I received a telephone call from a lady
last week. Her first word was "heeeelp"!
She was on a weight loss program and
only losing about one half pound per week.
She wanted to speed things up but didn't
want to do anything that was unhealthy.
Here's what I told her:
If you're interested in losing fat, you're
objective is to create a daily caloric
deficit. For example, If you're consuming
1700 calories per day, and expending 2000
calories per day, your caloric deficit is
300 calories.
So, if you'd like to increase your daily
caloric deficit, you have two options; to
decrease your caloric intake by eating
fewer calories, or increase your caloric
expenditure via more activity / exercise.
However, you cannot decrease your daily
caloric intake much lower than 1200 to
1500 or so without potentially creating
health and metabolism problems. So, the
remaining factor in the deficit equation
is caloric expenditure through increased
activity / exercise.
The good news is that you can substantially
increase your caloric expenditure. For
example, if you're exercising for 30 minutes
three days per week, over a period of
several weeks you can increase your exercise
to 60 to 90 minutes per day, six to seven
days per week. An example of this would be
60 minutes of aerobic exercise, six to
seven days per week and 30 minutes of weight
training three days per week.
So, in this example, you would increase your
monthly exercise minutes from about 360 to
1800. Plus, in addition to the calories that
you're expending during exercise, you would
also substantially increase the number of
calories you're burning 24 hours-a-day, yes,
you'll even burn more calories while you're
sleeping. You can't beat that, can you?
So, if you want to speed-up your fat loss,
here's your game plan..
1. Tone your muscles with weight training
three days per week. Toned muscles supercharge
your metabolism! This should be done just
after your aerobic exercise session.
2. Do some type of aerobic exercise (walking,
jogging, swimming, stationary cycling,
aerobic dancing, etc.) on a DAILY basis
(preferably in the morning) for 30 to 60
minutes! Note: If you haven't been exercising,
be sure to gradually increase your exercise
time.
3. Do an additional 15 to 30 minutes of
aerobic exercise in the evening, five days
per week. Some people like to do this just
before their dinner meal to decrease their
appetite, but after dinner is fine too.
In the interest of injury prevention and
not getting bored with your exercise, try
to alternate the type of exercise you do.
For example, walking in the morning and
aerobic dance in the evening.
4. Incorporate "intervals" into most of your
aerobic sessions. Intervals are a powerful
tool to help boost your metabolism. they
are explained in detail in my article,
"Intervals for Weight Loss."
5. Develop a more active lifestyle. Look
for the "hard" way to do things - the way
that requires the most energy expenditure.
Put this plan into action and you'll like
the results - you'll look better, feel
better, have less body fat and more muscle
tone! Get movin'!
copyright 2004 by Greg Landry, M.S.
Author and exercise physiologist, Greg Landry,
offers free weight loss and fitness success stories
and targeted, highly affective weight loss programs
for women, men, type 2 diabetics, and people with
slow metabolisms and hypothyroidism..
http://www.Landry.com