Ok, so we get it… We’re supposed to get in shape and stay that way. But what if we’re not sure how to exercise properly? We’ve probably all seen some neighbors trying to walk to lose weight… but the overwhelming majority of them seem to be in the same shape as the rest of us. Magazines with gorgeous people gracing their covers pitch one plan after another to “lose belly fat” or “get six pack abs in six weeks.” Are they all saying the same thing? And, if the secret is so readily accessible, 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 press as of late. The most recent study released in late July 2009 revealed 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 halted.
What is anyone supposed to do to learn how to lose weight? There always seems to be a magic pill 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 with everything in life, one adage will certainly be true: If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.
The basic rule for weight loss is this: You have to expend more energy than you consume in order for your body to begin calling on 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 our bodies have to various types of foods. Sugars and carbohydrates that quickly break down into simple sugars trigger the release of insulin. As a result our bodies quickly store extra calories as fat if our muscles are not demanding energy due to intense exercise. We need to eat the right combination of lean proteins, complex carbohydrates, healthy fats, and mountains of vegetables.
How can we tell we’re eating the right combination of foods? Without a pre-written meal plan you can try this: When you prepare a plate of food, make your portions of protein and carbs equal in size and half of your plate. Make the other half of your meal all vegetables. 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 fat 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 to burn fat, and this may come as a surprise, you should work on building muscle.
Cardio exercises raise your metabolism while you’re performing the exercise and for a short time after. For some people, this is all they will need to slim down. There are great fringe benefits to walking, running, and biking too, just in the act of taking some time for your self in an all-too-busy world. Getting results via low impact cardio can take longer, though, and nothing makes you want to exercise more than great progress.
So, why should you work on building muscle if you really want to lose weight 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 period 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 absolutely will destroy your life eventually. The other is natural, and a result of exercising using the right routines. The only catch to the whole concept is that you actually have to work hard to see results. This doesn’t mean 12 hours a week in the gym or that you have to run five miles a day. With three workouts a week that you should be able to complete in 90 minutes at the longest, you can get great results quickly.
The growth hormone theory was actually even put to the test by a blogger at who has been recording his journey to get in shape lifting weights–and he’s 48! His wife is doing it too, and she dropped three pants sizes in ten weeks. The key to the routine’s success is in the intensity of the workout. The intensity heightens the impact your body feels, 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 muscle every day! Let’s not confuse intense workouts and overtraining! Remember, too, that intensity is extremely relative. What you will perceive as an intense workout will differ greatly from everyone else’s!
The two keys to intensity are compound exercises and supersets.
A compound exercise involves many muscles for each repetition. Think about exercises like squats… Most of your muscles get involved to execute each repetition. 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 one right after the other with as little rest as possible between exercises. Typically, supersets are only discussed in the context of working one muscle, as in supersets for lats. 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 shocked at how fatigued you feel after only the first two to three exercises. Repeating the superset three to five times will then spike the intensity level your body experiences. When your fitness level improves, you can shorten the time between exercises and the rest between supersets to further jack up the intensity of your workout.
Remember that the level of intensity your body feels is what triggers the biological mechanisms that force it to adapt to new requirements you just imposed on it. So you don’t have to work body parts 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 miracle supplement 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!