Lose Weight Now !
There is a simple equation to weight loss and gain many fail to recognize: for every calorie ingested and not used to expend energy, the body retains the calorie, and that calorie turns to fat.
Simple, isn’t it? Therefore, to lose weight, you must burn more calories than you are taking in. If you are taking in 2500 calories every day, you’d better be working out like a star athlete, or you’ll find yourself with a spare tire, love handles, saddlebags, and a host of other types of accumulated, unwanted fat.
3500 unused calories equals one pound of weight gain. This chart shows how many minutes of exercise is required for a 150 pound person to lose one pound:
From this chart, we can see that you would have to spend almost 8 hours engaged in low impact aerobics to lose one pound.
Exercise Minutes
Aerobics: low impact 530
Aerobics, Step: low impact 417
Bicycling, Stationary: vigorous 278
Weight Lifting: general 972
Basketball: playing a game 365
Bicycling: 14-15.9 mph 292
Golf: using cart 833
Handball: general 243
Martial Arts: general 292
Racquetball: casual, general 417
Rope Jumping 292
Running: 5.2 mph (11.5 min/mile) 324
Running: 8.6 mph (7 min/mile) 201
Skiing: cross-country 365
Swimming: general 486
Volleyball: beach 365
Walk: 4 mph (15 min/mile) 648
Walk/Jog: jog Courtesy: FreeDieting.com
Now do you see why it’s so hard to lose weight?
For many individuals, the problem is two-fold. Consumption of calories is well above what is necessary. The lack of exercise needed to expend those calories is the second part of the problem.
Naturally, the body requires a certain amount of calories each day to perform. Each person’s daily caloric requirements will vary depending on gender, current weight, current height, metabolic rates, and the amount of physical activity performed each day.
Therefore, the more you exercise, the more calories you will naturally burn. Unfortunately in today’s sedentary society, the compulsion to habitually overeat while avoiding physical activity has led to our national obesity epidemic.
Weight loss myths, fad diets, and lackluster exercise plans don’t help to solve the problem either.
So why can’t you lose weight? You do not do enough physical activity to burn all the excess calories you are currently taking in from the food you consume. You have two choices then: take in less calories, or exercise more. The perfect solution to lifelong weight maintenance is to do both.
The answer to weight loss is simply diet and good old exercise. There is no miracle drug and, short of surgery, no miracle cure. By monitoring your calorie intake and fitness routine and making intelligent choices, you will begin to see a difference. By prompting the body to expend calories through exercise, weight loss will occur. A brief assessment by a qualified fitness professional can accurately determine your baseline number of calories used each day in simply being alive and performing daily tasks, and from there it can be determined how much exercise you must perform, and how you can make smarter choices about the calories you ingest.