Lose Body Fat
Lose Body Fat
Most people think of cardio when they think about losing body fat. While running, biking, walking, jogging, and other forms of aerobic exercise will indeed help anyone to loose body fat (while at the same time burning calories), one of the fastest and least understood ways of losing body fat is weight training or resistance training.
Regular cardio workouts are essential to a healthy lifestyle. The minimum requirement for daily aerobic exercise is 30 minutes, and most trainers and physicians recommend at least one or two longer sessions each week as well.
Contrary to popular belief, cardio doesn’t have to be intense to be effective. A daily walk in the morning and the evening works well for many and leads to far fewer injuries than jogging. Aim for a pace that leaves you slightly winded; just brisk enough that you can still carry on a conversation but with a bit of difficulty.
The best way to lose body fat though is to add two or three weekly sessions of weight training to your cardio routine. Weight training should focus on one part of the body at a time; usually upper body ant one session and lower body at the nest.
Unlike cardio, you always take a day’s rest between weight training workouts; otherwise you just wear muscles down instead of building them up. A sensible training schedule is 30-45 minutes of cardio five days a week and 30 minutes of weight training on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. By doing both, you will lose body fat much faster.
Why? Because even though cardio is good for your heart and lungs and helps you burn calories, it isn’t very good at building muscle, and building muscle is what will cause your body to burn more calories even while at rest. The more muscle you have and the more you work and build your muscles, the more calories you burn.
If two people are of the same weight, but one has more muscle than the other, the person with the higher percentage of muscle will burn more calories that the person with more fat.
This is why men, who naturally tend to have a lower percentage of body fat than women and who tend to have bigger muscles because of their different hormones, seem to lose weight more quickly than their wives and girlfriends. Men burn more calories because they usually have more muscle.
Women sometimes fear resistance training, fearing it will give them big muscles that look too masculine. The truth is that even male bodybuilders have to train four or five or more hours per day to get those muscles. The average woman will never look like a male body builder no matter how hard she trains. Sessions of less than an hour three times per week will only create firmness, not bulk.
Anyone can lose body fat through regular exercise and sensible diet. By making sure workouts are balanced to include both cardio and resistance training, anyone can lose body fat and build enough muscle to keep that fat lost for years to come.
