Don’t let the numbers on the scale or other tricky body measurements get you down! Fat loss and muscle gain can be easy! We have THE BEST diet and exercise tips to improve your body’s composition and help you make steady progress towards your goals.

The number on the scale can be misleading. For one thing, a loss of body fat paired with an increase in muscle mass can skew the results of your weigh-ins! And then there are things like body mass index (BMI) and body fat percentage tests. These can both be useful, but don’t quite give you the whole picture. Not to mention, measuring your progress off of these results can distract you from better markers of your health like how you feel and function! 

Oftentimes, getting into better shape is made way too complicated. There are easier and less stressful alternatives to help you make progress including forming healthier habits and arming yourself with knowledge. Prepare to free yourself from daily weigh-ins and inaccurate or ambiguous health markers. Let us help to create a leaner, fitter you–the easy way.

Exercise: The Core of Fat Loss and Muscle Gain

Creating a healthier body composition is typically comprised of fat loss and muscle gain, and at the core of this is exercise. The best way to make a change in your body composition is with an exercise routine. When you workout, you are not only burning calories, but you are letting your body know that it needs to adapt to the training stimulus you are providing it. These changes go beyond the calories and add up to a significant difference over the weeks and months.

These changes include increased muscular strength and size, shredding fat, and a release of hormones that will help to KEEP you in good shape. The more consistent you are with your training the better, as it will motivate your body to maintain the changes long term.  

Steady and Intentional Makes the Most Gains

All exercise routines are not created equal. Constantly running your body into the ground can actually limit your fitness quest. Every workout does not need to leave you soaked and sore. While sometimes it can feel good to push yourself to your absolute limits, doing this often can cause excessive fatigue and even release stress hormones which are NOT good for your fitness goals! Sometimes your muscles, connective tissue, and even your nervous system need a break. Rest is when your body makes adaptations and positive changes.

This is where the training principle called progressive overload comes into play. After a period of increasingly difficult workouts, a period of reduced volume or intensity should be introduced to allow for recovery. This should occur regularly and be at the center of any training program for optimal results. This will not only help you make performance improvements, but it will help your body make positive physical changes. Gymnastic Strength Training^TM follows these basic principles and is surely why GymnasticBodies Students see natural, positive changes in their body composition. No scale or body fat testing needed! Just smart training and real results!

Focus on the proper exercise progressions and your body composition will naturally improve!

Nutrition and Body Composition

Once you have mastered consistent adherence to a training program designed to improve performance and physical improvements, it’s time to support your hard work with some solid nutrition. Just like with GST^TM, basic principles and the lowest hanging fruit should be sought out first. Things as simple as eating vegetables, drinking water, and getting healthy fats into your diet can make incredible changes in your composition. To make these changes last, however, you’ll need to make habits out of these dietary components.

Nutrition is a massive and seemingly complicated world. To help you navigate it and get the most bang for your buck, Thrive, our habit-based nutrition program, will break down each meal and make sure you stick with these new, healthy habits for the long haul. Lasting improvements to your fit self require sensible, health-promoting eating habits, not fleeting, restrictive diets!

Measuring Progress: Healthy Change Takes Time

Nowadays, it seems there are a million apps, tests, and measurements that are “best” for determining your body composition and your progress. Whether it’s a DEXA scan, caliper measurements, BMI, weight, or other measures, they all have limitations and oftentimes complicate the issue.

The analogy of GPS coordinates works best here: in order to figure out a GPS location, multiple satellites must be used to provide an accurate result. Same goes for these tests; each measurement and test can help contribute to an accurate result, but as standalone information, they should not be trusted.

Lesson for the day? Don’t be fooled by the numbers! Body COMPOSITION trumps body WEIGHT any day, and basing your progress off of how you look and feel can free you of concerns and inaccurate testing modalities. Trust that with the proper exercise and nutritional habits, the changes will come. It’s best to keep things simple, perfect the most effective habits, and most importantly, find healthy routines that you can consistently adhere to.

Remember, positive, healthy change doesn’t happen overnight. GymnasticBodies Training Programs and Nutrition Courses can guide you to lasting change and steady, progressive improvement.