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Exercise for Weight Loss

Welcome the final article in the Top 100 Weight Loss Tips series that I have been publishing here on this website over a period of several months now.

This post, in what has been a backwards counting series is article number 1. Why did I go backwards, from 100 to 1 and not the other way around? Well, this being a blog, articles are generally read from the newest to the oldest and if I'd numbered the articles the other way around, this would have been the 100th article published but the first one read! So now you know why!

So what is the ultimate post in this premium weight loss series going to cover? I decided to make the last two articles compliment each other, so with the previous post looking at the role diet plays in losing weight, this one looks at the role exercise plays.

The Importance of Exercise

While your diet has to be both nutritious, wholesome and filling while simultaneously restricting your calorie intake on a daily bases, your body needs to burn those calories as efficiently as it can for weight loss to come about. Sure, you can figure out how to lose weight fast by starving yourself.

However, what happens is that your body simply goes into a physiological state known as starvation mode. In this mode, all non-essential functions are reduced and all nutrients and energy are directed to the parts that are essential to preserve life. These include auto-muscle responses like heartbeat, lung function, digestion and excretion, brain function etc.

When all your body's reserves of fat are used up, muscle tissue begins to reduce and your weight will drop dramatically. This is NOT a desirable state to get into as this is a serious danger to your life. You could die from malnutrition!

There is a much better, healthier way to lose weight and tone up your body so that you can fit into that smaller dress size.

That way is to combine a healthy diet with exercise. Daily light exercise is perfect to begin with and can comprise long walks in the fresh air, swimming or other light, enjoyable activity that gets you out of the house and moving around.

As you gain fitness this way, you can move up to more strenuous exercises like working out to a system such as the P90X extreme home fitness program, as your body becomes accustomed to working more than it used to.

The whole idea of exercise to lose weight is such an important factor in the process that it beggars belief that so many people who are trying to lose weight simply don't want to do any at all. yet the all want to know how to lose weight fast! That's crazy because by omitting exercise from your weight loss plan, you are only doing half the job and not giving yourself the best chance of success not just in the short term but long term too.

Exercise works to bring about a reduction on your weight and an improvement in your body shape, which is, after all the reason you're doing this! Here's how it works:

When you exercise, you are forcing certain muscle groups in your body to work. When muscles work, they need a supply of energy which they get from sugars in your bloodstream.

As the muscles work, they use up the supply of sugars in the blood thereby causing the body to replenish the supply of sugar from its store of fats. This reduces your "fat weight" while providing the muscles with the energy they need to work.

Burn Calories in Your Sleep

When you sleep, the muscles that were working hard during the day now start to repair themselves and build more muscle tissue in readiness for the next session of work, or exercise. While this process is going on, those muscles are still using more of your body's store of energy, so in effect you are burning calories in your sleep - far more than you would normally burn if you had done no exercise.

Those muscles tone up your body too, reducing the flabbiness and allowing you to fit into those smaller size clothes. They also gain mass. This is a point that surprises many people who are trying to lose weight, because muscle weighs more than fat by volume you may not actually see much difference on the scales at least not to begin with, although you will see the difference in the mirror. Which is, after all where you want to see the difference!

More Muscle for Less Weight

As time progresses and you continue exercising daily if possible, your weight will reduce as more fat gets used up than muscle mass gets created. This happens as long as you exercise in a way designed to burn fat and not to build excessive mass, as bodybuilders do.

Bodybuilding actually aims for weight gain and this is achieved by doing low repetition, heavy resistance exercises combined with a high protein diet. That's how bodybuilders achieve the huge, muscle bound bodies they are aiming for.

If you are not aiming to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger in his heyday, then your exercises should comprise many repetitions with low resistance so that the muscle work hard and use lots of energy but do not build excessive additional muscle tissue. This way you end up with a well toned, lithe and great looking body with lots of energy and plenty of strength and stamina. Your clothes will fit well and you will be the envy of all the other dieters who are not exercising!

Here's to your weight loss and great looking new body success!

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Posted on Wed, 16 Dec 2009 in Top 100 Weight Loss Tips | 6 Comments