Everyday Exercise

It is important not to get too bogged down with worrying about which exercise burns the most fat while you are working out. It is the total number of calories you burn in just staying alive that will influence how much or how little fat you burn. Only a small percentage of the calories you burn comes from exercise, compared with the amount burned just keeping you alive.

The exercise programs set out in this book include both aerobic and anaerobic exercises in order to stimulate the fat cells into releasing more fat (see Chapter 4), to replace muscle tissue and to increase the total amount of fat calories burned throughout the day—and night. What is vital, however, is that you adapt the program to suit you. For example, when choosing your aerobic activity, it is important to find something that you like to do and are able to do for at least 20 minutes—more if possible. You may find that power walking is a comfortable yet challenging workout for you if walking at a normal pace is not enough and running is too much. When power walking, you need to take much longer strides and use your arms and upper body to help you with the momentum. You should use as many of your muscles as possible and not just your legs.

Your body does not know the difference between providing energy for vacuuming and providing energy for an aerobics class. When the muscles start to work, the brain receives messages telling it to increase the supply of oxygen. This is the responsibility of the heart, which then has to pump faster to meet the increased demands.

You can, therefore, make a considerable difference in the amount of calories you burn simply by being more active in everyday life.

How Hard Should You Work?

One of the biggest areas of controversy concerns how hard you should work in order to maximize the amount of fat you burn while you are working out. The truth is that whatever form of exercise you do, you will be helping your body to burn fat, not only while you are exercising but all the time. One school of thought is that if you work too hard, you won’t burn fat. This is based on the principle that because it takes a long time for the fat to be taken out of the fat cells, into the bloodstream, into the muscle and then finally broken down, you need to exercise for quite a long time in order to stimulate this process. In other words, by the time the fat has been taken to the muscle, you will have already finished exercising. There is a lot of scientific evidence to support this, and in principle it is true.

To maximize the amount of fat you burn while you are working out, you should aim to keep going for longer to give your fat cells more time to release their fat. You should also remember that if you do this regularly, you will be training your fat cells to release fat into the bloodstream to be used as fuel. In order to do this, you will need to keep the level of exercise fairly low to moderate—after all, Olympic gold medalist Carl Lewis could not run as fast over 1,500 meters as he does over 100 meters. In general terms, you should feel breathless but not exhausted.

There are several ways in which you can estimate how hard you are working in order to see whether or not you are burning fat. The first is to take your pulse rate while you are at the hardest point of the exercise. The problem with this, however, is that if you are moving around (jogging or swimming, for example), it is almost impossible to take your pulse accurately. You will also need to calculate in advance what your maximum pulse rate should be.

Obviously you don’t want to work at 100 percent. Research has shown that when we work at approximately 65 percent we burn the most fat. Sixty-five percent of 190 is 123. Therefore, if a 30-year-old reaches a level where the heart is beating 123 times per minute, he or she is likely to be in the “fat-burning zone”: what you need to do is to pedal away at a level that is comfortable and sustainable. Remember: It takes longer to start burning fat than just glycogen alone, so start gently and gradually increase the time you spend on the activity, until you can work at a comfortable level for 20 or 30 minutes. Rest assured, you will be burning fat. You will also be improving your cardiovascular system and reducing your risk of heart disease.

The second school of thought is completely different, but also correct. It is based on the total amount of calories burned during exercise. Having established that you burn a higher percentage of calories from fat if the level is low to moderate, we now need to look at the total number of calories burned overall during low- versus high-intensity exercise.

For every individual, there is a particular point at which we can no longer continue to work aerobically—that is, supply oxygen at the rate it is required. At this point, we then start to use the anaerobic energy system, which does not burn fat and in turn produces lactic acid in the muscle. This causes muscle soreness, which eventually stops the muscles from contracting. Whether or not you should walk or run to burn more fat, therefore, depends largely on your fitness level and on how long you are able to exercise.

In addition to this, you should remember that the total amount of calories burned will vary from one individual to another, according to the total body weight and the amount of lean body mass. One pound of muscle will require approximately 40 calories per day in order to function—excluding exercise. The more you exercise, the more calories the muscle will require—not just when you are exercising but throughout the day and night, as it repairs itself and starts to grow stronger. The result is a higher percentage of muscle on our bodies, so we burn more calories when we work out. This in turn means we burn more calories throughout the day and night, and so the cycle goes on. All these extra calories have to come from somewhere, and provided you are not eating more than you need, they will come from the body’s fat stores—the perfect way to lose weight.

Move For Better Fitness

Are you a traveler who is always rushing from here to there? Are you feeling mentally-drained, experiencing insomnia, or overeating at fast foods at the airport? Do you find it difficult to overcome the discomfort and tiredness of traveling?

This book was written as a survival guide for all the fellow travelers who want to claim control over their busy lives by a salesman who clocks over 200,000 air miles a year. In this useful book you will learn:

1) 10 amazing ways to find exercise where there is none.
2) How to lose fat and have fun at the same time by being more active on the road.
3) How to exercise without having to go to a gym.
4) The secrets of a super-fit salesman
5) Fitness at 40,000 feet
6) How to run two miles in a hotel room
7) De-stressing techniques which you can use anywhere and anytime.

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It’s Never Too Late

People often tell me that they are too old to exercise, but that is simply not true. Provided you are in good general health, there is no reason whatsoever that you cannot begin a gentle exercise program and reap the same benefits as someone younger. There is little or no difference between the improvements gained by elderly people starting exercise programs and those achieved by people in their 20s.

In a recent study, scientific researchers wanted to test this theory. They went to their local residential care center and asked for some volunteers to start an exercise program. They were met initially with cries of horror from the staff, but once they’d persuaded them that it was all perfectly safe and that the participants would be very well supervised, they did manage to get a few residents to join in. These residents felt that they had nothing better to do since they were only sitting around anyway. The program began very gently with some mobility work in a chair and, over the course of a few months, progressed to include some strength work to try to regain some of the muscle tissue lost due to years of inactivity. At the same time, similar exercise programs were carried out with college students. The workouts were adapted to their increased level of fitness, and both groups worked at approximately 80 percent of their maximum potential.

When the results were compared at the end of the program, it was noted that the residents had dramatically improved their quality of life. They were more active during the day; they were more likely to play table tennis and go for walks rather than just sit around all day; and their medication requirements had gone down—in some cases, quite drastically. In addition to this, the results of the original test—which was to see whether or not they could gain the same improvements in muscle tissue as the younger students—showed clearly that they could. The replacement of lost muscle tissue was far more significant to the residents than it was to the younger group because it literally changed their lives. When the researchers completed their study, they were persuaded to stay and design a much larger program for the other residents, who had seen the changes in those who had taken part and wanted the same benefits themselves. The oldest resident who took part in the study was in his 90s.