Saturday, February 14, 2009

How Often Should You Exercise

By Cathy M

Fat burning workouts are pretty simple, as long as you have the motivation to stick with them. Pretty soon you'll be slimmer and trimmer if you combine them with a healthy eating style.

Every day, seven days a week, do some sort of aerobic activity. When your heart beats more quickly, not so quick that it struggles or your sucking in air hard, but sufficient to make you sweat you're doing aerobic exercise. This includes walking, jogging, swimming, stationary bike, and a host of other activities. Include intervals into the aerobic work outs. These are bursts of higher activity that help boost the metabolism even more. That means sprint between periods of walking, or burst to speed while swimming at an easy pace.

The health guides that say to do aerobic exercise three times a week or even five times a week are wrong. The body needs this work every day. Pick an exercise routine you can maintain so that you can stick with it seven days a week for the rest of your life. In order to burn stored fat make sure to exercise before breakfast or at least before your next meal. Throw in an extra 10-30 minute walk after lunch or dinner to this exercise routine, in addition to the 30 minutes. Finally, look for opportunities to move. This can mean anything from parking further from the office so you have to walk from the car to the door, to taking the stairs instead of the elevator, to raking leaves rather than blowing them.

Tone and build muscles with weight training at least 3 during times each week. Bigger muscles make your metabolism speed into overdrive. A faster metabolism will use up more calories even when you're not moving. You'll also generally look and feel better.

Definitely don't skip breakfast, lunch or dinner. If you do your body gets a message that it's starving, and breaks into slow metabolism mode. A sluggish metabolism is the enemy of fat burning. Another way to stop a slow metabolism is to make sure to eat enough food every day. For most people this means consuming at least 1200 calories each day. Any less and your body drops into starvation mode, working against your efforts to burn fat.

Fat burning workouts shared with healthy eating can have amazing results. It doesn't have to be hard. In fact if it's too hard you'll lose motivation and drop the workout plan. Too many people get all worked up and fanatical on fitness and working out after Xmas, or just before that well earned summer beach vacation, but don't even make it for a month before the difficult workouts ground them into quitting. Don't be one of these flash in the pan health enthusiasts. - 16004

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