Training Weight training uses principle of adaptation. By lifting a heavy weight, your body needs to expend some calories by burning blood-sugar and also uses up some nutrients. But that's trivial. More importantly, main effect of weight training is that in days afterward, muscle will slightly increase in size and strength. Why does this happen? Adaptation. Because message you're giving your worker muscle cells is that their job is to lift a massive weight, and your survival may depend on it. Your muscle worker thinks: "I could just barely do that today, so tomorrow I'll need to be a bit bigger, just in case it happens again." The muscle is adapting to stimulus of a heavy load by making it a little easier for you to lift that load in future.

Survive! To your body, everything is a matter of survival, and most important element that your cells try to maintain is your energy. If you don't have energy to chase down your food, you will starve, and if you don't have energy to run away from a predator, you will be their food. If you burn though energy too quickly, there won't be enough left over to live on. That's why your body loves to keep fat: it's good for survival if food runs out.

The key to understanding adaptation is to think of yourself living in African savanna, and what your activities would mean if they were applied only to your survival. When you run, your cells think, "We must be running to catch food, or to escape death!" That's all that cells know: survival.

To bodybuilder, question becomes, "Will lifting a heavy weight make me stronger?" The answer is No! The immediate effect is that it will make you weaker. If you lift 100 lbs 10 times, does that mean that you can then lift 120 lbs right away? No, you're weaker and tired from your previous work. But your body will think that it needs to lift 100 lbs 10 times in order to survive, so it will adapt to make that a little easier for you next time. Taking a week off and allowing time for your muscle to grow a little bit will mean that you are stronger. So, next week you lift 120 lbs, and your body needs to adapt AGAIN, thinking that you now need to lift 120 lbs to survive. This makes you stronger week by week. "Will lifting a light weight 50 times make me stronger?" No! Your muscle will be exhausted, but you're asking for it to be able to last longer, not grow stronger. How will your body last longer? By adapting your energy stores (fat) to release more slowly and gradually. This is great for your endurance, but BAD NEWS if you want to look "ripped" with little body fat.

But adaptation does not only apply in this case. Your body adapts to everything. Everything you do and eat. So, you have to ask yourself, "Am I sending my cells right message in things I do and food I eat?"

Look for sequel to this article, Adaptation II, for tons of examples and practical advice based on principle of Adaptation.

Don't be a house cat. Many cats are overweight because their environment doesn't challenge them to run to catch food (or avoid being caught), and sleep or lie around for 18 hours a day. If you have a desk-job, and then watch TV on couch, that is exactly what you are doing.

Three Squares

Should you eat only three meals a day and avoid snacking to lose weight? Well, you will be consuming fewer calories, so that's a plus. However, bigger effect is this: your body will think food is rare and that you may starve. If you go 5 or 6 hours between meals, or if you skip breakfast and go 16 hours or so without food, what else could your body possibly conclude? Your brain can't tell your cells "don't worry, we're trying to lose weight," because your intentions don't mean anything to your organs. Your organs react and adapt to stimuli presented to them. So they think that you're in desert. How do you survive in desert? Like a camel: Conserve as much food in your body as possible (fat), slow your metabolism to prolong your life (so you'll feel tired a lot), and retain as much water as possible.

What about opposite? What if you eat small portions every two hours and drink water all time? Your body will think that you're in a place where there is food whenever you need it, like a jungle full of fruit trees and other easily furnished food to eat. What is reaction? Hooray! Better to speed up metabolism, so that stomach is finished digesting previous meal before next one comes; no need to store fat that is just leeching circulation and water; and get rid of any excess water in system, because fresh water is constantly coming in. This is in line with your weight loss goals, so this is route to take.

Calories: Eat less or burn more?

The final effect of your body's great adaptation potential is question of which is more effective: eating fewer calories or burning more calories with exercise? Let's look at these two propositions in terms of adaptation.

If you first remove a significant number of calories from your diet, you will feel less energetic (because calories are energy), therefore, you won't feel like exercising, and you won't be able to exercise for as long. On other hand, if you start exercising more each day, it will make you hungrier (because your body knows it's not getting enough calories to support this new activity), but as long as you try to keep your eating habits same and pay attention to satiety by eating foods that make you feel full, you'll feel great, your endurance will improve and your overall health will keep getting better. At that point, if you reduce calories in your diet, then you will be able to cope with slightly less energy, because your body will already be more efficient at using that energy to fuel your exercise.

A Summary

To conclude, in terms of exercise: warm up to get circulation going with a fast walk for about 20 minutes, then do a high intensity activity for about 10 minutes. The best to do that is before breakfast. In terms of diet: try to reduce your calories overall, but divide them among small meals all day. Never eat a big meal, but snack every hour or two on something healthy. Also, drink as much water as you possibly can all day. These practices are optimized for your body's natural reactions, so that you will be training your body to lose weight. And whenever you hear diet advice, try to look past immediate effects and look at it from perspective of Adaptation.