When the scale, your own mind, or your doctor sets you on the path to weight loss, it is important to start the journey right. While it is tempting to depend entirely on diets and diet supplements, such a move would be a mistake. When endeavoring to lose weight, you might need to make a life style change. Dieters should start an exercise regime if they have do not already have one.
How Much Should You Work Out to Lose Weight?
One of the first questions that you might ask is how much do you need to work out to meet your weight loss goals? The number of hours you will need to exercise will depend on how much weight you want or need to lose. Thus the exact number will fluctuate.
To get at an exact amount we must first look at how much a healthy person should exercise when not seeking substantial weight loss. When exercising to maintain your weight and gain health benefits adults should put in 150 minutes of moderate aerobic exercises or 75 minutes of more vigorous aerobic exercises. Moderate exercises include speed walking and more vigorous include jogging and running. It is also recommended that adults spend some time doing muscle strengthening exercises two days a week.
In order to lose weight, you will need to work out beyond the moderate and vigorous recommendations. To lose weight it is recommend that you do at least 250 minutes of exercises per week. These exercises should be a combination of moderate and vigorous activity, but you should complete at least 100 minutes of vigorous exercises a week to ensure that your calorie burning will exceed calorie intake.
Cardio VS Strength Exercises
You might have this dream of rock hard abs and guns that lead you to the weight lifting section of the gym. Unfortunately, devoting all of your training time to lifting weights will not result in substantial weight loss. Strength exercises might build slightly stronger muscles, but weight training does not burn enough calories for the substantial weight loss that you are looking for. Cardio exercises on the other hand force your body to be into constant motion and thus burn more calories. For now spend the bulk of your workout regimes in cardio exercises. You can get those bulging muscles after you have met your weight loss goal.
Getting Started and Keeping at It
According to physical therapist Ben Quist in “Exercise to Lose Weight” by Barbara Sarnataro, boredom and injury are the biggest threat to reaching your weight loss goals with exercise. In order to reach your goal you will need to take measures to prevent both.
Preventing Boredom
With television, work, and other activities vying for our attention and time, exercise is often not a high priority. When we force ourselves into a healthy weight loss kick, we are often waiting for the smallest excuse to give up and go back to the way life was before. In order to prevent the boredom that can lead to you abandoning your work out regime, you can shake things up every once in a while.
One aspect of our work out regime that can be changed is the location where the work out takes palce. If you are being forced to work out, the least you can do is supply yourself with ever changing eye candy to stimulate the brain. You can switch between working out at the gym, running outdoors, and working out in your own home with work out videos or a fitness video game like Wii Fit. Even if you don’t want to make such a drastic change, you can run in different rooms or locations in the gym or house. And when running outside you can take different routes. The idea is to break the routine.
If that doesn’t seem to help and you still find your television, books, or music videos calling, incorporate those items into your workout routine. Run in front of the television, listen to audio books on your iPod or set the speed of your runs to the tempo of the music. These will offer the mind a distraction from the pain of burning muscles and boredom.
Preventing Injury
Like boredom, if you are careful you can prevent injury. There are methods you can incorporate into your work out routine to prevent injuries.
Start Slow. While you might be tempted to start with 250 hours of vigorous activity in the first week, you are better off playing safe and starting in smaller manageable chunks. Start with a mix of moderate and vigorous exercises for thirty minutes five days a week.
Warm Up. Before I got into a regular work out schedule, my friend and I would flirt with working out. He would head into the gym, get onto the treadmill, and set the speed to the highest setting from the first second. The next day I would watch as he winced as every step strained his pulled muscles. A few days later I arrived at the gym and received his call halfway through my more sedate work out—his leg hurt too much to come. It was months until he started working out again. The moral of this story? Start each workout with a slower pace, stretch if you feel like it, and then get into the more vigorous workouts. Don’t let a pulled muscle set your workout schedule back.
Cross train in different exercises. You should engage in different activities when exercising. Swimming, running, elliptical, lifting weights, and skiing will all work out different muscles. Cross training will allow multiple areas of your body to be strengthened while lowering the chance of injury from muscles that have been overworked.
I’m Exercising, But Not Losing Weight: The Weight Loss Triangle
Often successful weight loss regimes are not dependent on one aspect of your lifestyle. Working out is one of the more important aspects of the weight loss triangle. I will focus briefly on the other two important parts of the weight loss triangle: food and diet pills.
Food Choices
Food consumption is another of the points on the weight loss triangle. What you eat and how much you eat enters your body as calories. Super sizing everything, drinking too many sugary drinks, and eating too much junk food can lead to more calories than your exercise regime can burn being added everyday. Eating healthier, smaller portions will lower the number of daily calories your exercise regime will need to burn through before getting to the calories already stored in your body.
Diet Supplements
Diet supplement can be taken to raise your chances of successfully starting a healthier diet. While people have successfully lost weight without resorting to diet pills, diet pills can be taken for individuals whose appetite and eating habits lead them to consuming more calories than their exercise regime can burn through.
Diet supplement can be taken cautiously for short periods to quicken the weight loss process. While people have successfully lost weight without resorting to diet pills, diet pills can be taken for individuals whose appetite and eating habits lead them to consuming more calories than their exercise regime can burn through. Diet supplements can be taken to suppress appetite and speed up the rate at which your metabolism burns fat and carbs. Any of these pills will allow you to jump started your way into healthier eating habits. Once the desired weight has been reached, the individual should be able to keep up the healthier diet and exercise regimes. Any over the counter weight loss supplements should be taken with care. While they are relatively safe, some groups such as diabetics, pregnant women, and children can be harmed by taking diet pills.
Weight can be lost through a stable exercise regime. For best chances of weight loss start slow to prevent injury, engage in various types of aerobic activities, and work out the best way to ward off boredom. Be sure to couple exercise with healthy food choices. If you find healthy habits hard, you can research and purchase some diet pills to make the change easier.