Clients tell me that weight loss is a big priority. I believe that they want it, but it seems there are obstacles that keep some people from achieving it. Diet is a major obstacle, but so is exercise.
As I mentioned in
How to Make Belly Fat Disappear, there are two general types of exercise:
1. The exercise you do as a minimum to help prevent diseases like diabetes, hypertension, and obesity. These are also the folks that talk about how they walked around the mall for 2 hours as exercise. The
Center for Disease Control recommends a minimum of 20 minutes a day of exercise such as brisk walking, and an average of 10 minutes a day (75/week) of a more vigorous activity such as jogging or sports.
2. The exercise you do to lose/maintain weight, build/tone muscle, increase cardiovascular endurance, and reduce body fat. For best results, the exercise sessions must be a mixture of at least 2 things each time: high intensity, longer duration (45-60 minutes) and frequency (5-6 days/week). Also, sessions should generally consist of strength and core training, cardio, balance and flexibility.
My clients work harder with strength training than with cardio exercise. I sometimes tell a client to do as many strength training reps as she can, and often she will go beyond the number I had in my mind. But if we’re doing cardio together, she will set the speed/incline lower than I expected. Cardio is also the last thing most people will do on their own.
I’m not a huge fan of parking myself on the treadmill for 45 minutes, but I try to get it in by walking/jogging outside, doing circuit training or a kettlebell workout, dancing, making up my own step routine in the basement, road biking, or finding an exercise video on Netflix.
So come on, folks---push it harder, get sweatier, and stop making excuses!
No comments:
Post a Comment