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Author: David McCormick Article source: http://www.articlesfactory.com/. Used with author's permission.
Adaptation is the most important concept I teach. The human body adapts to thepressures it is put under with the goal of prolonging life. Your body wants tosurvive as long as possible, and it will adjust its internal workings quickly if it ispresented with changes. So, everything that happens to you - especially things thathappen regularly, like eating habits, sleep cycles and general activity - will havetwo effects on your body. 1) An immediate effect in the shortterm, then 2) for the long term, your body will adapt to it to betterperform the next time. It is this adaptation that most people forget about.
Mind-Body Split
Your mind perceives changes to your environment through your eyes and othersenses, that's how you understand the world around you. But your organs andcells can only perceive changes in the demands made on them and the kinds ofnutrients they get in your blood. Whether the stimulus comes from the world(a virus enters your body) or from you (you decide to take the stairs instead of theelevator), the cells in your body will react so that the next time that eventhappens, the cells can handle the situation better. In the case of the virus, yourbody creates antibodies. In the case of taking the stairs, your body ups theendurance of your leg muscles.
Your thoughts have little effect on what happens in your body at the level of yourorgans, and even less at the level of your cells. You are always in mental control ofyour muscles except for built-in reactions, and you can consciously take control ofyour breathing. However, none of your other systems can be consciouslycontrolled. That's why you can't will yourself thin. So, never mistakeby doing something that you "intend" to lose weight, but instead think of how yourbody will adapt to your performing the action.
The Factory
You can think of your body as a factory: The boss (your brain) can see where thefinished product is going, and how much profit to make. But the workers can't seeall the accounting papers or the costs of materials or even the customers. Theworkers (your cells) only see that they're being asked to work on a certain task, at acertain rate of pay, for a certain number of hours, and so on. That's what makes adifference to them. The factors that directly affect them and their job are theonly things that will affect how they do their job.
If the boss of this company needs more production or more profits, he can't justtell the workers to work harder. That never works! He could raisetheir pay, or give them more breaks, or just put some music over the intercom.There are many ways to communicate to your workers, but you have to send themessage that has the right effect. What about giving the workers fewer breaks sothat they'll have a better output? They're not wasting time, after all! But we allknow that workers need breaks or else they slow down, get tired, get angry, andmaybe quit from the stress. The same applies to lowering wages. The bad bossthinks that he can make more money if he pays his workers less. As the boss of thecells in your body, you shouldn't just eat less, because that's like lowering thesalary of your working cells. You have to get your cells to adapt in thedirection you want, and the tactics to do that may not be obvious. You have to dothe cellular equivalent of improving morale and increasing worker satisfaction.
Training
Weight training uses the principle of adaptation. By lifting a heavy weight, yourbody needs to expend some calories by burning blood-sugar and also uses upsome nutrients. But that's trivial. More importantly, the main effect of weighttraining is that in the days afterward, the muscle will slightly increase in size andstrength. Why does this happen? Adaptation. Because the message you'regiving your worker muscle cells is that their job is to lift a massive weight, and yoursurvival may depend on it. Your muscle worker thinks: "I could just barely do thattoday, so tomorrow I'll need to be a bit bigger, just in case it happens again." Themuscle is adapting to the stimulus of a heavy load by making it a little easier for youto lift that load in the future.
Survive!
To your body, everything is a matter of survival, and the most importantelement that your cells try to maintain is your energy. If you don't have theenergy to chase down your food, you will starve, and if you don't have the energy torun away from a predator, you will be their food. If you burn though energy tooquickly, there won't be enough left over to live on. That's why your body loves tokeep fat: it's good for survival if the food runs out.
The key to understanding adaptation is to think of yourself living in the Africansavanna, and what your activities would mean if they were applied only to yoursurvival. When you run, your cells think, "We must be running to catch food, or toescape death!" That's all that cells know: survival.
To the bodybuilder, the question becomes, "Will lifting a heavy weight make mestronger?" The answer is No! The immediate effect is that it will make youweaker. If you lift 100 lbs 10 times, does that mean that you can then lift120 lbs right away? No, you're weaker and tired from your previous work. But yourbody will think that it needs to lift 100 lbs 10 times in order to survive, so it willadapt to make that a little easier for you next time. Taking a week off andallowing time for your muscle to grow a little bit will mean that you are stronger.So, the next week you lift 120 lbs, and your body needs to adapt AGAIN, thinkingthat you now need to lift 120 lbs to survive. This makes you stronger week byweek. "Will lifting a light weight 50 times make me stronger?" No! Your muscle willbe exhausted, but you're asking for it to be able to last longer, not growstronger. How will your body last longer? By adapting your energy stores (fat) torelease more slowly and gradually. This is great for your endurance, butBAD NEWS if you want to look "ripped" with little body fat.
But adaptation does not only apply in this case. Your body adapts toeverything. Everything you do and eat. So, you have to ask yourself, "Am Isending my cells the right message in the things I do and the food I eat?"
Look for the sequel to this article, Adaptation II, for tons of examples and practicaladvice based on the principle of Adaptation. David McCormick is the founder of Weightless Products. His Mr. Weightless site isdedicated to free weight loss articles and advice, primarily targeted to men. Thereare no banners, no pop-ups, and you will never be asked for your email address.
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