| Why Fitness
Making time for your health and peace of mind, while living in a world of unending demands. Find your own time and space. Fitness matters so you must make time for yourself. The health benefits of moderate exercising are substantial. This includes a reduced risk of numerous chronic diseases including coronary heart disease, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, colon cancer, improved mental health and enhanced physical functioning.
Physical exercise increases your confidence, stimulates your ability to think and reason better. How? When you exercise you increase the blood circulation not only in your muscles but you increase the bloods ability to transport oxygen to the brain. The increase blood pressure during exercise forces blood through the smallest of the blood vessels in the brain causing increase brain stimulation. This is why many people discover during physical activity, that they are able to come up with solutions to various problems that have been on their mind before they started their workout. You may even notice that your problem was not really a problem at all.
How to get started
There are countless exercise options, depending on your preferences, finances, abilities and location. But your number one choice should be based on one thing. What is it you enjoy and will do regularly. It will be ideal to have one hour a day set aside to exercise 4 days a week, 30 minutes of aerobics, 20 minutes of weight training, and 10 minutes of stretching. But if you dont have a complete hour or more a day to exercise. Then exercise in what I call bite size portions. Fifteen (15) minutes at a time. Be creative!
- Use the steps more often
- Perform isometric movements while seating at your desk
- Perform stretching movements while waiting for a print-out
- Practice relax breathing exercises while seating in your car
- Do light exercises against your desk or chair periodically during the day
- Force yourself to take a lunch break away from your normal work station (This will help your mind and body to recover from the daily stress)
Lets talk about Fat Losing Fat
Body Fat (BF) is usually given as a percentage of total weight. If a 100lb. person has 10% body fat, that person has 10lbs. of fat and 90lbs of lean body mass (LBM) (water, muscle, bone, etc.) There are 3500 calories in 1 pound of fat.
1. What should my heart rate be to lose FAT?
Heart Rate (HR) is the number of times the heart beats per minute. This is taken by pressing on the front, left side of the neck, or the inner wrist, and counting the number of beats in a certain time. For example, if you count 10 beats starting at zero in 10 seconds your HR would be 60 (10x60sec.(1 min.)/10). When doing an aerobic workout, your Max Heart Rate (MHR) needs to be determined. Your MHR is defined as 220 Your Age. A 20 year old MHR would be 200, while a 50 year old would be 170. While performing aerobic exercise, your HR should stay in the range of (50% to 80%) MHR*.50 to MHR*.80. This is your Training Zone. So a 20 year old should keep their HR between 100 and 160. Keep the HR above this zone will not provide additional aerobic benefit, in fact, it may provide no aerobic benefit at all. For best results, aerobic and fat burning, keep your HR in the aerobic zone for at least 12 minutes. The longer and more frequently you do this, the more improvement youíll see.
2. How long should I work out to burn FAT?
An aerobic workout should last at least 12 minutes, not counting warm up or cool down, only the amount of time your HR is within your Training Zone. The longer and more frequently you do this the sooner youll see an improvement.
Why 12 minutes? According to experts, this is the amount of time needed for the body to start producing fat burning enzymes. It does level off, but the idea is that you want to get your body to use fat for energy. After 12 minutes, you start to burn fat at a higher rate.
|