When you aim for a long term healthy ideal weight, diet and exercise cannot be separated from the process. Fad diet such as Grapefruit Diet or Cabbage Soup Diet don not include exercise in their program since they only aim for short term fast weight loss. If you have made decision to start a healthy long term diet, you should pay attention to these points:
1. Sweating is not a tool to measure your exercise; there are people who will tell you that you have enough exercise when you are sweating a lot. You shouldn’t listen to what they said; sweating is only your body’s way to cooling itself, not an indicator that you have burned enough calories. The best way to do it is by set up a target or using a schedule.
2. Don’t skip your weight training; cardiovascular exercise combined with weight training is considered the best method to burn calories. Indeed, cardiovascular exercise such as jogging or biking can burn calories faster, but there is benefit in gaining muscle through weight training since a person with more muscle will burn more calories throughout the day.
3. If you are a women, doing weight training will not make you bulky; some women are afraid of this issue and thus skipping weight training. Don’t worry, this is just another myth since most women don’t have enough testosterone (male hormones) to become bulky. If you are training and your body really become bigger fast, try reduce your meal portion and weight you lift, then increase the repetition.
4. Do not exercise too much; when you exercise, you are damaging your muscle a bit. This damaged muscle will repair itself with good nutrient and enough rest, forming a new stronger and healthier muscle. But if you exercise too much without giving your body chance to rest, it can’t keep up because you damage the muscle again before it can fix it. 3-4 times a week is recommended for a healthy exercise.
5. Focus on low intensity cardio; some trainer will suggest to do High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) which mixing high and low intensity training for fast fat burning. This is a good method but it is not recommended for most of overweight people since it will put much stress to your body and make it hard to regulate your appetite. Take the low intensity exercise such as walking and light jogging; it will not burn much calories, but it will burn more fat for fuel, put less stress in your body and thus helping you to regulate your appetite.
6. Begin your exercise by walking; if you are one of the sedentary people you may find it hard to begin with all the advanced exercise such as weight training or the HIIT; some people even have difficulties with jogging as a start since they didn’t used to any physical activities. Walking is a way to workout at steady and consistent pace; this is important when you want to burn fat effectively, and you can do it while doing other activities as well such as shopping or chatting. Get used to this exercise and try to increase the duration before you move to the more advanced exercise.
7. Make sure you eat before any exercise session; it is a bad idea to start an exercise with empty stomach since foods are required to provide your muscle with energy to work efficiently, even if it is a morning session. Eat small meal such as toast, oatmeal, or fruits one to three hours before exercise.
8. Set up a target for your exercise; when you already get used to certain type of exercise, sometimes you will forget that you have been doing the same type exercise for so long and your body already get used to it, make it less effective. Make a target, check your progress, measure your heartbeat to make sure you are in the targeted zone; if not you might want to increase the level a bit.
A healthy long term weight loss is impossible if your diet doesn’t include a good portion of exercise. Pick your diet program carefully, make sure it is also contain a good healthy exercise.
