Boot Camp Versus Gyms!

One of my boot camp Clients asked me a question yesterday - why do we get results on the camp when I was going to the gym for hours on end and not seeing results?

Great question, there's a few answers to this - on the camp we aim to build lean muscle and when you have muscle you increase your resting metabolic rate (burn more calories during the day). That doesn't mean you can then eat what you like because you will just put on fat, you need to lose the fat from around the muscle to reveal the great muscle tone - and the NUMBER 1 way to do that is by cleaning up your nutrition. If you have started to lapse a bit on the diet - get right back to the healthy eating - live by the 90/10 rule - allow yourself the OCCASIONAL treat and eat clean the rest of the time.

Another reason we get results at the camp is because no two workouts are the same so your body never gets the chance to adapt to one workout, in the gym you generally get results for the first month then stop am i right? thats because your body has adapted - you need to change your programme (increase intensity/lift heavier) EVERY 3-4 weeks in order to keep getting results.

By doing resistance style training and High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) (what we do at the camp) we create what is know as EPOC (Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumtion) basically the harder our body and muscles have to work at regrowth and repair the higher the metabolism during that time. Usually on the gym programmes you are burning calories for the duration (assuming you follow the same routine most do - treadmil, bike, cross trainer - few light weights that haven't increased in months!) and for around 2 hours after, then it stops. When you create EPOC you may not burn as many calories whilst you do it but your metabolism stays ramped up for 24-48 hours depending on how hard you work your muscles!!

A lot of people will not notice their weight change very much on the scales on the boot camp (although when you follow the diet to the letter you will drop several pounds - this is through excess toxin build up and also expelling those foods that cause your intestines swell up because it can't digest it - MILK is a HUGE one!) anyway back to the point - theres a common saying we hear people say - 'muscle weighs more than fat' well no thats not entirely true because a pound of muscle is exactly the same weight as a pound of fat- the crucial difference is that muscle doesn't take up as much room in the body as its denser than fat. So if you had two people in front of you - one was well toned through weight training and HIIT so had more musle and the other never trained at all and had more fat they would have a completely different body shape yet the one with the most muscle might weigh more does that make sense?

Here is a picture of 5lbs of muscle and 5lbs of fat - as you can see fat takes up a larger surface area in the body:

so here's how two people may look where one carry's out weight training and the other doesn't do any exercise

Slim-fat (unhealthy) Slim - toned (healthy)

None exerciser 9stone Regular exerciser 9stone

The worst thing you could possibly do is rely on weight loss when you are trying to get in shape, sure if your overweight then you do need to lose weight but you need to do it through more than diet alone. Any exercise is great but if your not doing resistance work then some/a lot of your weight loss can actually come from the breaking down and loss of your muscle mass - which is devastating because muscle is VITAL for fat loss, if you rely on weight loss alone you could end up struggling with yo yo diets forever!

I hope this answers your questions? Please keep asking as it helps a lot of people, not just the boot camp members

Well done to Chritina for asking a fantastic question and for getting outstading results so far and we're not even at the end of week 3 - Keep Smashing it!! x x