A Routine of Aerobic Exercise and Resistance Training to Lose Weight?
Posted by: Marilyn Nelson on
Sep 30th, 2008 |
Filed under: lose weight
There are women who spend 4 days a week, 40 minutes at a time, on the stair-stepper, treadmill or bicycle who don't lose weight! There are men who run 6 miles a day who have no muscle tone and rolls of fat around their waists. You've been led to believe that if you want to lose fat, all you have to do is regular aerobic exercise. There's more to it than that.
You must be able to monitor and control your cardiovascular intensity to maximize the number of calories you burn. And, if aerobic exercise is not supplemented with resistance training (lifting weights) to at least maintain muscle mass, you cannot effectively accelerate the fat loss process. Each pound of lean muscle tissue burns 35-50 calories a day while your body is at rest. Body fat is not metabolically active, so little to no fat is burned for each pound of body fat.
A combination of properly monitored aerobic exercise and resistance training enables you to rapidly burn the maximum amount of fat. This may sound like its involved and time consuming. It is not! With the proper fitness and nutrition system in place, you can quickly burn fat, lose weight and get fit in as little as 40 minutes per session - exercising in the privacy of your home only 3 times per week. And in 12 weeks you can dramatically transform your body.
Muscle is metabolically active tissue. Unlike muscle, fat is an energy source for the body, but most people have much more than they need. Fat does not use energy - it is used as energy. Muscle uses energy. Lots of it. The more lean muscle you have, the more fat you burn. And here's the biggest benefit, and why everyone needs to incorporate resistance training in their exercise program: the more lean muscle you have, the more fat you burn - while you are at rest!
You see, that's really the crucial weight loss and fitness secret. Looking great and losing weight is not just a function of how much fat you burn when you're working out, because you can only exercise so much in a given week. The real secret is how metabolically active your body is the other 95% of the time. People with more lean muscle burn fat at a much greater rate than do those with less lean muscle. That doesn't mean you have to look like Arnold or Madonna to be an efficient fat-burning machine. But you do have to at least maintain - and preferably increase - your lean muscle tissue. It's easy with the proper resistance training program.
NOTE: women will NOT become "bulky" or "muscle-bound" by using resistance training in their exercise routine. In fact, just the opposite is true. Lean muscle is more compact and firmer than fat. Resistance training will make women smaller, firmer and sexier. Women are not genetically prone to adding muscle "mass." Men, on the other hand, will gain mass and see positive muscle growth through the proper use of nutrition and resistance training
Marg Roukens
202-657-5874
SKYPE: marg_roukens
Tri Power Team
Tags: lose weight, weight loss


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