EMS Fitness and Weight Loss

How is weight loss related to EMS fitness and what are realistic expectations?

Let’s define weight loss.

The body can gain fat and lose it, and it can also gain muscle and lose it.

What is toning? It’s just a marketing term that implies losing fat and maintaining or gaining muscle.

Weight loss is, in most cases, synonymous with fat loss. Some people may feel they have too much muscle, the solution there is pretty simple: don’t use the muscle as much, and it will start to atrophy. However, our recommendation is to do your best to maintain or even increase muscle mass.

Muscle is very useful to the body, it helps prevent injuries, allows for improvements in balance, metabolism, strength, power, endurance, and the list goes on.

Weight loss or fat loss is harder to achieve and even harder to maintain. Fat in the body has its functions as well, but we don’t need nearly as much as we humans tend to accumulate.

The general recommendation for a healthy weight loss goal is to aim for .5 to 2 lbs. per week. Keep in mind that when losing weight, you will lose water weight, muscle mass, and fat in the process. The only way to manage how much fat versus muscle you lose is by including resistance training and a healthy diet rich in protein.

Weight loss guidelines:

Let me tell you a bit more about my background so you can understand what I think is the best approach to weight loss from a healthy and sustainable standpoint.

For the past ten years, I worked as an exercise consultant and health coach for the Friedman Diabetes Institute helping endocrinology patients change their habits over time and embrace exercise as part of their lives. It wasn’t just diabetics, but people with thyroid issues, PCOS, people transitioning gender, and so on.

My approach has been to play the long game and collaborate with the patient to select what areas to prioritize and make incremental changes they can build upon.

Here’s what I found works best:

• Element of happiness: if you divide your plate into quarters or four of your own closed fists, one quarter should be protein, two quarters should be non-starchy vegetables, and one quarter should be an element of happiness. This element of happiness can be rice, potatoes, pasta, a brownie for dessert, a soda, etc. but the key here is that it can only be one quarter. If you have a serving of rice, and a soda, and a brownie, you are now at three quarters of happiness – that’s too much happiness.

Why is this effective? If you go on a strict “only salads” diet, inevitably you will start getting bored, and will not look forward to your next meal. Most of us feel an emotional connection to food and maintaining that element of happiness will maintain some level of excitement for every meal. This will help with sustainability.

• Increase energy expenditure: being active will burn calories, which helps with fat loss. This can be cardio exercise, hiking, walking, swimming, playing sports, running around with your kids, gardening, and so on.

Why is it important? The equation: “calories out > calories in = fat loss” is not as linear as the math claims, but it does work as long as you stay within healthy ranges (.5 – 2 lbs. per week) and don’t go under 1200 calories/day among other parameters.

• Resistance training: maintaining or increasing muscle mass will help maintain metabolism levels which in turn contributes to energy expenditure.

The more muscle you have, the more muscle fibers you are able to engage when performing any activity. The stronger you are and the more endurance you have the faster and longer you can run/swim/cycle/row/play sports. Exercising at higher intensities, or longer durations will burn more calories.

• Sleep: rest and recovery are where the magic happens. We don’t all need 8 hours of sleep, but it’s during sleep that your muscles grow stronger after working out. In addition, not sleeping enough will mess with your hormones which will impede weight loss.

Sleep helps regulate appetite hormones. Not sleeping enough will reduce leptin while increasing ghrelin. Leptin is a hormone produced in fat cells that decreases appetite. However, the more fat you have, the less effective leptin is, and the hungrier you feel. Ghrelin is produced in the stomach and signals the brain that you are hungry.

• Stress: managing and reducing stress is imperative to feel happier but it is much easier said than done. Sleep, meditating, and spending more time doing things you truly enjoy will help decrease stress.

Stress increases cortisol levels which stimulate the metabolism of fat and carbohydrates. This should be a good thing, unfortunately, cortisol and ghrelin increase in parallel. Ghrelin, as we said above, will increase your appetite.

You can find other guidelines online about how to lose weight (here’s one).

Ok, so what does this have to do with EMS fitness?

Electrical muscle stimulation does not directly interact with fat. EMS fitness does affect muscles in a major way. We emphasized the importance of activity and maintaining or increasing muscle mass. This is where EMS workouts shine.

Although the workouts are only 20 minutes and are joint-friendly and low-impact, they are still intense. You effectively get stronger, engage more muscle mass, and over time increase your metabolism.

Another side effect of EMS fitness is that small aches & pains will most likely dissipate thanks to our Buzz Recovery and Buzz Pain Relief programs.

Equipped with more strength, fewer aches and pains, and one of our knowledgeable EMS trainers by your side, you will be in great hands to achieve your goals in a healthy, effective, and fun way.

This blog entry is meant to set expectations around weight loss as a long-term goal. However, if you have an event you want to lose weight for, such as a wedding, competition, high school reunion, or beach vacation, please reach out as we have developed special programs called Buzz Metcon and Buzz Torch with you in mind.

Book a 30-minute call with me to see if EMS would be right for you here: https://calendly.com/conradfitness/30min

Conrad

Director of Education and Technology

conrad@bodybuzzfit.com

Bodybuzz

Bodybuzz combines Certified Personal Training with Electrical Muscle Stimulation, giving your body a deeper, safer, and more effective workout. 20 minutes twice a week is all it takes!

Our personal trainers will guide you through a custom EMS workout designed specifically for you. Whether you’re looking to build strength, lose weight, get toned, or recover from an injury or illness, we offer a safe, low-impact solution to help get you there.

EMS has now been FDA-cleared for use in the US and we are proud to be one of the first companies to introduce this technology. It is a full-body workout that uses a special muscle stimulating suit that sends low-level impulses to your major muscle groups to trigger muscle contractions. It’s a unique sensation that is painless and invigorating. EMS workouts are designed to achieve optimal conditioning, burn fat, develop strength, build muscle, tighten skin, combat cellulite, jump-start your metabolism and restore your body’s natural balance.