Exercise Key To Health And Fitness

You’re eating all the right foods, but you still don’t see the scale going down or feel your pants fitting more loosely. You can lose weight by reducing your daily caloric intake alone, but an optimal way to get results is to incorporate exercise for weight loss. Your workouts will never get old when you use a combination of cardio and weightlifting/resistance training.

Risks Of Excess Belly Fat

Not all body fat is created equal, and where you hold your fat can be an indication of various health issues. There are 3 types of belly fat:

While being overweight or obese is never healthy, excess belly fat may be even more dangerous than other areas. Fat around the middle can increase risk factors for heart disease, diabetes, stroke, and may be linked to certain types of cancer.

Exercise For Weight Loss

As difficult to lose weight as it may seem at times, the equation for weight loss is as simple as burning more calories than you are consuming. This is where exercise can really rev up your weight loss.

Cardio Exercise For Weight Loss

The beauty about cardio exercise for weight loss is that it can be whatever you love to do (or feel like doing that day), as long as you are exercising at your Target Heart Rate for about 20-30 minutes per day.

Running, biking, and aerobics are all well-known and common examples of cardio, but think outside the box. Some other fun ways to get your cardio in are:

• Jumping rope
• Trampolining
• Dancing
• Hula-hooping
• Hiking

Cardio exercise for weight loss will definitely help burn fat, but it can also result in muscle loss, particularly when you are limiting calories. Your body is going to find the energy somewhere, even if it is from existing muscles. That’s where weightlifting comes into play.

Weightlifting Exercises For Weight Loss

Weightlifting helps to increase the size of the myofibril, the long strands that run parallel to each other to make up your muscles. As you increase their size, they become stronger, and they also begin to require and use more energy. Using weightlifting to increase lean muscle mass can help raise your Base Metabolic Rate or BMR, which in turn helps you burn more calories while at rest.

This type of exercise for weight loss is not restricted to pumping iron. Resistance training works along the same lines as weightlifting, and sometimes dumbbells or weighted bars are used. Other types of resistance training include:

• Exercise bands
• Aerial fitness
• Calisthenics (Body Weight Exercise)
• Tire toss
• Battle rope

Circuit Training For Weight Loss

Many health and fitness centers have adopted circuit training, which combines cardio and resistance or weight training. A workout consists of resistance stations that work arms, legs, glutes, etc. for strength, alternating with cardio stations. At cardio stations, exercisers can mix it up by walking or jogging in place, doing jumping jacks, dancing, or whatever keeps the heart rate going.

Diet and Exercise for Weight Loss

Weight loss fads are a perfect example that you can do short-term studies and come up with just about any results you wish. Long-term research gives us a more accurate and precise picture of the body and weight loss.

The Harvard School of Public Health conducted a 12-year study involving 10,500 men aged 40 and over to get a clearer picture of how the body changes over the years as well as how different lifestyles affect weight, BMI, and even body shape. The study found that including 20 minutes of weight training per day reduced the belly fat and waist size of men in the study.

Whatever you choose as your cardio and weightlifting/resistance training, make it fun. That way you will be a lot more likely to stick with it, and you will probably love it so much that you will miss it if you skip a day.

Remember to always consult your doctor when beginning a new way of eating and an exercise regimen to ensure that it’s healthy and safe. If you are new to exercise, or just getting back into it, stay hydrated and maintain your electrolytes, along with other minerals and vitamins that can be lost through exercise and perspiration. Consider using all-natural products to enhance your dietary intake and maintain great overall health.

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Reviewed By:

Founder Ray Spotts has a passion for all things natural and has made a life study of nature as it relates to health and well-being. Ray became a forerunner bringing products to market that are extraordinarily effective and free from potentially harmful chemicals and additives. For this reason Ray formed Trusted Health Products, a company you can trust for clean, effective, and healthy products. Ray is an organic gardener, likes fishing, hiking, and teaching and mentoring people to start new businesses. You can get his book for free, “How To Succeed In Business Based On God’s Word,” at www.rayspotts.com.