Exercising is easier for me than eating right

Good for you! So many people can cut down on their eating, but not many people are motivated to get out there and get moving. If you’re ready to exercise, we have lots of ideas to share. The same things don’t work for everybody, so we’ll help you find what works for you. Choose the link below that fits you, or keep reading to find out more about the basics of exercise.

1.I’m ready to exercise, and I like to be part of a group.
2.I’m ready to hit the gym, but I hate those group classes.
3.I’m ready to exercise, but I’d rather do it at home.
4.I’m ready to exercise, and I love sports and outdoor activities.

The Three Types of Exercise

There are three types of exercise, and each has its own benefits in helping you achieve a healthy weight. Of course, even if you’re already at a healthy weight, you should continue to exercise. It has many benefits besides weight loss, but since our focus in on weight loss, that’s what we’ll talk about. Ideally, you should do all three to maximize weight loss and have the healthiest body possible.

Cardiovascular exercise. Cardiovascular exercise, commonly just called “cardio” or “aerobic exercise,” is any exercise that increases the rate of flow of oxygen to the cells in your body. And that means what, exactly? Anything, generally speaking, that gets your heart rate up and makes you breathe harder or faster is cardio exercise. (Yes, sex counts.) Some common forms of cardio are running or jogging, brisk walking, cycling, using a treadmill or elliptical machine, and jumping rope. Cardio strengthens the heart and vascular system, increases our daily energy and promotes a healthy body weight.

In terms of weight loss, cardio burns up the body’s fuel sources. To keep oxygen supplied to your body at a faster rate, your body has to work harder. In order to work harder, it has to have more fuel. (Think about a car – you use more gas if you’re driving 70 miles per hour than if you’re driving 30 miles per hour. Same principle.) Your body burns up glycogen first. (Glycogen is where our short-term energy, the energy that gets us from meal to meal, is stored.) When your body has used up all the glycogen you have stored, it finds other sources of fuel, including your excess body fat. Cardio burns fat from all parts of the body equally. If you have fat on your thighs and fat around your waist, cardio is going to remove fat from both of those areas in equal proportion. You cannot target fat with cardio.

Cardio is the best way to lose calories. It burns calories faster than any other type of exercise you can do. Some high-intensity aerobic exercises can burn 600 calories an hour or more! You should aim for at least 30 minutes a day, three to six days a week, of cardiovascular exercise. And remember, cardio has many more benefits beyond weight loss.

For more information about cardiovascular exercise, click here Period

Resistance exercise or training, also known as strength training or just “weight lifting,” is another important component of your exercise program. Resistance training builds your muscles, enabling you to be stronger, have better posture and balance, maintain bone density and achieve a healthy body weight. Before you say it, all you women out there – weight lifting will NOT give you big, bulky muscles. Unless you start taking testosterone supplements, you simply don’t have the hormones for bulk. Women’s muscles will get larger with resistance training, but they will be sleek, smooth and lean.

OK, so you’ll look great in a strapless gown. What about weight loss? Like cardio, resistance exercise burns calories while you’re doing the work; unlike cardio, it burns them much more slowly. The cool part about having muscles is that they work for you around the clock. Muscles use more energy than any other type of tissue in the body. The more muscle you have, the more energy you burn – always! Plus, when you do resistance training, your muscles are damaged and have to repair themselves. (That’s why you get so freakin’ sore when you lift weights.) This repair work also burns extra energy. And remember, burning the body’s energy equals burning calories equals weight loss.

There’s a giant myth surrounding resistance exercise, however, and you should get this through your head right now. You CANNOT lose fat around your waist by doing crunches. You CANNOT lose your “bat wings” by doing triceps presses. Fat is fat, muscle is muscle; the two CANNOT, DO NOT, WILL NEVER change into each other. You must do cardio to lose any significant amount of excess fat. Building the underlying muscles will lift and support your problem areas and leave them looking toned when the fat is gone, but you can NEVER spot train with weights to lose fat from a particular area.

For more information about resistance exercise, click here.

Flexibility and stretching. All right, I admit it’s going to be hard to lose weight by flexing and stretching, but it’s so important to exercising that I had to talk about it. We see all those people on TV stretching before they run, right? Well, wrong. That used to be the thinking, but now we know that stretching is appropriate only for muscles that are already warmed up.

When you exercise, as we talked about above, your muscles get damaged. When they repair themselves, they draw up a little bit. (Think about a scar forming over a cut and how it gets all puckered and shriveled. Yuck.) Stretching after you work out helps alleviate this process. It doesn’t avoid it altogether, but it does help keep your muscles lengthened out. It also helps the tendons and ligaments, which attach everything to the skeleton, remain supple and limber. I’m a big fan of yoga. Give it a shot – you’ll love it!

For more information about flexibility and stretching, click here.