Originally Posted by
garymacd
Rest?
What's that?
I was supposed to have every weekend off this month. In the space of three days in mid-January I booked teaching gigs for every and all weekends in February, while still working full shifts during the weeks. The last two weekends will be spent teaching at a fire department way up in God's country on the shores of Georgian Bay. I'm actually looking forward to it, but will miss family and homecooked meals for a while.
As for those questions, BrerGnat answered them quite well. Thanks. One thing to remember about calories and metabolism. The more you work out, the more calories you will need, and not just while you are working out. Your body will require extra calories to recover from the exercise. It will repair any damage you cause during exercise while you rest and sleep. It repairs damage by removing damaged tissue and replacing it with more muscle, tendon and ligament. This is normal.
Yes, you will actually burn calories while you sleep. Creating new muscle takes energy. Feeding that new muscle tissue takes energy. Without energy you will crash if you can't feed all that muscle.
Is it possible that some of those last ten pounds you want to lose is muscle? The last thing you want to do is to burn muscle fibre. That is not healthy. Try to find a body fat skin caliper set and find out what your body fat percentage is. I just saw them listed on EBay for less than $20, some as cheap as $5. Follow the directions to see what your body fat percentage is.
Look at this table for fat amounts and fitness levels (it doesn't look very good, but..):
Fitness Level Female Male
Essential 10-12% 2-4%
Athlete 13-20 6-13%
Fitness 21-24% 14-17%
Average 25-31% 18-25%
Obese 32+% 25+%
Men generally carry more muscle and less fat than women, so these numbers are normal.
If a woman's body fat drops below 10%, her body will go through some radical and very unhealthy changes, the least of which is no strength reserves, losing hair and being cold all the time. You will look spectacular, if you like that bald, ripped, skinny, vein-y look with no ... um ... you figure it out, but not really healthy.