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This is a follow-up to my diet advice page since next to eating healthy, exercising is a must if you want to be and stay healthy.
Exercising not only helps you to make it easier to keep a healthy weight, it also strengthens your body.
On this page I will teach you some of the basics of how much you should exercise and how many calories every exercise averagely burns.

Why you should combine healthy eating with exercising.

On my Diet Advice page I have showed you how to eat healthy to get and/or maintain a healthy weight but I’m afraid that just eating healthier isn’t the only thing you should do.
Exercising or at least increasing your activities is necessary especially when you consider that if you don’t exercise and lose weight by decreasing your calorie intake that your body will first use your muscles as fuel, since it’s easier to burn, and only then starts using your fat. This is also one of the main reasons why people “yo-yo”.

Here is how it goes : you restrict your calorie intake by eating healthier and lose the fat you want to lose. Then you go back to eating the normal amount of calories your body uses and what happens? You gain weight and normally even more then you just lost.

Next to losing fat, you have also lost a lot of your muscles and it’s the muscles that burn most of the calories you consume.

So now see what happens if you restrict your calorie intake and exercise : you lose fat, the exercising compensates for the muscle loss due to dieting and you may even end up more muscles.
More muscles mean that it’s easier to go back to increasing your calorie intake and you wont gain weight. It is of course very important to stay active for the rest of your life because if you lose those muscles and keep on eating the way you were when you were exercising, you will gain weight again.

Just increasing your activities and not eating healthier doesn’t work that well by itself either. You may lose weight but what does that help if you die of a heart attack at 50 due to all the fat foods you’re still eating?

Losing weights basically just all comes down to combining better eating habits, exercising and increasing your activities.

Increasing your activities : think about mowing the lawn, playing with the kids or the dog, taking the bicycle to work or even taking the stairs instead of the elevator. Basically everything you do will help, especially everything you do extra. Think about walking to the kitchen for every plate you want to put down on the table instead of taking all of them with you at once. It may sound silly but it does help, even if it’s just a little bit. And doing these kind of things in combination with some real exercising for at least half an hour a day is the best thing to do.

If you’re not up to that level yet then it’s important that you slowly to build it up. More and more research shows that it’s healthy and that it will keep you going for a lot longer when you become older. So start off with some easy things like walking around the block during your lunch breaks, taking the stairs, parking the car further away so you force yourself to walk further and even shopping will help. Just make sure that you don’t give in to all the foods they sell and if its lunchtime take a healthy sandwich (without mayonnaise or other fattening sauces) instead of a greasy hamburger and take a glass of low-fat milk, water or diet soda instead of that 200+ calorie regular soda.

All these small things will count up to a lot of you them regularly.

To make it easier, the government has put the activity pyramid together.
Click here for the activity pyramid.

If you follow the activity pyramid then you’ll know that you’re doing the right thing.

The picture can be found at AllPosters.com

Different types of exercise will have different results.

-Aerobic exercises will improve your endurance
-Resistance training will make your muscles stronger
-Stretching will make you more flexible

The main benefits of exercising regularly are :

-Reduced chance of cardiovascular disease because it strengthens your heart. (aerobic).
-Reduced chance of getting diabetes type 2 and treat it if you already have it. This is because you’ll lose weight and your body will become more sensitive to insulin again. (aerobic and strength)
-Reduced risk of obesity because there is less chance that you will gain weight. (aerobic and strength).
-Strengthens and makes the bones denser. (strength)
-Reduces arthritis because strength and flexibility increase will make the joints move easier. (strength and stretching)
-It may reduce the risk on certain cancers (research is still being done on it). (aerobic)
-It makes you feel better by increasing your energy level and self-esteem. (aerobic and strength)
-You burn more calories no matter what you do because muscles are big calorie burners and the more muscles you have, the more you will burn. Even while you’re not doing anything. (aerobic and strength)
-You sleep better because you have been more active. (aerobic and strength)

The picture can be found at AllPosters.com

So how many calories will I burn?

The following list shows how many calories you’ll averagely burn when you do the activity for an hour.

For example a woman weighs 137 pounds and she spends an hour doing some general aerobics so that is 2.72 x 137= 372.6 calories burnt.

If she only did it for 30 minutes then she burnt half of it (186 calories burnt) and if she only did it for 10 minutes then she only burned 1/6th of it (62 calories burnt).

Remember that it is impossible to make a accurate list for every person but it gives you a good estimate.

Note : Weight in pounds = weight in kilograms x 2.2.

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