 minutes), always able to breathe comfortably at a rate of 60 percent to 85 percent of your heart rate maximum, and with little resistance and many, many, many repetitions.
While aerobic exercise will strengthen your heart, it won’t really affect muscle mass. In short, work out with both the treadmill and elliptical, as neither will build much more than the heart muscle.
Alexandra: There is a myth, young miss, that’s a mystery to me and misses the point about weight loss. That myth is that weight training will make you all bulked up like the Hulk. That is called bodybuilding. If you want to lose weight, you will have to add weight training to your regimen. (See how it’s called “weight training”? That’s because you’re training your weight to bend to your will.
With cardio, if you hustle your bustle (19th-century version of Spanx®), you can burn 10 to 12 kcals a minute; with weight training it’s only 8 to 10 kcals per minute. But, da da da da (those are trumpets), due to a magical thing called the metabolic spike (not a volleyball term), you will continue to burn kcals for about an hour after you finish working out and are sitting on your Chelsey Tushy. So in the end, due to the wonders of higher math, you will actually have burned more kcals with the weight training added in.
K: If it reassures you even more, unless “Chelsey” is a fake name for “Carl” or “Charles” or “Manly Man,” as a female you don’t have enough testosterone to accidentally bulk up. No sireee, I mean no misseee, you will not wake up one morning suddenly sproing boing, pop pop muscle-bound beyond belief and desire. Creating muscle definition is a process that takes time and deliberate weight training effort, so if you see yourself getting more muscular than you want, I’m pretty sure you’d notice and make changes to your program.
A: Because we like you so much, you get the bonus info that we haven’t told anyone (see almost all previous blogs): By adding weight training, you will change your metabolism and be burning kcals at a higher rate all day and night. Even on vacation and during high fatty-intake sports matches and dates where you eat a lot because someone else is paying (oops, gave away my college financial solvency plan), you will be a little kcal-burning heater.
So stop picking up strangers with cute dogs on those five-mile walks and pick up some weights instead!
Dear hulkers and bulkers: What kind of weight training have you added to your exercise regimen? Did you even know there was a She-Hulk?
— Identical twins and fitness pros Kymberly Williams-Evans and Alexandra Williams have been in the fitness industry since the first aerobics studio opened on the European continent. They teach, write, edit, emcee and present their programs worldwide on land, sea and airwaves, including AM 1490 at 6:20 p.m. on Sunday nights. They co-write Fun and Fit: Q and A with K and A from their home base in Santa Barbara. You can currently find them in action leading classes at Spectrum Uptown and Goleta and at UCSB. Kymberly is the former faculty minor adviser at UCSB for its fitness instruction degree offered through the Department of Exercise & Sport Studies; Alexandra serves as an instructor and master teacher for the program. Fun and Fit answers real questions from real people, so please send your comments and questions to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Comments
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» on 09.09.10 @ 04:22 AM
One of my favorite myths debunked! Love it!
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» on 09.09.10 @ 08:47 AM
You’re welcome. We are in the debunking business. We use our special decoder rings to find all the best myths in need of scrutiny. Thanks for reading our column.
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