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.

become a long standing myth that performing cardio exercise means to execute the exercise at a steady pace over a long period of time.

It’s also paired up with what we call aerobic exercise meaning in the presence of oxygen. During aerobic exercise oxygen is consistently delivered to your lungs and muscles.

It’s fair to say that this is the type of “cardio” exercise that most are accustomed to in the form of jogging indoors and outdoors, spinning classes, swimming and long walks to name a few.

However not all cardio is equal and using the method outlined above is not that efficient at burning fat tissue.

An outcome that we desire is to work the muscle tissue sufficiently in order to create an increase in metabolic rate and in doing so burn fat tissue instead of wasted muscle. This is what we call anaerobic training.

In this case we are still talking about cardiovascular exercise and what options to use but now it is defined as NOT in the presence of oxygen.

Don’t get too alarmed and think that you are going to stop breathing. All this simply means is that the conversion of oxygen to energy is not enough to complete the activity and so your body moves to other energy systems to create movement.

What are the benefits of this type of cardio training?

Time – It can be performed very quickly, no requirement for a 1 hour window.

Fitness – Anaerobic exercise can improve all components of fitness including aerobic. However, aerobic cannot offer the same cross benefit

Metabolism – Anaerobic energy system training burns calories hours after the exercise is finished. This results in more fat tissue being melted away. Aerobic training will actually bite away at your muscle tissue and slow down your metabolic rate. In doing so your body will become less efficient in burning fat.

Take the image of a sprinter and a marathon runner. Sprinters carry less body fat than long distance runners because of their muscle mass.

Stands the test of time, there is no end point – Consistently performing aerobic exercise will get you fitter but as mentioned above will not increase your metabolic rate. By performing this type of exercise only over and over you are adapting so much that it will be harder and harder to get any gains from it. Anaerobic exercise does not get easier and will consistently bring results because the muscle will always try to work harder or you can challenge them more.

On question that will always come up with this format of training is whether you are getting any “fitter” and why it never gets easier?

Trust me; this is a good thing because as you are getting fitter you are able to increase your effort which results in better results and a system that you can benefit from for life because small changes can be made so that you never adapt.

The same method cannot be applied to aerobic exercise. If you try harder, it will then become anaerobic so the question becomes why not utilise anaerobic type training to begin with and save loads of time?

And when you adapt to aerobic exercise you do not need to expend as many calories and so less fat is burned!

One form of anaerobic training that is cardio vascular is interval training which prevents and adaptation and will improve your fat loss results.

Interval training is simply performing a period of intense activity followed by a period of active rest meaning you can perform at a higher intensity using your muscle tissue for a longer period of time. The ratio of the work to rest periods and actual length of them can be changed to serve all manners of purposes and in doing so means there is no end in sight. As you progress, so will the challenge, there is no down side!

Here is a simple structure for performing interval training using running.

After a warm up of 5 minutes

Perform a run/sprint for 60 seconds as fast as you can. The level of exertion rated at at least a 9 out of 10. On completion, walk at a moderate speed or a perceived level of about 3/10 And repeat 5 more times

Understand that the speed and intensity will decline as you do repeat and as you get closer to the conclusion of each work interval.

if you then include a cool down to end the session, the total time from start to finish would be about 25 minutes.

Then as you get better reduce the active rest to 60 seconds also making a total of 15 minutes end to end.

Nothing to it and time to spare. Trust me; your improvements in burning fat tissue and creating a better body shape will explode as will your general fitness.