I am very interested the the ‘best’ exercise plan to lose weight. Clearly, there are ways to exercise that lead to more fat bunring than others. Having said that, though, it’s important to know that I don’t have the "final" answer. You can pick up books everywhere that claims that their way is not only the best way, but it’s the only way, and anyone who does something different is an idiot. That’s clearly an unhappy position. The best exercise for me, a middle aged woman who does moderate exercise and the plan for a 20 year old guy who is a fanatical body builder, is obviously very different.
Having qualified this subject, it’s univerally true that attempts at losing weight must take three things into consideration. These three things are:
Lifestyle …
Exercise …
Diet …
I would argue that our mental conditioning is also tremendously important, but we’ve discussed that in other articles and will do so in the future. The fact remains that certain kinds of exercise have proven more effective in dropping those pounds and staying healthy.
Ever seen a televised marathon or shorter race that has amateur runners in it? Usually in the bigger races you will see at least a handful of top runners. Behind them will also be quality runners who train regularly. Then even further back is the rest of the crowd. It is usually easy to tell the difference between the first two groups and the much larger one. Among the larger group of runners you will always see more than a few runners who are obviously overweight but still trying to complete a marathon.
Considering that a marathon is a grueling twenty six miles long how is it possible for so many people not to be in shape? This is because simply running does not mean you will lose weight.
Another type of exercise is lifting weights. The few chunky weightlifters are usually brand new lifters or some power lifters in the heavyweight division. Comparing runners to weightlifters shows that a greater percentage of weightlifters are not overweight while many runners are.
The simple reason is that only running will not increase muscle mass. Add on the fact that getting rid of those calories during physical activity is not truly going to be the tipping point of shedding those pesky twenty pounds but instead all the calories burnt throughout the day.
Running will certainly increase metabolism but it is limited to the times you are running. Once you have gone back to normal activities your metabolism returns to a much lower level.
This fact however does not apply to weight lifting. With more muscle your metabolism will increase no matter the time or the day.
Muscle eats away at calories at a much faster rate that fat – an astonishing three times more calories are burnt. Simply maintaining your current weight but converting a mere five percent of that weight from unwanted fat to desired muscle is going to have your body burning many more calories.
Leave a Reply