So yesterday we talked about the differences between what your body wants and what you want, and why these differences can cause massive amounts of frustration when trying to get results with a diet and exercise routine. If you missed it, please look over it here.
What I want to do today is dive a little deeper into the fascinating processes of the body, and in part 3 we will get into some actual real life examples of how you can use them for your goals of building huge muscles while burning truckloads of fat.
If you want to find a program that takes all this into account and just gives it to you in a manner in which all you have to do is execute, please check out Vince Delmonte’s No Nonsense Muscle Building; or for those looking to cut weight and get that coveted 6 pack, check out Your Six Pack Quest here. There are others out there but these are the best ones I know of that I have personally used to see fast results.
So let’s start out by taking a concept I brought up yesterday: your body’s survival instinct. Because your body really has only one purpose--to survive so it can pass on its genes--and because ANY excess muscle past the necessities of survival are really just seen by your body as a drain on its precious energy supplies, it will decimate that excess muscle as soon as it gets a chance. On the opposite side of the equation, because your fat is your body's built up supply of that precious energy, trying to get rid of it will be met with challenges. Your body will want to hold onto every drop that it can. This is built directly into the blueprint for your body, your DNA. What I’m telling you is that fighting it is futile. You will not win.
“But Kris, lots of people have the body that I want. Lots of people have lost a ton of fat and built lots of muscle. It can’t be futile. You’re not saying that all those people are just blessed with incredible genetics are you?” And the answer to this is of course no. It's very true that it is highly possible to accomplish these goals for you or for anyone else. Not everyone, at least with today’s technology, can be Mr. Olympia but almost everyone has the ability to look pretty damn good, and EVERYONE has the ability to make positive changes to what you already have. So why then would I say it's futile?
Because it is. You can’t fight your body. You can’t fight its design. You can, however, work with it. In your DNA, there are rules to be followed. These have evolved for millions of years into what they are today, and it’s what makes our bodies and brains so amazing. These rules are what allow us to change and adapt and what has allowed both our survival and even dominance in the animal kingdom. Yes, it's true that some very big rules are things like "fat (energy stores)= good" while "muscle (energy wasters)=bad," but that’s not the entire equation.
If you were to highly simplify it, the true equations look more like this :
Excess muscle=bad (unless) X .
Excess fat=good
You’ll notice that there was no (unless) with the fat rule. Your body didn’t evolve having to deal with excess fat, so there is no real rule for it in your DNA--even though we are now seeing that it can kill you. This is why you can be 300 pounds and your body will go into starvation mode. The important rule then when dealing with fat is this…
If fuel is not provided, I will take from excess muscle over fat stores (unless) X .
I know it’s not much of an equation, but work with me here.
So what is X? X is the phrase “I need it for survival." And even more so it’s “if I need it for survival in a more significant way than I need the fat (energy stores)." There are other complexities such as what whether it needs just energy or whether it needs protein to build new cells but that is past the scope of this article.
The problem is that in today’s modern world you really don’t need all that extra muscle for survival, so why would it keep it over fat stores? This is where the body's design can trump our conscious wants.
Your body has no concept of what the modern world is. It doesn’t know it's the 21st century and that you’re going to the gym to impress a girl any more than it knew that you might be running from a lion a few thousand years ago. All it knows is that when it is exposed to certain stimuli, it should react in a given way. That reaction is what has given it the evolutionary advantage for you and I to be alive today. Most people think of these actions in very large steps, such as "I will now build a bigger bicep." The truth however, is that your body is not really trying to build a bigger bicep. That’s really just an after-effect of the processes it's always done, the processes which have allowed humans to be awarded survival.
Instead of "building a bigger bicep," your body will release a chemical or hormone. This hormone will stimulate something else, which will then have another effect, and eventually, you will have muscle. Even if you don’t believe in evolution, you should be able to agree that the body is not actually “thinking” about what it’s going through; it is reacting. It’s these reactions we need to be able to control if we want success. Of course, you can’t just tell your body what reaction to have next. What you can do is set the stage, give it the right tools, and watch it work its “magic.” Give it a hammer when it needs a screw driver though, and depending where you are in the process it will either try to use the hammer and actually cause damage, or its more common response is to just abort the mission leaving you with little to no results.
In part three, I will go more into how you can know what the right tools are for the job you want your body to do, and give you some real life examples of how to use them.
Yours in success,
Kris
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