Weight Loss with Sohu12

Regular physical exercise is an absolute must for a healthy metabolism. Exercise is also an effective strategy for weight control because it causes a favourable shift in body composition, increasing muscle mass and decreasing body fat. The greater your muscle mass, the greater your fat-burning capacity. When you diet to lose weight, most of the reduction comes from loss of water. In addition, dieting lowers your basal metabolic rate (BMR). In other words, your body slows down to compensate for the reduced caloric intake, thus keeping your weight basically the same. Exercise has been shown to compensate for a reduced BMR due to caloric restriction, and it helps your body lower your set point, the weight to which your body naturally returns. Here are some tips to help you develop an exercise program.

1. Make It Fun

If you like what you are doing, you have a better chance of sticking with it. Find a workout buddy and plan to exercise together. For example, you and your neighbours might enjoy taking brisk walks early in the morning or in the evening.

2. Stay Motivated

If you are goal-oriented, set realistic targets for your exercise – more laps, more lifts and keep track of how you are doing. Reward yourself when you reach your goal. Vary your routine to avoid boredom. Read exercise books or magazines for tips on getting the most out of your program and learning other exercise strategies.

3. Exercise Regularly

You need to commit to your exercise plan. Exercise at least three times a week throughout the year. Some people find it easier to exercise every day, so that it becomes a habit. With strength-training exercise, however, it is recommended taking a day off to allow your body to recover.

4. Recognize Exercise

You need to recognize the importance of physical exercise. Make regular exercise a top priority in your life.

5. Give Yourself Time To Exercise

To do you the most good, exercise must cause an increase in your heart rate and must be sustained for a minimum of twenty minutes. It is recommended that exercising in this way three times a week is usually enough to provide you with benefits. In fact, more frequent exercise of longer duration is even better. Aerobic exercise-movement that increases utilization of oxygen includes walking briskly, jogging, bicycling, cross-country skiing, swimming, aerobic dance, and racquet sports. Strength-training exercise, such as lifting weights, is just as critical to long-term weight control as aerobic exercise because it is able to build muscle mass.

6. Before Starting, Consult Your Physician

This is especially important if you are over forty years of age. Suddenly launching into vigorous exercise when you are not used to it can cause dangerous strain on your heart. Regardless of your age, before exercising see a physician if you are a smoker of if your have known heart disease, high blood pressure, or irregular heartbeat. Consult a doctor if you become breathless with moderate exertion or if you experience pain or pressure in your chest, arm, teeth, jaw, or neck during exercise.

7. Monitor Exercise Intensity

This is determined by measuring your heart rate (beats per minute). To check your pulse, put your index and middle fingers on the opposite wrist or on your neck just below the jaw. Count the number of beats in twenty seconds and multiply by three. This is your resting heart rate per minute. Your goal should be to increase your heart rate to within the appropriate training rate range for the duration of aerobic exercise (say twenty minutes). The training rate depends on your age. To determine your rate range, subtract your age from 185 to get the top of the range, and subtract another twenty to determine the bottom range. Thus a forty-year-old would have a target training heart rate of 125 to 145 beats per minute. Do not exceed the higher figure in this range.

Excessive body weight compounds many health problems. It stresses the heart, the muscles, and the bones. It increases the likelihood of hernias, hemorrhoids, gallbladder disease, and many other conditions. Excess weight makes breathing more difficult, slows you down, makes you less effective in personal encounters, and lowers your self-image. Fat people are hospitalized more frequently than people with normal weight. They have more surgical complications, more cases of breast cancer, more high blood pressure, more heart attacks, and more strokes.

Weight control is a difficult task. Fortunately, it becomes a little easier for seniors than for others. Maximum body weights are generally obtained between 45 and 64 years of age; after this most individuals do lose some weight. Excess weight is very seldom due to thyroid disease or other specific illness. For most of us the problem and the solution are personal, not medical. As with the other habits that change health, management of this problem begins with its recognition as a problem. Weight control requires continued attention. For those of us with a potential problem, the vigilance must be lifelong.

Increasingly, exercise is being seen as an important key to weight control. Part of every weight control program should be an exercise program. Obesity is not just the result of overeating. Obese people, when studied carefully, are found to move around less than other people and, therefore, to burn too few calories. Thirty-five hundred calories equals about a pound of body weight. If you take in 3,500 calories less than you burn, you lose a pound. If you take in 3,500 calories more than you burn, you gain a pound. If you want your horse to lose weight, you just give him less hay or exercise him more.

These are two important phases to weight control: the weight reduction phase and the weight maintenance phase. The weight reduction phase is the easier. Here the method you use to lose weight doesn’t matter very much, although you should check with your doctor if you plan to lose a large amount of weight quickly to make sure the diet you intend to use is a sound one. During the weight loss stage, many of your calories are provided by your own body fat and protein as they are being broken down, so you need little or no fat and much less protein in your diet during this period. Complex carbohydrates are important to most sound diets. Diets usually have a gimmick of some kind that encourages you and helps you to remember the diet.

Most people have some success in losing weight. If you set a target, tell people what you are trying to do, and stick with it for a while, you can probably lose weight. Remember that it has to go slowly, however, since even a total fast will cause true weight loss of less than a pound a day. Rapid changes in weight are generally due to loss of fluid. Because low-calorie diets tend to be lower in salt, the first few days of a diet give you a false sense of accomplishment as you lose some of the fluid that the salt was retaining in your body. Then, when the rate of weight loss slows down, you may think that the diet has failed. You have to be patient with the weight loss phase. A pound a week is a reasonable goal. This requires elimination of the equivalent of one day’s food each week.

The second phase is maintenance, maintaining the desired weight you have achieved. This is more difficult, and it requires constant attention. Weight yourself regularly and record the weight on a chart. Draw a red line at three pounds over your desired weight and keep your weight below the line, using whatever method works best for you. It is easier and healthier to make frequent small adjustments in what you eat than to try to counteract binges of overeating with dieting. Keep yourself off the dietary roller coaster.

Many people just can’t keep weight off no matter how hard they try. For some people, overweight is determined by their genes. If this is you, don’t feel guilty about your failure to lose weight. But you must work twice as hard to reduce all of your other health risks. You must find a way to exercise, eat less fat, and if you smoke, quit.