Regular, high intensity exercise and a healthy diet is the foundation of weight loss. Aerobic exercises such as running, cycling and swimming result in weight loss and cardiovascular fitness. The American Heart Association recommends 30 minutes of aerobic activity daily to lose weight and decrease your risk of coronary disease.
Aerobic Exercise
Aerobic exercises such as running, cycling, swimming and rope jumping are excellent for losing weight. These types of exercise require continuous movement, involve large muscle groups, increases your metabolic rate and results in weight loss. The American Heart Association recommends 30 minutes of aerobic activity performed at 60 percent to 80 percent of your maximum heart rate. Exercise three to seven days a week and alternate between low impact aerobic exercises such jumping rope and low impact exercise such as jogging and swimming. A 160 pound individual will burn 511 calories by performing a high impact aerobic activity for an hour and 365 calories by performing a low impact activity for an hour. 730 calories are burnt by rope jumping for an hour, 986 calories by running for an hour and 511 calories by swimming for an hour.
Interval Training
High intensity, interval training is also an excellent way of boosting your metabolism and accelerating your weight loss. Interval training alternates between of low impact cardiovascular exercises and high impact cardiovascular workouts. It burns more calories and improves your aerobic capacity, allowing you to exercise for prolonged periods. Interval training incorporates a high impact, explosive workout such as sprinting for two minutes and a low impact activity such as jogging for two minutes. Interval training should be performed at 20 minutes durations, with a five minute warm up and a five minute cool down. Depending on your weight-loss goal and level of fitness, you can increase or decrease the duration of high impact workout.
Anaerobic Exercise
Anaerobic exercises such as weight lifting and strength training in combination with aerobic exercise is perhaps the most effective way of increasing your metabolism, burning calories and losing weight. Weight lifting increases your basal metabolic rate as well muscle mass. Muscle mass is metabolically active, burning more calories at rest than fat. Thus, incorporating strength training exercise programs that increase your muscle mass is an excellent means of losing weight. Strength training workouts that utilize multiple muscle groups such as leg presses, lunges, arm curls, pull ups and push ups may be performed right after an aerobic workout or on alternating days.
Consideration
In addition to interval training and combining different workout plans, a healthy diet deficient of 500 calories per day is recommended to meet your weight loss goals. Your energy expenditure must always exceed your caloric intake in order for you to lose weight. Cycle between workout plans, number of set, repetitions, intensity and duration in order to keep your metabolism and energy expenditure above your caloric intake and basic energy requirements.
Member Comments