Long distance runners have lean bodies.
A lean body is a firm body with well-developed muscles and carries no fat except for the essential kind. A 30-year-old man with a body fat percentage of between 3.5 and 8.4 is lean, with it increasing to between 12.5 and 19 for a woman of the same age. The older you get, the more lean muscle you lose. According to Edwards Laskowski, M.D., a physical medicine and rehabilitation specialist at the Mayo Clinic "if you don't do anything to replace the lean muscle you lose, you'll increase the percentage of fat in your body."
Instructions
1. Develop a lean body through exercise. Aerobic exercise burns fat and is a great precursor to a strength-training program. Any exercise that involves repetition using large muscles -- your legs, for example -- will help you lose inches. Brisk walking, jogging, running, rowing and cycling are good examples of exercises that you can complete at 60 to 90 percent of your maximum heart rate. According to Medline Plus, adults should perform at least 2.5 hours of aerobic exercise a week. If you want a lean body, you need to shift any excess fat, and there is no better way to help with this than aerobic exercise.
2. Build up your lean body mass with strength training. The more muscle you have, the more efficient you will be in converting fat to lean muscle. Use your body weight as a strength training aid by doing push-ups, pull-ups, crunches and leg squats. Resistance tubing also provide a great full-body, strength-training workout. For beginners to strength training, perform sets of 12 to15 repetitions of exercises, such as bicep curls, tricep extensions, bench press, seated row and military press.
3. Eat the right food. No good training routine is complete unless complemented with a good diet. In order to shift fat and build lean muscle, give your body the right food. Food high in calcium helps break down fats, and high-fiber food like sweet potato keeps insulin levels low. Find foods high in choline -- soybeans are a great example -- as it helps block fat absorption and breaks down fatty deposits. Oranges have flavone, which is a fat-blasting compound, and berries such as strawberries and raspberries, being high in vitamin C, help burn fat. Alpha-linolenic acid, found in almonds, increases fat metabolism, and turmeric may slow the growth of fat tissue.
Tags: lean body, lean muscle, strength training, your body, aerobic exercise