Sunday, February 22, 2009

Are Your Exercises To Lose Weight Keeping You Fat and Unhealthy?

By Heather Hughes

Almost every single person who exercises to lose weight does moderate intensity aerobic activity. Think stationary bike, elliptical trainer, or treadmill. Just about everybody thinks that this will help them loose fat fast. But it doesn't. In fact, current researcshows that moderate intensity aerobic activity just doesn't work to burn fat. But why doesn't it work?

There's more than one reason, and I'll focus on the two most important ones. When you exercise over a long period of time at a medium pace (which is what usually is recommended) your body is burning fat during the exercise. This sounds great, but really isn't.

Your brain is wired to keep you alive. So what you're doing is sending a signal to your body to keep fat around for the next time you exercise. It's unbelievable, I know, but what you really telling your body is that "you'll be doing this exercise again, so keep some fat around". It is true that you're burning calories during a workout, but as soon as the workout is over your body goes to storing fat again for the next one. Obviously, this is not what we want. What we want is to burn fat as fast as possible.

The second thing that happens when you use the fat burning mode of these workout equipment is that your body becomes really good at it. When you do the same thing over and over and over again your body becomes super efficient. As good as it sounds, it actually is not very good for you. You end up working at the level you are good at, and you never improve your aerobic capacity.

This is important, because your aerobic capacity determines how well your body handles all kinds of stress. If you don't expand your aerobic capacity, and that's what happens with this type of exercise, you are probably actually diminishing your long-term health, not to mention not letting your body burn the fat should.

There is good news though, you can reverse these effects by doing high-intensity resistance training instead. These workouts with only 15 to 20 minutes on average, and you can do them just two to three times a week.

These types of workouts are amazing. They burn carbs during a workout. This is important, because when you do this over the next 24 hours your body will reach into its fat stores, and burn the fat that is on your hips, thighs and tummy. Isn't that a neat trick? That is the best kind of exercise to lose weight.

In order for this to work the exercise must be performed correctly. You need to have enough intensity and you need a short rest periods of less than 60 seconds between sets.

This is the best exercise to lose weight. It will give you the results that you want, and instead of just losing weight, you will be burning fat. - 16004

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