Guide to Intermediate Bodybuilding

Authors Avatar

Guide to Intermediate Bodybuilding

        In today’s society where the majority of the population is obese and overweight, it has never been as important for people to not only become knowledgeable of how to maintain a healthy lifestyle but also to act out on that knowledge and become healthy. Many people today have different perceptions of how to stay healthy and lose weight. The danger in this is that although some people do have the right idea on how to lose weight, others do not which puts them at risk to cause further harm to themselves and their bodies. This means that even though a person may begin a program or diet, they might actually be hurting themselves more than helping themselves, because they may be doing unhealthy things to their body thinking they are helping themselves lose weight. In this paper I will elaborate on some of the common mistakes people make in dieting according to an article form Muscle & Fitness, and discuss the implications it has on society as well as discuss the biology related to these mistakes.

        One of the most common mistakes made by people who wish to be healthy or lose weight is drastically cutting calories. Although it seems logical for a person who wishes to lose weight to eat less, this might actually cause a somewhat negative affect for a person. The reason for this having a negative affect is because by drastically cutting your calories you are causing your metabolism which burns calories for you, to slow down significantly which means you burn less calories overall. Not only does drastically cutting calories or having fewer meals in a day slow down your metabolism but also gives your body less of a chance to produce ATP and energy. ATP is made in a process known as cellular respiration which is a process in which cells use sugars to make ATP. However since we as humans are heterotrophs, which means we can not absorb the suns energy and convert it into sugars which then leads to ATP and energy. We must eat plants and other forms of food to breakdown the energy in those foods and then create our own energy. So, relating this back to eating fewer meals a day or drastically cutting calories, if a person actually did this they would have very little energy in their body and would feel sluggish and lethargic. Imagine trying to go days or weeks felling sluggish all the time, not only would it affect a persons body, but it would also affect how they perform at work, the time they spend with there family and anything else they may do. Not to mention the fact that an individual would be very unlikely to go out and exercise since they would feel extremely tired and lethargic.

Join now!

        Another common mistake made by people who are trying to diet or lose weight is by completely abandoning fats. Although some people may think that because fat has twice the amount of calories as an equal amount of protein or carbohydrate, it is good for them to eliminate it from their diet, they are wrong. Similar to drastically cutting your calories, by completely eliminating fat from your diet you are once again slowing down your metabolism. This happens because when a person has no fat in their diet it lowers testosterone levels, which leads to metabolism also being lowered. Speaking ...

This is a preview of the whole essay