Lose 1 pound of Fat a week - Activity

May 19th, 2008 • Related • Filed Under
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Diet alone is only 10% effective and getting weight off and keeping weight off. By weight, I am referring to excess pounds of fat. A combination of diet and increased activity is 90% effective at accomplishing this goal.

There are 4 kinds of exercise activity: 1. Lifestyle activity like parking the car farther away, taking the steps, walking in place of driving. 2. Aerobic activity is that which gets your heart pumping faster and your breathing faster. Friday night bingo does not count. Fast walking, bicycling, swimming, running, and using cardio machines does count. 30 minutes or longer 3-5 times a week is best. 3. Strength building activity uses some form of resistance like weights, bands, body-weight to stress the muscles and make them stronger. 2-5 times a week for 30 minutes. 4. Balance and flexibility are #4 in this order but not importance. Long muscles are strong muscles. Balance is vitally important. Much more so as we age.

What type of exercise are you doing? Why are you doing it and for how long have you done it consistently? Begin to consider how you can incorporate 1000 calories of exercise into your life consistently. How can you decide how much you have to do to burn 1000 calories? The calories burned depends upon your weight, the type of exercise and how vigorous you are.

In Cool Tools on the MyHealth site, you can find a calculator of this type. Enter your weight, activity from the list and the amount of time to get your results. I like to walk and can walk faster than 15 min per mile. 30 minutes and my weight burns 148 calories. If I roller blade for 30 minutes I burn 260 calories. I have been thinking of training some for rollerblading and now am more convinced I should.

How about you, how are you going to burn an extra 1000 calories this week?

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There Are 5 Responses So Far. »

  1. Comment by Blaine Moore on 21 May 2008:

    I’ve been known to burn 3000-4000 calories in one workout before. Then again, I’ve also been known to go running up and down mountains non-stop for 4 to 5 hours at a time.

  2. Comment by Bruce Bair on 21 May 2008:

    Blaine,
    Wow! That is quite the workout! Do you have some advice on ways to get up to 1000 cal per week when you haven’t done much regularly. For the person who goes to the local fair and walks all day and is sore the next. Getting able to exercise and doing it regularly is not what the majority of our citizens do. I know you have a running blog. Any advice for those of us who have not accomplished as much physically as you have?

  3. Comment by Elliot Wilson on 21 May 2008:

    “Diet alone is only 10% effective…” I’m not sure what you mean by that statement… I would have said that diet only can be all you need to lose weight. If you want to speed up results though you’ll need to add exercise to the mix as well.

  4. Comment by Bruce Bair on 21 May 2008:

    Elliot,
    Research has shown that those who combine exercise and diet not only lose the weight, part of the goal, but are 90% effective at keeping it off. Those who lose weight by diet alone are 10% effective or successful at keeping it off.

    You are correct in saying that diet is all you need to take off weight. Exercise has an effect on the brain (it seems on the endocannaboid system of the brain) that affects satiety and cortisol production. Both are tied up with weight gain.

    I am not an expert in this area of physiology, but the combination is more effective than either alone.

  5. Comment by Elliot Wilson on 22 May 2008:

    Thanks for your reply Bruce, regardless, I would always advocate both a healthy diet AND regular exercise!

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