One of the main reasons people started to exercise is because they want to look good, feel good and to achieve a better quality of life through health and fitness. Excess fats around the body definitely do not look and feel very good. Having too much excess fats would even have serious health implications. There are also many health conditions and diseases associated with obesity, such as hypertension, dyslipidemia (for example, high total cholesterol or high levels of triglycerides), type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, stroke, gallbladder disease, osteoarthritis, sleep apnea and respiratory problems.

Very often than not, instead of losing weight from exercise, they ended up gaining even more weight than before. Why is this so?

This is not surprising if we understand how the energy equation works. Whether we want to lose weight or maintain a healthy weight, it is important to understand the connection between the energy our body takes in (food consumed) and the energy our body uses (physical activities). In order to lose weight, we need to use more calories than we take in. To maintain a healthy weight, we need to balance the calories we use with those we take in. If we take in more calories than our body needs, we will put on excess fat. If we expend more energy than we take in we will burn the excess fat.

Exercise plays an important role in weight control by increasing energy output. During the initial phase of exercise, the body uses the carbohydrates from the food consumed as the main source of energy. When all the carbohydrates are being used up, the body would then look for the excess fat store in the body for extra fuel. Recent studies have shown that not only does exercise increase metabolism during a workout, it also causes your metabolism to stay increased for a period of time after exercising, allowing you to burn more calories.

Thus, the intensity and duration of the exercise is also an important factor to determine how much calories are being used up. It will only be effective if we are able to burn those excess fats during our workout. How much exercise is needed to make a difference in our weight depends on the amount and type of activity, and on how much we consume. Aerobic exercises such as jogging, running, Taichi burn body fat effectively. However, many people always have the wrong mentality that they can afford to have a hearty meal and eat all they can after the workout, since they had already burnt so much calories, which very often the meal negate the effects of the workout.

Taking for instance, if we consume 150 excess calories a day, we will gain approximately 15 pounds in a year. We could take that weight off, or keep it off, by doing minimally 30 minutes of moderate light intensity exercise daily. The combination of exercise and diet offers one of the most flexible and effective approach towards weight control.

Muscle tissue is heavier than fat tissue, and through exercise, we tend to develop muscle to a certain degree. Thus, our normal bathroom weighing scale will not necessarily be able to tell whether or not we are “fat.” Individual with well toned and developed muscles, and with relatively little body fat, invariably are considered “overweight” according to standard weight charts. If we are engaging in a regular program of strength and resistance training, our muscles will increase in weight, causing our overall weight to increase. Therefore, looking at the body composition is a better indicator of how much fat we have than just looking at body weight alone. In today’s technology, we can easily find commercial weighing scales which are able to read our body water percentage, body fat, muscles and bone mass.

Lack of physical activity causes muscles to get soft, and if proper nutritional diet is not maintained, excess calories consumed is almost always stored as fat around the body. Those that were once actively engage in physically activities, who continue to eat as they always have after settling into sedentary lifestyles, tend to suffer from “creeping obesity.” Thus, exercise should be a lifelong activity and Taichi still remains as one of the best forms of lifelong exercise for all ages.

te indicator of having a good fitness and strength level can be measured by the amount of energy we have. To fit everything into our busy lifestyles we need high energy levels. When we have loads of energy we tend to be happier and more enthusiastic, more motivated to be active and in turn can enjoy an enhanced quality of life.

Constantly being tired and having low energy levels can lead to apathy and the blues, which in not favorable to getting the most out of life.

What if you have no energy to exercise? Without exercise you will have no energy causing a vicious cycle. But breaking the cycle with a proper balanced exercise program is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself.

Exercise is more effective at giving an energy boost than even prescription stimulants. It has been proven time and again that regular exercise increases your energy, vitality, mood and your whole outlook on life. As strange as it seems, exercise will actually give you energy rather than take it away.

The human body when it’s in motion has to produce energy through various metabolic processes. When we’re not in motion, those processes simply slow down. Exercise contributes to higher energy levels by increasing oxygen flow to the brain which thrives on oxygen. As your heartbeat increases with a vigorous workout, more blood surges through the brain; more oxygen gets absorbed by your brain cells, which helps relieve fatigue. Also boosted are the body’s feel good chemicals, the endorphins and you feel more mentally alert, energetic and have an overall happier disposition.

The number one way to boost your energy levels is to perform strength training exercise. This will get you stronger which in turn will increase your metabolism (this is the rate your body burns fuel). This increase in your metabolism is the key to keep you feeling energized throughout the day. Your better conditioned muscles will make every task that much easier, regardless of body weight.

However, just as regular exercise creates an upward spiral of good spirits, loads of motivation and tons of energy, not getting any or enough exercise can toss you into a pit of low energy and little motivation. So what do you do when you’ve hit a slump, haven’t been active in a while and are having a hard time even scrounging up enough energy just to get out of bed in the morning?

Make your personal fitness a priority in your life, not only in getting started, but also in keeping it going. If you’ve got too much on your plate, it might be necessary to turn down offers to happy hour or dinners out, or less TV if it means having time to exercise. Be prepared to learn new skills to make your journey as easy as possible. Enlist the help of a fitness professional or trainer to help you get started and to have someone to check in with every few weeks to keep you on track.

Consistency is probably the most important part of your exercise program. The more consistent it is the more you will get out of it, and the more you will enjoy it. Improved strength and fitness, like life is a journey and all you have to do is take the first step. Your energy has got to be high on your priority list. If you have no energy, you will not be able to enjoy your life to the fullest. Making good choices right now will not only boost your energy, it will rejuvenate your life.

oper strength training exercise will trim your body not bulk it up. It is strange that someone who is overweight would choose to believe the opposite when their body is already ?bulked? up from excess body fat. A proper exercise program that includes strength training exercise is the only long term permanent solution to the problem of being overweight.

A restrictive diet combined with the wrong type of exercise will make excess body fat loss very difficult if not impossible long term. This combination works against the body not with it and will only lead to frustration and disappointing results.

Loss of muscle tissue is an important factor in weight gain as we get older. Muscle tissue demands eight times the calories that fat requires so, if we lose muscle mass, we lower our metabolism (the rate the body burns fuel). This can happen even if the weight on the bathroom scale does not change.

Someone who is overweight has an unhealthy body composition (muscle/fat ratio) and restricting food intake without proper exercise will only make this worse. The focus must be on correcting this underlying problem right at the source. Building back the muscle tone will increase the metabolism which is the body?s engine so it burns more calories.

Some people especially women think that they have this genetic curse of ?bulking up? overnight if they even look at a weight. But that is not correct, lets repeat it ?proper strength training will trim your body not bulk it up?. Adding muscle tissue to the body is not easy, especially for women as they have approximately 18% the testosterone levels of men, the primary hormone related to muscle building. These levels drop in men and women as they age, an additional reason that muscle mass drops naturally with age unless you work to keep it.

For excess body fat loss any program that does not include strength training exercise will cause muscle loss and a subsequent reduction of metabolism. Ultimately, the dieter cannot sustain the lower calorie intake and thus slowly gains the weight back and usually adds some extra as well.

But is doesn?t have to be this way. The solution is two fold ? a proper exercise program that contains strength training exercise and a balanced food intake that contains enough food to prevent hunger and enough energy to be able to perform the exercise program with enough intensity (degree of difficulty) to product results.

If you are new to exercise it is important that you seek the help of a fitness professional to set up your program and teach you correct exercise technique. This could save you months if not years of wasted time and effort.

The reason for all this weight gain in our population, however, is not an aging metabolism – it can be attributed mainly to our lifestyle activity levels or rather the lack of them. Inactivity results in loss of muscle, and a loss of muscle, not an aging metabolism, is the primary cause of creeping obesity that has become epidemic in our population. The muscle tissue that remains on a person is as metabolically active as ever, but in the majority of people as they get older they simply have less of it.

A well planned and executed exercise program set up by a fitness professional can be a virtual fountain of youth. There aren?t any tricks or short cuts, but the benefits are numerous including, decreased risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, cancer and metabolic conditions.

You can feel better, look better, and have better control of your body weight and your health by making fitness a part of your life. It is never too late to start, but the sooner you start the sooner you can reap the benefits.