It is difficult to carry around excess body weight and this has a detrimental effect on your health as well. Some of the health issues you will face with obesity are diabetes, stroke, heart disease and even certain types of cancer.
You can manage your weight by managing your caloric intake. Then there is exercise where you can burn fat and build muscle. By combining these two methods, you will be able to achieve weight loss more effectively. Exercise can be seen as a preventative method for avoiding certain diseases. Heart attacks are quite common in people with excess body fat but exercising will lower your cholesterol and blood pressure reducing the risk of this happening. It will reduce the risks of certain cancers such as breast cancer and colon cancer. It can also reverse the effects of some diseases. In addition to the physical health benefits, you will also gain psychological benefits such as an improvement in your self-esteem and lower levels of stress and anxiety.
You have to understand how much exercise is needed to achieve all of these benefits. It is recommended to exercise at least three times a week ensuring each session is at least 20 minutes long. You can always make adjustments for this based on your routine and preferences. Increasing the length of time of your exercise session to over 20 minutes will actually gain you better results. For example, you can walk about a mile every day building up your endurance slowly. You can start with a smaller distance until your strength builds up. So as long as you don’t increase your caloric intake, the rate of exercise will work to burn more calories. You can improve your mindfulness by practising yoga. While this is not an intensive exercise, this will help you be more aware of the food you eat and the habits you practise. You can also adopt small changes to your lifestyle to incorporate more exercise. You have to think about the total exercise you do in a day instead of focusing on just one single session. For example, you can increase activity by walking or cycling to work, taking the stairs instead of the elevator in order to get some walking done.
If you have special health concerns such as a heart condition or any injury, you need to speak to your physician about your plan to lose weight with fitness. They can recommend what is best for you without having to strain your body overmuch. You can also choose some of the exercises you enjoy without the whole thing turning into a chore. This will not help you sustain your routine. Variety is needed to reap maximum benefits from exercise. So if you are primarily doing low intensity exercises such as walking, you will need to add some high intensity exercises. It will be easier if you can work with a trainer to get an idea of the intensity required for each workout. You can use different types of exercises for variety. Aerobic exercises such as walking, cycling, swimming etc. will get your blood pumping. You can also work out with weights focusing on major muscle groups such as the chest, calves, abs, back etc. for about three times a week.
