So it’s hot out and you want to look good. Understandable, but, you gotta understand, you are only human. Just because you have the time to train and workout 14 hours a day doesn’t mean you should.
By: Daniel Salazar
Rest and recovery are both a pretty big deal when it comes to fat loss, muscle building, and just overall health… If you’re getting at least 8 hours a night you’ll be piling on the chub in no time!
Training and working out is a form of stress in itself that does promote fat loss, however, the changes in your body don’t happen while you are training. It happens as the result of your training session.
The fat loss or muscle building that your seeking outcomes from the adaption of the stress from training, but the only way you can adapt is if you allow yourself to recover. No sleep, no recovery, you get chubb…
Here’s why stress and lack of recovery get you fat:
- When your stress levels skyrocket from overtraining, that stress can actually mess with your hormones. Training too hard, for too long increases a hormone called cortisol. This hormone can cause your body to store fat and create new fat cells.
Cortisol is part of the fight or flight response. Faced with a “life or death” situation, cortisol increases glucose (sugar) in the bloodstream as well as insulin, another fat storage hormone, to increase energy and physical readiness to handle any stressful situations. This response is something that is already hardwired into use since the times we lived in caves fighting off sabertooth tigers. But the thing is our body doesn’t know that we don’t have to do that anymore so it takes any stressful situation as a major threat and prepares us to either fight or flee. Cortisol can also break down the body’s protein to produce more energy.
Now imagine that you work your ass off not only to get fat but lose muscle at the same time!
