Need A Personal Trainer In Westfield?

The truth is that there are no quick fixes. If you want to lose body fat you need to be prepared to put in the time and effort. That means changes to your diet and to your exercise. Diet alone might help you to lose some extra weight, but it will never be enough on its own.

When you add in exercise, you supercharge your efforts. Exercise helps to rev up your metabolism, making your body use more calories than it otherwise would have. In addition, your system becomes fitter and more efficient. You start feeling better and find it easier to adopt healthy eating habits.

By doing the right kind of exercise, you can change your body into a fat-blasting machine. As your muscles start to firm up and new muscle tissue is created, the effects are even more long-lasting.

Muscle burns more energy, even at rest, than fat does. So, even when you are sleeping, you will be burning off more fat than you would have before.

So, what is the best way to lose body fat? Diet is important, for sure, but not more important than exercise. If you want the best possible results, you need to start incorporating both into your lifestyle. 

Getting fit fast means challenging your cardiovascular system on a regular basis. This means walking, running, swimming, etc. Incorporate interval training into your routine to start seeing noticeable results much faster.

For beginners, though, interval training is not recommended.

What is interval training? At first, it seems a bit like slacking off. Don’t let this fool you, though. This kind of training is the most effective way to get the results that you want to and to get them much faster.

It is pretty simple. Choose your main form of exercise. Let’s choose running here as an example. Run as fast as you can for three minutes. You want to push yourself really hard, like an eight or nine out of ten effort. Ideally, you should be hitting 95% of your maximum heart rate.

Then slow it right down to a slow jog for the next three minutes. This is your body’s recovery time, so it is essential to take it easy here.  You then need to repeat this pattern three or four times.

So, essentially, you are going at maximum effort for only half the time spent exercising.

If you’re a beginner, your best bet is to focus on getting stronger, first, and work on your cardio separate.

That is a tough one to answer because everyone is different. You need to think about not only the exercise itself but also about giving your body time to recover. If you are hitting the gym for a four-hour session, your body needs more recovery time than if you just went for a run.

Here is a basic guideline to get you started.

Cardio

Do cardio two to three times a week. It is possible to do cardio every day, as long as you are not overdoing it. Be guided by your body here. You could easily run a mile or two a day if you are fit enough. It wouldn’t be too taxing. But could you run a half-marathon every day?

Strength-Training

This should be part of anyone’s fitness routine because it helps to shape and tone the muscle fibers. Muscle burns more energy than fat, so it is a win-win. Strength training is a little harder on the body, so two to three times a week and don’t work the same group of muscles two days in a row.

Actively Resting

There should be two days a week that are designated as rest days. On these days you do not have to haul your sorry butt out of bed early to go for a run. That said, do some activity on these days – play catch with the kids or go for an after-dinner stroll.

When deciding  how many days a week to exercise, it is important to take the fact that your body needs to recover very seriously. While it may seem easy to continue while you are motivated, pushing yourself too hard is only going to lead to injuries down the track.

And then, it will be a case of having to take weeks off from your program. That could destroy all the progress that you had already made.