The main product of New Element Training is strength for health. Our medical-grade equipment and rational approach to exercise are unmatched in the fitness industry. As many of you have noticed, the results you achieve in our facility are superior to what you normally get at other gyms. Strength for health will always be our main focus.

As the summer is just around the corner we decided to offer a program where the main goal is to lose fat and add muscles. Please make sure to contact us for more information about this exciting program.

In this newsletter Andrei talks about why strengthening muscles is the key for an effective and sustainable fat loss program.

There are various diet programs that help people lose weight and sometimes very quickly. Unfortunately, far too often this weight comes back and we even add on more pounds than what we had before. The reason is that we lose weight not only from fat stores in our body but also from the muscles.  After stopping a calorie restricted diet we gain our weight back in the form of fat, as it is much easier for the body to increase in fat than muscle.  As a result we may weigh the same, but will have more fat in our body than prior to the start of the diet.  Most popular diets cause people to lose weight then gain it all back over and over, each time getting fatter and fatter.  This is commonly known as the Yo-Yo effect. Consuming more nutritious and lower calorie dense foods is the key to weight loss, but a leaner body will not last unless we maintain the muscles.

Even on a regular diet we can still lose muscle from lack of use, leading to atrophy and progressively as we age (sarcopenia). An example of atrophy can be seen after the removal of a cast from a previously broken bone. The body part is healed but due to its lack of use and mobility, it is noticeably smaller and weaker. Leading a sedentary lifestyle and continuous hours in the office is similar to sitting in a cast all day. Sarcopenia is the loss of 0.5-1% of skeletal muscle in the body per year after the age of 25. This means by the time we reach the age of 50 we may have lost somewhere between 12.5 to 25% of our skeletal muscle. We also gain quite a bit of weight as we age and that extra weight is not in the form of muscle, rather the buildup of fat. The bottom line is the fewer muscles we have, the slower our metabolism is and the easier it is to gain fat.

In combination with a correct diet, a proper strength training program is the key factor to an effective fat loss program and maintenance of a healthy body weight for the following reasons:

• It forces the body to preserve or add muscle tissue while burning fat. Lean muscle mass burns calories, even while at rest. A pound of muscle tissue consumes three times the energy that a pound of fat uses. Adding a few pounds of lean muscle tissue means we will burn more calories (in the form of fat) all day long. Thus, increasing the amount of muscle we have, increases our body's ability to burn fat.
• Strength training increases anabolic metabolism, a process during which the body builds new tissues. Hormones control this process and new tissues are formed while fat deposits are lost.
• Proper strength training causes the body to carve deeply into the largest muscles' glycogen reserves. As the body works to replenish these glycogen stores post-workout, it becomes more insulin-sensitive, which means less dietary glucose gets converted to body fat.

Insulin response plays an essential role in fat loss. Even when calories are being restricted, high levels of insulin will cause glucose to be converted and stored as body fat. Unless insulin levels are managed by high-intensity exercise or carbohydrate restriction, individuals may find it almost impossible to shed body fat.

Lipase is another key component responsible for mobilizing stored body fat. It responds to both epinephrine and insulin. Epinephrine acts as the on switch, starting the process of fat breakdown while insulin works as the off-switch, stopping the process. When high-intensity strength training is performed, epinephrine is released causing lipase to begin mobilizing body fat. This chain of events occurs even without a calorie deficit.