Ok, so we get it… We’re supposed to get back in shape and stay that way. But what if we’re not sure how to exercise properly? We’ve probably all seen people in our neighborhoods trying to walk to lose weight… but most of them seem to carry as much extra weight as the rest of us. Magazines with abnormally beautiful people gracing their covers pitch one plan after another to “lose belly fat” or “get six pack abs in time for the beach.” Are they all saying the same thing? And, if the secret is so universally available, why isn’t everyone in America already back in shape?
All the extra pounds we have been carrying around have been getting a lot of attention as of late. A study released in late July 2009 found that medical spending by obese Americans averages $1400 more per year per person over a non-obese person’s. That equals nearly $150 billion a year in extra medical expenditures that could be avoided if the obesity epidemic was brought under control.
What is anyone supposed to do to learn how to lose weight? There always seems to be a magic supplement or new exercise contraption that promises unbelievable results for little effort or incredibly little time on infomercials late at night and early in the morning. Do any of them work?
As always, one adage will certainly be true: If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.
One basic rule for weight loss is this: You have to burn more energy than you eat in order for your body to begin using its own stored fat for energy.
If you are carrying around extra inches around your middle, your diet may contain hidden sources of lots of calories. Fast food, soda, pretzels, and snacks generally have way too many calories. It’s virtually impossible to lose weight when you regularly drink soda and eat fast food. Besides being too many calories, this is due to the chemical and hormonal responses the human body has to various kinds of foods. Sugars and carbohydrates that quickly break down into simple sugars raise insulin levels. As a result our bodies quickly store extra calories as fat if our muscles do not require extra energy due to intense exercise. We need to eat the right mix of low fat proteins, complex carbohydrates, healthy fats, and mountains of vegetables.
How can we tell we’re eating the right combination of foods? Without overly complicating a new way of eating before you make a habit of it you can try the following: When you prepare a meal, make your portions of protein and carbs equal in size and half of your plate. Make the other half of your meal all veggies. Eat six small meals every day instead of three large ones. This approximation approach will get you on a better path as you learn much more about nutrition.
Once we have the right diet, losing the extra weight we’ve put on over the years still requires some effort.
Low impact cardio like walking will strengthen your heart gradually and is probably a great first step if you haven’t done much exercising in a long time. Elliptical trainers also are great for low-impact cardio. However, if you really want rapid fat loss, and this may come as a surprise, you should work on building muscle.
Cardio exercises raise your metabolism for the duration of the exercise and for a short time after. For some people, this is all they will need to get back in shape. There are great fringe benefits to walking, running, and biking too, just for some time alone in a very busy world. Getting results doing low impact exercise can take longer, though, and nothing makes you want to exercise more than great progress.
So, why should you use muscle building workout routines if you really want to burn fat quickly? It takes energy for your body to build and repair muscle, which breaks down during strength exercises.
Therefore, you burn energy during your exercise, and your body continues to burn energy above and beyond your base metabolic rate for a much longer time afterward as muscles are repaired. Also, when you force your body to repair and build muscle tissue, it releases its own growth hormone. You may not have known it, but growth hormone is the best known fat burner. Really!
There are only two ways to get growth hormone in your blood stream. One is illegal, dangerous, expensive, stupid, and guaranteed to destroy your life before you know it. The other is natural, and a result of exercising using the right routines. The only caveat is that you actually have to work hard to see results. You don’t have to spend 12 hours a week in the gym or that you have to run like you’re training for a Iron Man contest. With three workouts a week that may take 90 minutes at the longest, you can get great results quickly.
That fantastic claim was actually even put to the test by a blogger at who has been recording his journey getting back in shape lifting weights–and he’s 48! His wife is doing it too, and she dropped three pants sizes in ten weeks. It worked because of the intensity of the workout. The intensity magnifies the impact on your body, and that triggers the release of all the right hormones that help burn fat and build muscle.
An intense workout lifting weights doesn’t mean you have to do 25 sets of exercises for each body part every day! Let’s not confuse intense workouts and overtraining! Remember, too, that intensity is extremely relative. What your body will perceive as an intense workout will differ significantly from everyone else’s!
The two elements of an intense workout are compound exercises and supersets.
A compound exercise involves many muscles for each repetition. Think about exercises like bent over rows… Most of your muscles get involved in stabilizing your body and the weights. A pushup works similarly: Besides the very obvious chest and triceps at work, nearly every other muscle in your body is involved in each repetition.
A superset is simply a set of exercises performed back to back with the absolute minimum rest possible between exercises. Typically, supersets are only discussed in the context of working one muscle, as in supersets for delts. However, you can work your entire body by doing only one superset of eight to ten different exercises.
If you have never done a full-body superset, you will be truly surprised at how difficult it becomes after only the first two to three exercises. Repeating the superset three to five times will then spike the intensity level your body experiences. Once you get in better shape, you can shorten the time between exercises and the rest between supersets to further jack up the intensity of your workout.
Remember that the intensity level your body feels is what triggers the biological mechanisms that make it try to adapt to new requirements you just imposed on it. So you don’t have to work each muscle to “failure” to experience the natural release of growth hormone and its benefits, but you will feel fatigue!
But what if you want to start exercising at home and don’t have weights? No problem! There are plenty of exercises you can do without weights to work your whole body.
Beware of any companies trying to sell you the next appetite suppressant for losing weight with no effort. If you’ve read this far, you are realistic about losing weight and getting fit and are on the right track to getting sound guidance. Congratulations!