Losing weight is one of the hardest parts of building a more confident you. It requires a lot of discipline, determination, and planning. Exercising correctly plays an important role in losing weight, but the biggest factor will be your diet. Always remember the number on the scale does not tell the whole story! These three tips will cover some methods on how to exercise in order to lose weight, as well as some diet tips. Disclaimer: I am not a certified nutritionist, any tips regarding diet are based off facts and numbers. I am not suggesting any particular product or meal plan.
1. Using Cardio Correctly
a. Most people think the best way to lose weight is to train cardio super hard and try to go as fast or as far as possible. Ask yourself this question; what is cardio short for? Cardiovascular right? Cardiovascular refers to your heart. The more intense the cardio workout becomes; it involves more strengthening of your cardiovascular system and less fat burning. Also, as the cardio workout gets harder you sweat more, sweat is water, after a cardio workout you drink water! If sweat is water all you're doing is losing water weight and then putting it back into your body. The number on the scale will go up and down causing this to be an ineffective way to lose weight.
b. Incorporating cardio into your workout is still a great way to lose weight and here’s how. Disclaimer: this formula is based on an average, we all have different hearts, keep that in mind when using this. Take 220 and subtract your age, this is your maximum heart rate. There is a cardio zone and a fat burning zone. If you want to increase your cardio strength take your maximum heart rate and multiply it by anywhere above 75%. When utilizing cardio to lose weight you always want to be in the fat burning zone which is 65-70% of your maximum heart rate. This formula is called the Karvonen Formula.
c. Example for a 25-year-old: 220-25= 195 maximum heart rate. 195x70% (.7) =136.5bpm for the fat burning zone.
2. Lifting Weights
a. Lifting weights will not make you bulky unless you specifically train for that and eat towards that goal! I know the notion is that “if I lift weights, I am going to get bulky”. That is simply not true and becoming bulky takes years! Diet aside, lifting weights is one of the most important things to incorporate to your workout routine to lose weight. When you partake in weighted exercise, your muscles don’t recover instantly, recovery takes time. As your muscles recover you are also burning calories, so you are now burning calories for hours after you are done. Cardio does not give you the same caloric burning effect that weightlifting does because your muscles are not being strained compared to weightlifting.
3. Diet: a basic guide to start on the right track
a. Take extremely specific notes on what you eat for four or five days.
i. Before starting a diet, you want to see what you are currently eating and base off of that. Be specific!! Journal everything you eat and also when you eat meals as well. You can do it by hand on excel or you can use one of the thousand calorie counting tools you can find on the internet. For these first few initial days eat normal and then gauge what needs to be worked on. This will give a great starting point to begin your journey!
b. Adjust your diet
i. Do some homework on yourself. Journal how much you way, what your body fat % is, and it is always good to know what your BMR is. BMR is short for Basal Metabolic Rate and in short it is the number of calories your body needs daily just to be at rest.
ii. Look at your four- or five-day trial period. Figure out when your biggest meal of the day is and if it happens to be at dinner time, I would consider switching your biggest meal to breakfast or lunch. This will ensure that your body is able to burn off those calories throughout the day, compared to at night where you will not burn nearly as much while watching tv or relaxing after work.
iii. Pick foods that you like! Dieting is hard and can be extremely challenging, but if you are able to compile a list of foods you like and pick out healthy choices it makes dieting a little bit easier.
c. Stay consistent
i. Just remember if it was easy everyone would be doing it! It may take some time to see results, but stay consistent, stay educated, and you will stay on track to reach all of your goals!
Philip Tomeo
Comments