"What is not started today is never finished tomorrow," Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once said. If you want to shed pounds and lose inches fast, there is no better time than now to begin. Exercise offers a healthy way to burn calories and lose weight, while reaping health rewards such as disease prevention. There are a variety of exercise plans that can help you slim down and tone up.
Weight Loss 101
The basic formula for weight loss is to burn more calories than you consume. Dieting alone may not lead to weight loss, because a restricted, low-calorie diet can slow down your metabolism and make it harder to shed pounds. Exercise, on the other hand, helps speed up metabolism, spurring your body to burn more calories even while resting. You will be able to lose weight and keep it off if you combine healthy eating with an exercise program.
Cardiovascular Exercise
Cardiovascular exercise is any activity that elevates your heart rate for a continuous, sustained period. The American College of Sports Medicine, ACSM, recommends doing moderate-intensity cardio for 30 minutes a day, five days a week or vigorously intense cardio for 20 minutes a day, three days a week to stay healthy. ACSM offers base guidelines for an exercise program for beginners, but you can add intensity or time to your workouts if you are a longtime fitness enthusiast or want to tone up and lose inches more quickly.
Interval Training
You can burn more calories and increase the intensity of your workouts by doing intervals. Intervals can work with cardio activities such as running, biking and swimming. To do intervals, alternate bursts of intense activity with periods of rest or light activity. If you normally walk for 30 minutes, for instance, you can do an interval workout by walking for a set period, such as five minutes, and jogging for a set period, such as five minutes, and repeating until you reach 30 minutes. Interval workouts burn more calories by increasing the intensity of your workout, according to MayoClinic.com.
Resistance Training
Resistance training also burns calories, helps boost your metabolism and builds more toned muscles. ACSM recommends doing resistance training twice a week for 8 to 12 reps of 8 to 10 exercises. You can do resistance training up to three times a week for extra strengthening and calorie burning, but it is important to rest at least one day between each session to allow your muscles time to rebuild. Resistance workouts can use your own body weight, free weights or weight machines. Some popular strength-training exercises include crunches, pull-ups, push-ups, bench press, shoulder press, squats, lunges, biceps curls and triceps extensions.
Considerations
Consult your doctor before beginning a weight-loss routine. Set realistic goals for your weight loss and keep in mind that you can lose inches and get toned more quickly than you may lose weight. When you work out, your body will build more lean muscle mass, which weighs more than fat and also burns more calories than fat. As a result, you may lose inches in your waist from fat loss while gaining some weight in muscle mass, and you will appear more toned overall.
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