Editor's note: Periodically, ProsperNOW opens the editorial floor to folks who bring a unique, and proven, perspective to creating lasting prosperity in all its myriad forms.Today, we're featuring Rob Poulos [pictured], a celebrated fitness author, fat loss expert, and the founder and CEO of Zero to Hero Fitness, LLC. Rob created the world's most efficient method for fast and permanent fat loss with his best-selling "Fat Burning Furnace" system, designed to help those men and women looking to put an end to restrictive fad diets, long and boring cardio workouts, and the need for super-human willpower, for good.
By Rob Poulos
Fat Loss & Fitness Expert
Creator of "Fat Burning Furnace"
In order to reap the benefits from the intense exercise I recommend to my Fat Burning Furnace students, you must get adequate rest. I can’t stress this fact enough. In fact, rest is just as important -- if not more important -- than the actual exercise itself.
During the high-intensity resistance exercise that my students perform, the muscles experience tiny injuries or tears. The body’s response is to adapt and repair, gaining stronger and larger muscles -- which, of course, leads to burning more fat and gaining a leaner body.
But this growth-and-repair process won’t take place if the body is not allowed the time to do its job. Too often, people rush back into the gym, as many have been inundated with the "more is better" axiom when it comes to exercise. But, if we don’t get out of the body’s way and let it do its magic, we will experience poor results. We won't burn fat like we want to, and we will just end up demotivated or, possibly, give up our efforts altogether.
If you don’t get enough rest or sleep, you’ll have a very difficult time building the fat-burning muscle that will transform your body. And you’ll also have a tough time burning fat off, too! That’s why we can’t work out too long, or too often, when using a sufficient intensity level.
When giving the body an intense stimulus, such as proper weight training, you can’t keep hammering it into the ground. If you did this, you’d quickly over-train your muscles and negate your body’s ability to recover from exercise.
[In fact, your immune system could become so worn down, that you might even get sick. This happened to me a few times in the past, when I wasn’t paying attention to getting adequate rest and sleep.]
And this repair-and-recover process doesn’t happen overnight; it usually takes two days or more. So, make sure to keep between one to three days of rest between your properly conducted resistance training workouts -- or you will be short-circuiting your chances of success to burn fat and build lean, strong, muscle.
Now that we know how important rest is to burning fat and building muscle, we also must understand the most important component of rest -- otherwise known as sleep.
Sleep is the ultimate recovery tool -- and not only for recovery from exercise. It’s a recovery tool from any stress you take in throughout the day.
Whether it’s from family pressures, work issues, finances, etc., increased stress can be dissolved by adequate sleep. And don’t think you can burn fat maximally when you’re over-stressed by other things in your life. A high stress level can shut down the effectiveness of your ability to burn fat, among other things.
So, make sure to get adequate sleep. What’s ideal? I would recommend no fewer than seven hours, nor more than nine hours. In fact, seven and-a-half hours per night might be the perfect amount!
Research has shown that we sleep in cycles of 90 minutes or so. It has been suggested that if we wake up too far before or after one of these 90-minute cycles, you will probably feel groggy for a good part of the day. So, try five 90-minute sleep cycles -- or seven and-a-half hours total. You’ll most likely wake up feeling well-rested and energized -- and your fat burning furnace will show its appreciation, allowing you to burn more fat faster.
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