Exercise Key to Fighting the Flab

1:43 AM Weight Loss Trainer 0 Comments

Dieting is often viewed as the easy option to losing weight, after all, it doesn't take up much more time than your regular daily routine and just involves maybe a little bit more painstaking preparation of your food intake. Exercising, on the other hand, requires valuable time spent involved in raising the heart rate and burning calories, but it's time well spent in the fight to lose weight and generally restore the "feel good factor." However, exercise seems to be the missing link in many diet plans.

Dieters Feel Cheated By Lack of Success

Dieting in all its various forms from the Atkins Diet, through the Cambridge Diet and beyond has its success stories, but for every person who claims that a particular diet worked for them, there are thousands who feel cheated that nothing actually works for them and that their bodies will never lose the excess weight that they so passionately desire.

Truth is, if you burn more calories than you consume, you have to lose some weight. Or course, there are some people who can't take regular exercise due to health problems and dieting is therefore their only refuge in the weight loss stakes. However, for most people, exercise is not only beneficial, it can also be fun.

Don't Run Before You Can Walk

The key to any exercise regime is to start slowly. Don't go out and attempt to run a marathon when you've been sitting on the couch in front of the TV all your life. Start by walking as much as you can. Leave the car at home and walk to the office, or if that's not convenient, park the car a few blocks away from your workplace and walk the rest of the way. Take the stairs rather than the elevator and go for a walk around the block during your lunch break. This may be a small step in the battle to lose weight, but, it's a huge leap in changing your mindset about exercise and weight loss.

Finger on the Pulse is the Key Measurement

Taking a step up from this, keep a finger on your pulse. Take your pulse before you start your walk by holding two fingertips against the underside of your wrist below the thumb. Count for 15 seconds and then multiply the total by four, this will give you your resting pulse per minute. Take your pulse again after you've finished your walk. For a fit person there will not be much discrepancy between the two figures. The unfit will notice a huge difference in the figures, but with time and effort, the difference between those two figures will begin to narrow.

Taking another step further down the road is then simple: start by walking 100m and than jogging the same distance; alternate several times and then up the amount of exercise gradually. Exercise may not be a miracle cure in the fat fighting arena, but it works, it can be enjoyable and all you need is a pair of decent training shoes to start you on the road to a more lithe and fitter you.

Once you achieve a certain level of fitness, don't stop there. Enter a local race over a distance you feel comfortable with. Just jog around the course and enjoy the atmosphere; no one will laugh at you, but you will get plenty of encouragement to go and achieve more goals. Taking the first step is the hard part, but go on, you can do it!