Diet and exercise adherence is a key component to the effectiveness of your program. Unless you regularly stay with your program, your body will not be able to adapt to reflect the benefits of diet and exercise. Repetition of moderate change over time can best enable you to reach your goals and to maintain them. Thus, your routine should be specific to you and your goals.
Types of Routines
Routines should be tailored to reach short-term goals that aim you toward a major long-term goal. These short-term goals are designed to set you up for success so that you can achieve an obtainable result that isn't too daunting. Furthermore, your routine should focus on principles that will enable you to comfortably and regularly practice the principles that make it up. This will prevent unnecessary dramatic or excessive changes to your body.
Exercise Routine
The exercise routine that you choose should incorporate a complement of cardiovascular and resistance training exercises. Utilizing a combination of both is important because of the different training adaptations that they can stimulate in your body. These exercises need to take into consideration your training and physical fitness status to optimize your potential gains. A good starting point to build your exercise routine around is based on the American College of Sports Medicine's recommendations for physical activity. It states that three to five days of 30-40 minutes bouts of cardiovascular exercise and two days of whole body strength training are the minimum doses to see the benefits of exercise.
Diet Plan
Your diet plan should have fats, proteins and carbohydrates in varying proportions. Despite the fact that all three are essential in providing you with proper nutrition, they should not be consumed in equal quantities. Your fats should only consume 20 percent to 35 percent of your diet, proteins 10 percent to 35 percent, and carbohydrates 45 percent to 65 percent, as recommended by the Mayo Clinic. That said, those are broad ranges and should be further narrowed down depending on your current health and exercise routine. For example, if your exercise routine is heavily concentrated on cardiovascular exercise, a diet rich in carbohydrates would be more appropriate versus one rich in proteins.
Variety
Whatever exercise and diet routine you choose at the onset, it should be flexible and easy to modify. Your body develops adaptations as a result of repetitive stimuli, but over time the same repetitive stimuli no longer stresses the body into making adaptive changes. Consequently, change your program variables every two to four weeks to can allow your body to make adaptive changes and avoid plateaus.
Results
The beneficial effects associated with diet and exercise are associated with positive aesthetic changes and improved health status. You're not guaranteed to see the effects of all exercise related benefits, but by regularly adhering to your program you can set yourself up to maximize this potential. The journals "Obesity" and "Circulation" report that health related benefits include: decreased risk for heart attack, improved insulin sensitivity, decrease in stroke risk, decreased risk for cardiovascular disease, and decreased risk for hypertension. The journals "Kinesiology," "Obesity," and "Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition" report a greater likelihood for: weight loss, increased fat-free mass, increased muscle strength/endurance, decreased risk for obesity, and improved cardiovascular functioning.
References
- "Kinesiology"; How Effective is Exercise in Producing Fat Loss?; K.T. Borer.; 2008
- American College of Sports Medicine
- Mayo Clinic
- "Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition"; ISSN exercise & sport nutrition review: research & recommendations; R.B. Kreider et al.; 2010
- "Obesity"; Exercise, Abdominal Obesity, Skeletal Muscle, and Metabolic Risk: Evidence for a Dose Response; C.A. Slentz et al.; 2009
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