Dumbells - Yeah, I'm Talking To You

Today it is time to start thinking about exercise. (Did you hear that, I think it was a collective groan). For most of us the thought of exercise is not appealing – at all - in any form – what-so-ever. So, for me at least, it makes sense to understand why you are doing it and to understand what kinds are the most effective. I don't know about you, but if I'm going to exercise, I want to be sure I'm getting everything out of it that I can. I'd be less than pleased to find out I was having no, negative or very little impact on my weight loss because of how I was exercising.

As I mentioned yesterday, we are going to consider two basic types of exercise: aerobic and anaerobic. The difference between the two has to do with the amount of oxygen being delivered to your muscles (of particular concern are the enzymes we talked about yesterday). Just as their name's suggest, aerobic means enough air and anaerobic mean not enough.

Now, right off the top, thinking about yesterday's post, you may say, “OK, great, just tell me what exercises are anaerobic and I'll avoid them like the plague.” After all, who wants the pain that can sometimes go with it and, as we learned yesterday, who wants to be breaking down all those wonderful enzymes that eat carbohydrate, fat, and protein without also building the enzymes back up? Seems counter productive.

Well, don't jump so fast. While those somewhat negative qualities of anaerobic exercise are true, anaerobic exercise (weight lifting, sprinting) also has some big (and I mean BIG) up sides. For starters, it burns more calories than aerobic exercise (at least short-term). It also builds muscles and like I said yesterday, muscles are FANTASTIC fat burners. More muscles will also help you do aerobic exercise for longer periods of time thus enable you to burn more calories for even longer periods of time. It also gets the old metabolism cranking and it stays running at elevated levels for longer than anything else will do for you.

Aerobic exercise (running, swimming, biking, tennis) allows you to burn calories constantly over a longer period of time and if you are doing it at the right level your body will be breaking down fat, carbs and proteins and at the same time rebuilding enzymes (enzyme biosynthesis), so you can keep burning them away!

What does all this mean? Well, do them both. Early in my weight loss, I like to alternate the two. One day building muscles and getting that metabolism to ramp-up for longer periods. The next day I ride my bike or some other aerobic exercise (need to keep changing what you do, more on that in another post) in order to burn more calories over time (it also makes more red blood cells, which care more oxygen, which we know is used in burning carbs, fat and protein as well as helps in enzyme biosynthesis – so we can exercise longer over time and born more calories – sweet!).

Once I am in a little better shape, I like to combine the two. Sometimes this means speed walking with weights and every 10 minutes or so I do as many curls as I can. Or when riding my bike I start every mile with a sprint. You get the picture.

So, get out there and exercise – mix it up – and before you know it, the old metabolism will be working with you, not against you.

I'm taking a day off on the weigh in. But numbers will be posted tomorrow.

Keep at it and let me hear from you!