Weight Loss Through Exercise

Is there any more of a dirty word then "Exercise" in our society today? If you want to make a room part faster then the red sea all you have to do is make mention of the evil E word. Although it is true that you can lose a decent amount of weight without ever having to exercise, you won't be doing your overall well-being any favors. Studies prove that exercise in conjunction with dieting increases your health as well as decreases your body fat faster then just dieting alone.

So why is it that most people refuse to exercise? Don't get me wrong, there are a large percentage of people out there who have tried exercising but they were misguided and ended up doing a lot of work for little return. Other then the fact that finding and understanding a new exercise program has gotten as complicated as programming your VCR used to be I think the other main reason is that most of us just can't find the time. Well all that's about to change. What if I asked you to devote 50 minutes a day to exercise and in a month's time I promised you a noticeable improvement in your health and your appearance. Some of you may not feel you can devote 50 minutes at this time and may feel that it is a lot of time, but when you consider the average person both works and sleeps 8 hours a day and watches on average 6 hours of TV per day, does 50 minutes still sound like an overwhelming number to you? I don't think so!

There are only two forms of exercise you need to do to lose weight and keep your body in great shape. They are aerobic also know as cardiovascular training and anaerobic training such as resistance training. Let's first take a look at aerobic training. The best time to do aerobic training is first thing in the morning on an empty stomach. The reason for this is the fact that, instead of using the food you've ingested throughout the day, your body is forced to use stored fat as the fuel for the workout. A huge mistake people make is performing too taxing a workout for their fat burning cardio. The key is time not effort. Studies show that your body will not start to use fat deposits until you have reached the 25-30 minute mark of your cardio session. The other aspect of this is that if you go too fast, instead of burning fat, you'll be using glycogen found in the muscles to fuel your workout. So what would I prescribe? A thirty minute walk, whether it be on a treadmill or outdoors done at a pace where you are slightly out of breath when trying to carry a conversation. That's it, that's all! Do this 5 times a week first thing in the morning and your cardio is taken care of.

As I stated before, the second part of the equation is the strength training. This doesn't have to be overly complicated and for the most part I like to keep it short. On 3 days of the week you will be using weights but in a much different manner than you're used to. Pick an activity you like to do, such as jogging or skipping. Now pick 3 resistance exercises to do. The 3 that I recommend are free weight squats, dead lifts and clean and jerks. Now you set a timer for 20 minutes. You start the workout by either jogging or skipping for 1 minute straight and when that minute elapses you proceed to do 10 squats followed by running or skipping again. After your next session of running or skipping for a minute you would complete 10 dead lifts and then jog or skip and proceed with 10 clean and jerks. After you do that 3 times you would start over again until the 20 minute timer goes off. You would do this 3 times a week and try to beat the amount of cycles you did in the previous week. This little game will not only keep you motivated but will also let you know the progress you are making.

Now that you know what it takes to get it great shape and lose weight with exercising what are you waiting for?

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