Traditionally when women exercised with weight loss in mind they focused more on ‘cardio’ type activities and combined this with a diet of some kind to restrict calories. While this approach may have worked for some women it fell way short of the mark for most women’s fitness/weight loss goals.
We now know that dieting and cutting calories in fact, makes it harder to lose weight and get in shape as they work against the very mechanism that determines how fat or slim you are – your metabolism which is your body’s engine. As soon as you cut more than a hundred or two calories from your daily food intake your metabolism will slow down and you will automatically burn less calories and store more as fat. Not exactly the right environment for weight loss you will agree.
Weight loss slows after a few weeks when the body has time to activate this ‘starvation mode’ and often a woman will start a cycle of even more calorie restriction and more long duration low intensity activity to try and get the weight loss happening again as it was at the start of the diet. But you are wasting your time now as your body has put the brakes on fat loss, is in ‘diet shock’ and if you keep this up long enough you will not only damage your metabolism you will damage your health.
Proper exercise is needed for weight loss
There is a much better and more effective weight loss approach – simply add a proper strength training all over body exercise program and perform it will some intensity (effort) 2-3 times each week. That’s all you need to do to boost your metabolism which is the very best weight loss strategy as then you will be burning more calories every minute of the day and night rather than less with the other old fashioned ineffective methods.
Just a few pounds of new muscle or simply toning up what you already have will give you this fat burning boost. You won’t even see it because it will be under the excess fat you have stored on your body but it will be underneath working away for you like factory workers gobbling up the excess fat.
For weight loss we need to have a bigger metabolic motor
Toned muscles create heat and heat takes fuel to maintain and this is where you will get your weight loss. Weak flabby muscles have very low energy requirements and if you have not been doing enough muscle building and maintaining activity this is the likely reason you have become overweight in the first place. Fix things up right down at base level – your metabolic motor – and watch the weight loss magic happen.
We used to be only concerned about exercising in some sort of mythical ‘fat burning zone’ and were only focused on how many calories we burned during an exercise session. But now we know better and understand for a true weight loss solution we need to be focused on what happens long after an exercise session is over.
We need to exercise in a way that increases fuel burning for the long haul if weight loss is something we desire. Cardio type activity cannot do this – not now…not anytime soon…not ever.
So, get yourself along to your local gym or fitness center and get yourself started on a proper strength training program. You will be delighted not only with weight loss but many other benefits such as increased energy and vitality along with looking and feeling fantastic. Give it a few months and you will see your brand new body emerging which will motivate you even further in your fitness and weight loss goals.
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