Exercise & Dieting
One of the key ways to lose weight is to combine exercise with a healthier lifestyle. Exercise for weight loss through aerobic exercise metabolizes calories and therefore raises your metabolic rate enabling you to lose the pounds.
Your heart rate would need to be raised to an increased level for around 30 minutes 3 times every week in order to affect your metabolism long term. Aerobic exercise will enable 300 calories per hour to get burned off (depending on your weight and fitness level).
To put this into context, 1 pound of body fat contains c.4000 calories. Therefore, how long do you think that takes to shed through working out alone - especially to ensure it comes off permanently. Putting 4000 calories on is quite easily, and can be a result of years of no exercise and excess.
The point of this article is also to try and help advise you on how to burn the fat and lose weight. As discussed above, you need to be able to workout for around 30 minutes a day - so you need to work at a level that you know that you can maintain that.
There is debate over training regimes and intensity - especially where some fitness bodies suggest training at 75-90% of your maximum for short periods, or 55-75% of maximum heart rate for longer periods.
In reality you do need to try both methods, but obviously as a novice to fitness and exercise you need to get advice and guidance. Your aerobic exercise will help you to raise your metabolic rate for up to 24 hours after you completed your exercise and training. The exercise helps to burn up extra calories and also prevents your metabolic rate from declining.
[The next page has information on weights & resistance training for slimming].
