Exercise is always a good idea when someone starts to lose weight. When an individual loses weight, there is a tendency to also lose muscle. This is especially true when the average weight loss is more than 2# per week. In order to maintain muscle during weight loss, it is important to include a combination of aerobic and muscle-building exercises. Incidentally, if you are losing more than 2# per week consistently, you are probably not getting enough calories in your diet. I’ll explain specifically what is recommended for exercise, but I also wanted to discuss physical activity which I view as a different category.
Aerobic Exercise: Aerobic exercise helps to burn fat and improves your heart rate and overall cardiovascular health. During the week, most of your exercise should be aerobic. The current dietary guidelines for adults ages 18-64 encourages individuals to include at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity aerobic exercise. For added health benefits and weight loss, striving for 300 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise or 150 minutes of vigorous-intensity aerobic exercise per week. Examples of moderate-intensity would be walking vigorously, dancing, water aerobics, biking, and general gardening. Examples of vigorous-intensity would be aerobic dance, jumping rope, race walking, jogging, running, basketball, soccer, swimming laps and riding bikes on hills or riding fast.
Anaerobic or Muscle Building: Building muscles helps to prevent muscle loss during weight loss and also helps to increase your metabolism so that you burn more fat even when you aren’t working out. It is recommended by the 2010 Dietary Guidelines that adults should include muscle-strengthening activities at least twice per week. Examples of this would be to lift weights, do push-ups, sit-ups or squats, and to target different parts of our body during your work outs, e.g. back, chest, legs, arms.
These are the types of exercise that most people think about when they start an exercise program. I also wanted to touch on the importance of physical activity throughout the day. It is good to go to the gym or set a specific time during your day to complete aerobic and anaerobic activities, but think about what you might be doing for the rest of your day. Some individuals work in very sedentary environments. So essentially, they could be working out an hour per day, but then sitting the rest of the day. I encourage individuals to try and find ways to have physical activity throughout their day, whether they get up and walk down the hallway once per hour or they park farther away from their office or walk at lunchtime. Bottom line: avoid inactivity most of the time. Try and take 5 or 10 minutes periodically throughout your day to move and get away from your
“screen” a.k.a. computer or television.
There are more benefits that can be obtained from exercise and physical activity than just weight loss. It can prevent most chronic diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure or high cholesterol. It is encouraged for those individuals who haven’t been exercising to see a primary care provider for a health physical and clearance before starting an exercise routine.
Filed under: Tips for Weight Loss
