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Exercise
Being physically active is like attaching a charger to your battery while giving your body a complete tune-up at the same time. It can change you on the inside and the outside and totally energize you.
Why do we need to exercise to lose weight? If you eat healthy foods and watch your portions, there’s no doubt that you will lose a certain amount of weight. But at some point, your body will grow accustomed to your healthy eating style and fight to hold on to the excess weight, stopping the weight loss you’ve been enjoying dead in its tracks. Now you understand why exercise is so critical. Add a regular schedule of physical activity to your healthy eating program and watch the fat and pounds burn away.
Whatever you do, don’t think of exercise as a chore. A negative perception of exercise stops too many people from participating in something that could help them lose weight and vastly improve their overall health. Exercise will definitely help you reach your weight-loss goals faster and maintain your success, but it can also provide other great benefits.
- Prevent heart disease and stroke
- Reduce your risk of diabetes
- Add years to your life
- Improve recovery after hospitalization
- Reduce your risk of the bone-thinning disease osteoporosis
- Fight depression
- Lower the risk of cancers of the colon, prostate, and uterus
Bottom line—regular exercise is one of the best things you can do not only to lose weight, but to live a longer and healthier life. Use the box below to find some cardiovascular exercises that you may want to try.
| Physical Activity |
Calories Burned/Hr |
 |
| Walking (leisure) |
200 |
| Dancing |
420 |
| Bicycle riding (moderate) |
450 |
| Power walking (3 mph) |
450 |
| Aerobics |
450 |
| Jogging (5 mph) |
500 |
| Swimming |
500 |
| Basketball |
700 |
| Elliptical Machine |
700 |
| Jumping Rope (70 jumps/min) |
700 |
| Stair climbing (stadiums) |
900 |
The Exercise Plan:
- Do some form of cardiovascular activity for at least for 35 minutes, 3 days a week. If this is too much for you at the beginning, start slower and increase to this level of activity as your body becomes acclimated. If you’re more advanced, or as you get used to the increased level of activity, try to raise this to 5 days a week for 40 minutes each day. The important thing is to start and stick with it!
- Switch up your activities. If you do walking one day, then try bicycle riding the next time you exercise. The more you change your exercise, the more you’ll get out of it.
- If possible, try to do as many of your exercises in the morning as you can. Then, if you have time, do it again in the evening—a second session to help burn even more calories (though not too close to bedtime, or all that excitement could keep you up).
- Two days a week for 35 minutes, you should either do some resistance exercise in the form of resistance bands, lift light free weights, or use resistance machines. Make sure you are properly instructed in these methods before trying them.
- Every three weeks try to increase your program by 10 percent. So if you’re walking 1 mile, then start walking 1.1 miles. If you’re riding the bike for 30 minutes a session, try 33 minutes. The idea is to gradually increase the length of your exercise sessions and their intensity.
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