How To Exercise And Lose Weight
F.I.T.T is a principle that you should follow if you want to achieve your fitness goals. These principles are not hard to follow and if they are followed, you definitely can get your dream body.
How to exercise and lose weight is one the most popular question thrown at all personal trainers and fitness consultants around the world. The reason behind this is that there is many people out there that exercise vigorously almost daily and get zero results! It may sound funny if you are not the one that is not getting results. You can just stand and laugh and make fun of that guy who tried so hard and yet get no results.
In reality, it is very depressing for that person because that individual pours in all his hopes, his dreams, time and money into his or her exercise program and only to find out that he is going no where. This article is to address this issue. By reading this article, you would now know what it takes to lose body fat and look good. If you can satisfy all the principle in this article, you are guaranteed to achieve you fitness goal. For those who started already, it is not to late to apply these principles now.
The principle that I want to talk to you is this, the F.I.T.T principle. If this principle is followed exactly, you definitely can exercise and lose weight. But if it is not followed, you are just wasting your time. You can get some results, but not significant.
F.I.T.T is the ultimate guideline for all exercise programs. This concept stands for frequency, intensity, type and time.
Frequency
We always give excuses when it comes to something painful. Exercising for example. We can give all sorts of excuses like work, traveling, studying and many others but the fact is, you have to ask yourself why are you reading this article is the first place? If you want to lose weight and it is really something you want, be prepared to invest 3 to 5 hours of exercise session per week. Yes, there is no way around it and your body will not be sympathetic to your excuses.
According to the American Council on Exercise, you need to exercise at least 3 times a week to get minimum results and 5 times a week to get optimum results. In order to lose 1 pound of body fat, you need to burn 3500 calories. Do you think you can achieve that with just 2 hours of exercising per week?
Intensity
There are people who go to the gym daily. It is like their second home. They will do cardio and weight training religiously but yet, they get no results. Why? They don’t get results because their exercise intensity is not high enough to utilize the fat in the fat cells! This is especially important during your cardio session. You have to hit at least 75 percent of your maximum heart rate. You cannot get lean abs by just walking 5.0 km/h for 45 minutes!
Type
The type here means the type of training. In order to maximize your body fat loss, you need to combine weight training, cardio training and stretching. Weight training can help build muscle, which in return speeds up your metabolism. An additional 1-pound of pure muscle can burn extra 50 calories by doing nothing. The extra calories are there to keep the muscle alive. Cardio training will help by making the body to use the fat in the fat cells, thus burning body fat and preserving muscle!
Do not look down on stretching. With a better flexibility, you can run further and not only that, your muscle function better thus producing better results.
Time
Time here refers to the time you need to invest in your training per day. Regarding weight training, an intense weight training session should be around 45 minutes. We are talking about a rest period of 1 minute between sets. For the cardio sessions, in the beginning you should try to train for 30 minutes. When you are fitter, you need to build up to 45 minutes. In my experience, most people lose loads of body fat when they can run for 45 minutes at the heart rate of 80 per cent of max heart rate.
These principles of F.I.T.T are very important. These principles are not just simply developed. They are created by researches and observations. If you can follow these principles properly, you definitely can lose the body fat that you wanted in no time at all! Think about it, these principles are so easy to follow you just make exercising your priority. You have to really want it!
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Why Intense Cardio is Much More Efficient at Burning Fat
What is the most efficient way to burn fat? The never ending debate. Should we do cardio in the target heart rate zone or not? Is intense exercise more beneficial? Here I put in my 2 cents.
For years, it was common knowledge that you had to stay in the target heart rate zone to efficiently burn fat. However, the last few years have seen a rise in the popularity of shorter, intense cardio workouts to burn fat.
Training in your target heart rate zone came about when it was revealed that lower intensity exercise (like walking) burns a greater percentage of fat calories during the activity. More intense work on the other hand burns predominantly carbohydrates. So people would try not to train too hard, because if they did, their body would switch from burning fat, to burning carbohydrates. What most people don’t realise though is that you cannot rely on calories burnt during an activity to lose weight.
Calories burnt during the activity do little to help us lose fat. The critical component of successful fat loss relies on our metabolism and certain hormones flowing through our body. This is why shorter more intense workouts are much more efficient.
Training at a lower intensity burns calories only during the activity. As soon as you stop you will stop burning calories. This is because this form of training hardly raises your metabolism. Also longer, less intense cardio sessions hardly stimulate our body to release hormones which will help our fat loss progress. If done long enough though, you can actually stimulate a hormone that works against us…cortisol. Cortisol is a catabolic hormone which actually eats away at muscle. This is obviously a bad thing!
On the other hand, shorter, more intense cardio workouts release certain hormones, most importantly Growth Hormone. The amazing thing about growth hormone is that it helps us build muscle, and does its best to stop fat from storing on our body. We could eat as much as we want and we won’t put on any fat. (However if you got an absolutely voracious appetite, you might, at worst very slowly put on some fat.) That’s why if we got the hormones flowing in abundance in our body, an occasional pig out day, or binge isn’t going to hurt our progress.
Another great benefit of intense training is that it raises our metabolism substantially, for up to 48-72 hours afterwards. Seeing how it keeps the metabolism elevated for up to 3 days afterwards, imagine what would happen if you did these cardio workouts every other day. Your metabolism would be like a fat destroying furnace!
A good real world example is to compare the difference in physiques between marathon runners and sprinters. Which physique would you prefer? How do you think they train? Marathon runners do hours upon hours of long distance running, whereas sprinters train intensely and explosively. No matter what training we do, our body works by adapting to the stress and making it easier.
So with all the training marathon runners do, cortisol will be running rampant in the body, destroying muscle. This is simply the body adjusting to the workload and making it easier for itself. Too much muscle will only hinder the athlete’s performance (and joints mind you!). That’s why marathon runners have very little muscle.
On the other hand, if we trained like sprinters, with short explosive bursts our body will actually want to keep muscle and burn fat. This is because we need our muscles to better perform the workouts we are subjecting the body to. Also, the body, when exposed to this type of training actually wants to rid the body of its excess fat. This is because the fat on the body is simply hindering its performance. Hence, this is why short, explosive training stimulates hormones like growth hormone which help us build muscle and burn fat.
Well then how should you train? It depends on your goals. Do you want to look like a marathon runner or a sprinter?
If you want to be as thin as a rake, go running for hours on end.
However, if you want that lean, muscular physique much like a sprinters, here are a few suggestions:
30-100m sprints: Set out a distance and sprint all out for the set distance. For recovery, walk back to the starting line. As soon as you get back, sprint again. I wouldn’t do more than 8 total sprints in a workout. For example you could do 6 x 60m sprints.
Intervals: Pick an exercise you like, (running, swimming, cycling, boxing, skipping etc.) and give a near maximum effort (80-100% Max) for 20 seconds, followed by 40 seconds of rest or light exercise (40-60% of max). Repeat 5-6 times. No more than 10 reps is necessary. If you can do 10, focus on going more intense in each interval. I personally like doing these with shuttle runs over a distance of 10-20m.
10 minutes constant max effort: Pick an exercise (running, swimming, cycling) and go as hard as you can for approximately 10 minutes. Try to outdo yourself. You could do 10 minutes every time and try to beat the distance every time you do it OR you could have a set distance and try to beat the time every workout. I personally go down to the oval and time myself over 8 laps of the track.
In finishing, for maximum fat loss, I would recommend doing no more than 4-5 sessions a week. That equals, at most to 60-70 minutes of training time a week. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but if you spend every single one of those minutes going as hard as possible, your metabolism as well as those hormones will melt the fat off your body in no time.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Luke Johnstone is a former long time yo-yo dieter who has struggled with his weight ever since he was a little kid. Fed up with dieting he decided to devise a plan which enabled him to eat more food everyday, eat whatever he wanted, ‘pig out’ a few times a week and exercise a total of only 90 minutes a week. He managed to get in the best shape of his life and now has a website to help others struggling with diets to lose weight. You can check it out at www.lukesfatlosstips.com
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Is There a Fat Burner That Can Help You Lose Weight Fast?
Is there really a substance that exists that is able to increase the rate at which the body is able to burn fat? There are a few substances that can help your body to burn fat faster and you don’t have to pay high prices for them either.
If you are looking for ways to lose weight and virtually melt away excess fat, you have probably skimmed through many silver bullets and "magical" herbs that nearly promise you the world and more. However, the question is if there is really a substance that exists that is able to increase the rate at which the body is able to burn fat. Most of the substances that are listed and said to do this type of thing generally don’t work, but there are a few substances that can help your body to burn fat faster. The best part is that you don’t have to pay high prices for them either. You can go to the supermarket and find them easily.
Cayenne and Cumin
Whether you believe it or not, cumin and cayenne have been proven through a lot of research to increase the basal metabolic rate. This is the rate at which your body is able to use energy. Have you ever watched the news and seen people from India, usually Southern India and noticed that they are very skinny? This is because their culture eats large amounts of hot spicy foods that are usually very rich in cayenne and cumin.
Water
If you want to say that a secret to weight loss exists, water is a definite miracle substance. Make it a habit to drink more water daily. Water will help your body burn more calories than it usually does. Water is known to increase your overall metabolism. Another fat burner that you can try is water? Who would have though? Talk about losing weight for dummies.
Crunchy vegetables and fruits
Do you know that there are many fruits and vegetables that can help you lose more weight the more you eat them? This almost sounds too good to be true, but it isn’t. There are fruits and vegetables that exist that have less energy than the amount of energy it takes to actually digest them and break them down. Foods like celery, blueberries, apples, and lettuce can help you lose weight. Eat as much as these are you want daily until you feel full. You can feel full and lose weight with these foods!
If you were considering spending money to buy a fat burner supplement, there is no need for it anymore. You have all of the tips and tools you need to burn fat on your own. Use the tips provided and you are sure to see as well as feel the difference that you are making on your own.
If these tips have caught your interest, why not get further information about sustainable but rapid weight loss. If you find it difficult to implement a weight loss regimen on your own, you can visit this link.
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