Tuesday 4 March 2008

Day 14. The Importance of Exercise

Hey hey!... in my crusty the clown voice... and yes I am a Simpsons fan, am a bit like Homer ;o) do'h!

Anyhow, I wanted to chat about exercise today. I am not a personal trainer or anything but I do know a bit about Exercise & Physiology, Nutrition etc. I have a degree in Sport, Health & Physical Education and I just want to share a few pointers.

First of all, if your taking up exercise for the first time in a while, perhaps go see your doctor especially if your overweight or suffer from any health issues. I do advise that you also seek professional help albeit from a personal trainer if you can. But the main thing i want to talk to you about is, how to burn the maximum amount of FAT during exercise.


Exercise improves health and can reduce weight immensely, in fact a lot of people will say just exercise alone can help you to achieve your ideal weight without dieting. But imagine the combination of eating healthy whether on a low carb diet with exercise... in no time you could reach your dream goal!


A lot of people have the misconception that to lose weight they have to work hard with a "No Pain No Gain" attitude when exercising. Now don't get me wrong this does get results for very athletic sports people who want to push further in their abilities, but for normal or relatively overweight people this is just not true and can be dangerous to health & further lead to injuries. People who have be doing sports for years have conditioned their bodies to work at such high levels, where's as non sport folk haven't. Also if your suffering with high blood pressure (hypertension) this could also lead to disastrous results as in a myocardial infarction (heart attack) or stroke, hence why you should see a specialist trainer if you have no clue.


Although please watch out, some gym trainers really don't know what their talking about, and its all well and easy to think they do (But some are after your money only with no interest in you). So listen up, here is the advice...


What if I told you that you don't have to work out to hard to lose fat? Would you believe me? Well its true, Google around if you don't believe me... its all about cardiovascular exercise, 3-5 times a week (6 days a week is best) for roughly 15minutes a time or mo
re. You can do this exercise just by simply walking (perhaps with the dog), jogging, swimming, gardening, teams sports or at the gym.


Basically the body uses two fuel states depending on what level of what intensity you work at. Between 55% to 65% of your target heart rate you tend to use fat stores as the main energy source, while higher than this you use glucose stores 65% to 85%. Therefore if you want to burn more fat you need to work in the range of 55% to 65%.

Take a look at the chart to see:

Source taken from: doctorsamimi.com <-- please check out this site for more details.

But how do you work out your heart rate zones, and how do you monitor these zones... good question.


To Work Out You Heart Rate Zones


Hum well to work out your target heart rate you need to do some simple maths. Basically by using this equation:

220 - Age = Your Maximum Heart Rate


So for instance I am 28 years old so;

220 - 28 = 192 beats per minute (bpm) <-- 192 is my Maximum heart rate. Its called maximum heart rate, because if you go beyond it, it could be dangerous.

Men have slightly higher maximum heart rates, but this equation normally suffices! To then find out my target heart rate zones, I need to work my Lower (55%) and
Upper (65%) levels of 192bpm. So my lower and upper target heart rate levels I need to maintain to burn the most amount of fat are:

Fat Burning Zones
Lower Level: 108bpm
Upper Level: 125bpm


Once you know your values, all you need to do is, do some form of exercise which you enjoy and that keeps you between the upper and lower levels of your target heart rate zone for 15 minutes or more (Idealy 30-45minutes). You have to manage at least a minimum of 15 minutes of work for this to work, if you can't straight away, don't worry do your best and eventually you will get there!



How to Monitor you Heart Rate Zones

Well you could run around with your finger on your pulse and count every 60 seconds, but you may find this difficult whilst exercising ;o) However... if you belong to a a gym, this should be no problem as most cardio workstations now have heart rate monitors built in. Some even calculate your zones for you and tell you what phase you need to work out at.

However if your out walking or lightly jogging, swimming etc you will need a heart rate monitor, which normally comes with an elasticized band which wraps around your chest and syncs with a watch. The watch then outputs your current heart rate, and can inform you of your level of exercise, as in some beep when your not working out in your selected zones.

This would be the kind of heart rate monitor you need:



A couple of more words of advice, depending on your level of fitness and how overweight you are etc... you may find this intensity too easy or too hard. Often overweight people can surpass their fat burning target zone just by walking real slow, but this doesn't mean your not exercising, in fact... you are and therefore should not run or train harder than this to lose weight.

On the other end of the scale you may find working in these target zones are too easy, but if you stick to them, then you will burn a lot of fat and you will find you will be able to exercise longer. Again you don't have to stick to these levels, you could do intervals in a higher zone for a couple of minutes or so then resume your fat burning target zone.

If you stick to these target levels you will also find, that you will have less fatigue in your muscles (as in less stiffness) and therefore the next day you will be ready to train again.

To be honest this is the best way to exercise and I encourage you to try this out. Start off with a 20 minute target and build on it. Again if you can't manage 20 minutes try working towards reaching 20 minutes. Set yourself goals ;o) And make sure your participating in something you enjoy... Not everyone enjoys the Gym, I don't do Gym instead, Volleyball, Badminton and Cycling more sort of social activities.

Some of the best cardiovascular exercises are walking, swimming and cycling, because these are very low impact exercises and am sure you will agree their enjoyable too.

Another note weightlifting is not a good idea, basically because its working on toning muscles not removing fat. If you tone your muscles but have lots of fat on top of them, then you won't see the definition results. Same goes for ab workouts. On the other hand if you want to strengthen muscles your, then weightlifting is a good idea, but I am not going to go into this, as we are talking more about weight loss.

Before exercise you should drink plenty of water and do at least 5minutes of stretching. After exercise you should repeat what you did in stretching. Also take in plenty of water during exercise.

I hope this helps and rant over.... I would really enjoy anybodies comments about this... so feel free to post your messages below.

Oh and here is my food consumption for today:

Till next time take care and keep on losing!

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