weight loss Archives - Dr. Nick Campos

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Muscle Memory: How to Bring Back the Body You Admire

By Dr. Nick Campos On April 5, 2021 · Add Comment · In Body, exercise, health

Why do you never forget how to ride a bicycle?* If you can forget people’s names, the triangle inequality theorem, or even where you put your car keys…then how the heck can you remember how to ride a bicycle, even after years of not doing so? The answer lies in our different types of memory. We have short-term memory, procedural memory, and even episodic memory, each one being stored in different regions of the brain. And while every form of memory within the human capacity is indeed fascinating, the type of memory I wish to share with you here is not a cognitive memory at all but physiological. It is called muscle memory.

Muscle memory is well-known among athletes and bodybuilders, professional and amateur alike; any person who has spent time exercising, any time at all, believe it or not, has some experience with muscle memory. Simply put, muscle memory is a “detrained” muscle’s ability to regain size, strength and endurance upon retraining. To understand this completely, one must understand what happens during exercise, in this case, I wish to keep it to weight-lifting, although you can assume some overlap into other forms of exercise like yoga, swimming, Pilates and so on. I am referring mostly to forms of resistance training, but these principles apply to other forms of exercise (sports, flexibility training) to varying degrees as well.

When one contracts forcefully against resistance – gravity, weights, resistance bands, etc – the muscle fibers develop micro tears, a form of microtrauma, which the body then adaptively repairs the tissue and adds more fibers to essentially prevent further damage. This process of adding muscle fibers is called hypertrophy – trophy meaning “growth,” hyper meaning “above” or “beyond.” Hypertrophic muscle is what it means to be yoked or ripped in bodybuilding speak. It is essentially what most people wish to achieve, on some level, by lifting weights.

Now in my experience as a long-time health practitioner – with many clients seeing me for a decade or two – I find that very few people exercise consistently day in, day out, week in, week out, or year in, year out. This is not a flaw – it is life. Over the course of a decade, most people have new obligations, changing schedules, new relationships, babies, divorces, deaths of loved ones, and a whole multitude of other tragedies. Sometimes people just burn out – they need a break. Sometimes people get sick or injured. I have many clients who are extremely dedicated to their health and fitness, and not one person have I ever seen keep up exercise without a break in a ten-year period. I am not saying it doesn’t exist, just that it is extremely rare. Life happens.

Here is the point: If you have ever in your life exercised against resistance – that is, lifted weights, done calisthenics, or any sport requiring strength or bursts of speed – you have developed muscle memory, which will allow you to regain what you once had relatively quickly. The two important terms here are “what you once had” and “relatively.” First, it is crucial to understand that getting back to your pre-layoff size, strength and endurance should be fairly simple. You’ll have to return to your work outs slowly and smartly to prevent injury and coax the body back into its groove, but if you do things rightly, you will see your body morph over a short period back to how it once appeared. True, you might have stored some adipose (put on fat), and it won’t just melt away overnight, but the good news is that resistance training actually speeds up fat metabolism, so that lifting weights regularly will help you shed weight faster than diet or aerobic exercise alone. All three matter, but by doing resistance training along with the other two will burn the fat in the fastest possible way. And that is also why I say “relatively,” because, obviously, the rate at which your body returns to pre-layoff shape, size and strength will really depend on the duration of your layoff and the damage caused in that time (food, drugs, alcohol to be exact). So patience will matter in this endeavor, but the principle remains.

I cannot emphasize enough this phenomenon of muscle memory and what it means for you. I am certain anybody who has ever seen their once-developed body slip into softness, but then returned to the gym, knows exactly what I am talking about. It doesn’t take long in most cases. One study showed that women who trained for 20 weeks (~ six months), then laid off (detrained) for 30-32 weeks (~ seven months), and then retrained for 6 weeks showed significant increases in cross-sectional areas of muscle fibers (size, girth) which also translated to strength and endurance. Interestingly, the same study found that the initial strength gained by the women during the initial training phase was not diminished much over the detraining phase.

This study shows that aside from the incredible ability of muscle to retain its size, strength, and endurance, even for people who have never worked out, a simple six month regimen of weight lifting exercise will create positive body changes that cannot be completely undone by an equally long layoff. So its worth every effort, even if incrementally. And, if you are like most people, when life twists and turns and you find the need to stop your exercise routine, you can rest assured that you will get back to where you left off quickly when you return to the gym.

I always try to impress upon clients, however, that while getting back to where you were last is relatively easy, taking your fitness to the next level is not – you have to work really hard to get to where you’ve never been. Keep that in mind. I am not trying to imply that developing your body to each successive level is easy. But I do wish to encourage you to keep with it (i.e. – get back to it…or start even) no matter what. Every time you exercise you are developing a little more toward your goal in mind, even if it doesn’t seem so in the moment. Muscle memory proves it. Your body develops and it remembers. So you are never wasting time by exercising – this should be encouraging to know that due to muscle memory, every workout matters.

*The bike thing is due to procedural memory

Rapid Weight Loss Confusion

By Dr. Nick Campos On April 19, 2011 · Add Comment · In Body

Listen up wrestlers, boxers, body builders, brides to be and anybody else who makes a habit of losing significant weight quickly–rapid weight loss can lead to mental confusion. Aw big deal, right? Yes, it is–it could mean the difference between a win or loss, increase your risk of injury , or even be a matter of life and death!

Researchers at Cal State Fullerton recently looked at 16 collegiate wrestlers to determine if losing weight rapidly before a match had negative strength implications. But what they found might have surprised them: although they found no changes in strength, the wrestlers that lost 4% or more of their body mass had significantly higher levels of confusion on the day of the competition. No increased confusion was observed in those who lost less than 4% body mass. No wrestler lost more than 8% of their body mass (avg. wt. loss = 6 lbs). The study is published in the April issue of the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research.

So you might be wondering why anybody needs to lose weight quickly. Fighters must ‘weigh-in’ before each bout, so it is common to lose weight right before the match or weigh-in, to come in lighter than their actual weight. This has the advantage of fighting a smaller opponent if you can get your weight below a certain level. In fact, most of the wrestlers in the study lost nearly all their weight in the two days before the match. (They were allowed to choose the desired amount of weight to lose before the match, using methods such as exercise, calorie restriction and fluid deprivation).

The drawbacks were not benign. According to researchers, “a sport which requires split-second decision making, a higher state of confusion and tension can detrimentally affect the wrestler’s performance.” No kidding.

Lots of people want to lose weight overnight. Shows like The Biggest Loser only perpetuate that desire, as they demonstrate how effective rapid weight loss under controlled conditions can be. But for the most part, rapid weight loss can be dangerous. Most people that lose weight rapidly gain it back quickly, and the physiological changes that go along with this type of weight loss can have deleterious effects on the body–cardiovascular, neurological and mental.

I never understand when clients tell me they expect their latest weight loss plan (diet or exercise program) to net them 100 lbs. in a year or less.

What?!?!

Yes, a year or less.

You are crazy–first it probably won’t happen and second, you don’t want it to. A pound a week is healthy; 50 lbs in a year. But they are convinced.

I’m not suggesting that this study has anything to do with the type of weight loss I just describe, but it does have a correlation. Simple–any super-rapid weight loss is going to have physiological effects. Now extrapolate that to “if it has short-term effects in athletes, what does it do over the long-term in the obese?” I think that’s a question worth asking.

Obesity & Weight Loss: A Multi-Factorial Issue

By Dr. Nick Campos On February 23, 2010 · Add Comment · In Body

I recently had the question* posed to me, “If there is an easy answer to weight loss, why is our country filled with so many unhealthy, overweight people?” I think this is a fabulous question since the answer certainly uncovers some of the hidden factors behind obesity.

First, obesity is a consequence of an addiction to food. I’m not talking about merely being overweight, here–I mean obesity and, most certainly, severe obesity. Being overweight can be the result of a number of things: eating the wrong foods (eating many meals out, for instance), neglecting exercise, twelve-pack of beer every weekend, and so forth; bad habits, if you will.

Obesity, however, has an addiction component. Obese people are drawn to food either for sensory pleasures (taste) or emotionally. Emotional eaters eat when they are stressed out, pissed off, hurt, elated, embarrassed, and any other number of emotional stressors that lead one to escape. So food, therefore, is a way for some people to avoid these uncomfortable feelings, whether they are conscious of it or not.

An eating addiction is like any other addiction: a combined enjoyment and escape. Drinkers have it, smokers have it, gamblers have it, and sex addicts have it–it’s a momentary checking out, a retreat from unpleasant feelings, whatever they may be. Often, it’s a totally unconscious act; the addiction becomes habit.

So, as I said in my New Year’s Resolutions article on weight loss, the first step is a true heartfelt desire for change. Some people aren’t inspired to lose weight; they attempt it because of societal pressures. Only true inspiration leads to actions that will endure the pain and pleasures of undertaking a weight-loss endeavor. Anything else will fail when it gets too tough. That’s one reason some people can’t lose weight.

Next, a realistic game plan must be constructed. This is where our topic of The Biggest Loser comes in. A healthy strategy must be implemented and carried out, like any venture, be it business, financial investing, family planning, or weight loss. Without a reasonable or healthy plan, not only is failure likely, but complications can arise.

At the very least, the person losing weight runs the risk of putting it all back on again. This is the part of the strategy that requires The Six Keys To Optimal Health. Without them, the whole endeavor ends up momentary, and it’s exactly why Biggest Loser contestants have such a high rate of weight regain.

Finally, and most importantly, the mental component to the addiction must be balanced. Essentially this means finding the pleasures and pains associated with the eating addiction for each individual. There is no cookbook here, if you’ll forgive the pun; it’s individualized and specific. That takes work. People who lose weight without clearing the mental component that leads them to gravitate toward food in the first place, find themselves back off the wagon when emotional crisis hits. Think Oprah’s battles and struggles with weight—she’s an admitted emotional eater. Yeah, fail to address the emotional component and long-term weight loss will be unattainable.

To further complicate matters is the necessity of food for energy conversion and nutritional needs. So it’s easy to see that obesity is a multi-factorial issue that needs attention to a number of components. I hope that answers the question of, “If losing weight had an easy answer…” I think it’s not so much that the answer evades us, it’s just that we approach it from such simplicity, AND many people are missing the forest for the trees by looking for very complicate answers (genetics, hormonal disorders, etc.). Let’s observe Okham’s Razor and see that the simplest solution is probably the most correct. But obesity does have a number of sides that need attention, and that’s why so many people are struggling with it.

*Thank you Jeanne M. for the great question.