Tuesday, March 3, 2009

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

By Heather Hughes

Most people who exercise to lose weight do moderate intensity aerobic activity at long duration cardio. This type of exercise is supposed to help lose fat fast, but it doesn't work. The entire aerobic industry has been built on this thought. Could an entire industry be wrong? Recent research has shown that moderate intensity aerobic activity doesn't work to burn fat. The big question is... Why?

There are several reasons for this. I'll focus on the two that matter the most. What happens when you exercise on an elliptical trainer or treadmill over the course of 30 minutes is that your body does burn fat. This sounds great, but it's not what you want.

What you are doing when you do moderate intensity cardio is sending a signal to your body to store fat so that you have it there the next time you exercise. What's happening here is that you're giving your body the message to store fat so that it's there the next time you workout. Now this type of workout is not completely useless, it does burn calories while you're doing it, but as soon as you're done your body goes straight back to storing fat. This is so not what we want. We want is to burn the fat off of our bodies as quickly as possible.

The other thing that doesn't help is that when you perform medium intensity cardio and aerobic activity several times a week, you just get really good at it. You train your body to become very efficient. You may be wondering, "How can that be bad?". Making your body too efficient is not good for you. You end up working where you were really good, and you never improve your aerobic capacity.

The reason that this is important because your aerobic capacity is how your body decides how to respond in times of intense stress. If you diminish your aerobic capacity, as you do in this kind of exercise, you are actually messing with your long-term health. You are also giving your body a poor chance to burn the fat.

Here's some good news. You can reverse these effects with high intensity resistance training. Here's some even better news. You'll probably actually get some of your time back, because these workouts only take 15 to 20 minutes on average, and you can view them as a couple 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.

But the exercise must be performed correctly to be effective. You must have enough intensity and you must keep your rest periods between sets below 60 seconds.

When you do these type of exercises to lose weight, you will be amazed by the results. Your body will start shrinking, because you're not just losing weight you're losing fat. - 15683

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