Which do you prefer, aerobic or anaerobic exercises? Do you know the difference? Does it make a difference? Not really. The words aerobic and anaerobic represent different ways the body gets energy for exercise.

In aerobic, meaning with oxygen, exercise involves or uses oxygen to fuel metabolism, and the main fuel comes from burning fat. This type of exercise involves relatively less muscle fatigue. Aerobic exercise is of moderate intensity. Anaerobic, or without oxygen, exercise is higher-intensity exercise where the muscles rely on fuels other than oxygen. Anaerobic exercise burns sugar as the main source of fuel. Either way, you still burn fat.

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Light exercise cleans out lactic acid (a waste product) and stimulates cell regeneration. To burn fat, rather than sugar, there are several things to remember:

- Breathe deeply. Use your diaphragm to draw in air, through your nose, and hold the breath for a few seconds. Then exhale through your mouth.

- Exercise at a comfortable level. If 10 is extreme exertion, exercise at a 7. You should still be able to carry on a normal conversation while you work out. Doing this for 45 minutes a day will restore energy and make you feel great!

You may think you don’t have time to exercise, but you should make time. The benefits to your health and well-being far outweigh the cost in time. Since proper exercise increases energy, you won’t need to sleep as much as you have in the past. So, take a little of your nighttime sleep to exercise. You’ll be better for it.

Or use your lunch break to exercise instead of having a heavy lunch that adds fat. Your productivity will increase. You’ll be more alert and energetic. And the time you save in added productivity can be applied to those other important tasks you aren’t willing to trade for exercise.

Rebounding (also known as cellularise) is a great way to get aerobic exercise. A rebounder is a mini-trampoline that provides excellent, non-impact exercise through bouncing. If you have access to this type of equipment, try it! It’s a fun exercise for all ages and types, and it’s less expensive than other types of exercise equipment.

Whether you have access to a rebounder or not, use any break or time out to get in some movement and deep breathing. Any type of exercise will have great benefits. It will improve your heart, making it stronger and larger. Deep breathing will make your lungs stronger, too. The movements you use to exercise promote proper blood flow to your joints as well as to your muscles, so you reduce possible joint pain by engaging in regular exercise. And research suggests positive links between exercise and overall health – preventing almost every type of disease.

Many of us spend most of our days sitting crouched at our desk, typing away at our computer, focused on the job at hand. And while we do this, our bodies get stiff, tired, and full of natural toxins. Proper exercise flushes the system and stimulates internal organs, including the brain. It restores energy and improves attitude.

Your investment in just a little moderate exercise will repay your effort with benefits that last a lifetime. You’ll live better, live longer, and enjoy life more when you commit to and follow through on a regular program of exercise.

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.