Optimize Weight Loss and Improve your Health

  In a perfect world, everyone would have healthy, fit attractive bodies and be able to eat anything they wanted without the concern of gaining weight.

  What would you do if I said that your world could be perfect? And it doesn’t have to cost anything but a little time and a little bit of sweat!

  We all know that cardiovascular exercise is a workout for your heart and lungs but that it also burns calories - nothing surprising there.

  Research has proven that even as little as fifteen minutes a day of moderate cardio exercise can burn fat and pump up your metabolism so that you continue to burn extra calories for hours?

  Although twenty to thirty minutes a day is preferred, it does not always have to happen in one chunk. If you need to break it up into, say, three ten-minute blocks of time, that it is nearly as effective at burning calories as if you were to do it all at once.

  Old school thinking was that you had to workout for a minimum of 20 minutes before your body even began to burn stored calories

for energy and in some ways that is still true. However, what was not taken into consideration was the lasting effect on your metabolism from any length of cardiovascular exercise.

  Depending on the intensity and duration of the workout, your metabolism can stay high for several hours afterwards – doesn’t that make it seem a lot more appealing?

  Moreover, a cardio workout does not have to be anything extreme – simply taking the dog for a walk counts towards your cardio output for the day. What about carrying a weeks worth of groceries up the three flights of stairs to your apartment? Now that’s a workout!

  Raking leaves, mowing the lawn, tilling the garden in spring is all cardio exercise and realistically it all counts towards your daily total of calories burned.

  Now that is not to say that exercises such as jogging, cycling, using a treadmill or elliptical trainer at the gym are not more intense, work your cardiovascular system more efficiently and burn more calories. I am just saying that for those days were you are too busy to take a half hour walk are not a complete write off for burning calories.

  As you continue to exercise and change your eating plan to incorporate healthy, nutritious lower calorie foods, any excess weight you are carrying will miraculously begin to fall off revealing the fit you underneath. And as your fitness level continues to improve and you reach your ideal weight, you will be able to periodically indulge your sweet tooth, salt cravings or chocolate lovers fantasies 100% guilt-free.

  A woman I know runs 10 miles a day - every day - and teaches at least seven aerobics classes a week. She is in her mid-fifties and in phenomenal condition. But do you know why she exercise so much? You will never guess so I had better tell you…

  She exercises two to three hours a day so that she can eat ‘Milk Duds’ while watching ‘Oprah’. How this particular obsession came to be I don’t know and in truth, I probably don’t want to know but the fact is, as long as your calories in match your calories out, you too can eat ‘Milk Duds’ while watching your favourite show!

  However, you might want to pick a half hour sitcom – not as many ‘Milk Duds’ means a lot less cardiovascular exercise needed to burn off the calories and most of us do not have the time that is needed to keep the ‘Duds’ weight under control.

  The important thing with any cardio exercise is to work at the right intensity and for most of us that is at the optimal level for burning calories. The tested optimal conditions are between 60 to 80% of our theoretical maximum heart rate. To determine your optimal heart rate, take 220 minus your age. To be at an optimal fat burning level you would exercise at an intensity that maintains your heart rate between 111 and 148 beats per minute.

  My favourite trick to avoid having to take your heart rate is the ‘talk test’. If you can maintain a conversation, you are exercising at the perfect fat-burning intensity for your fitness level. Eventually yes, you will have to learn how to take your heart rate but for now, the ‘talk test’ is more then adequate.

  The ‘five minute rule’ is another of my favourite tricks and I still use it myself when the weather is particularly nasty and it is my run day. The ‘five minute’ rule is just that – tell yourself that you have to, say, go for a walk but you only have to go for five minutes. Guaranteed when you get out there and get the blood flowing through your veins and the fresh air in your lungs, that five minutes will turn into ten then fifteen and before you know it, you have walked for half an hour and you feel marvellous!

  The whole point is to just get off your rump and get out there doing something – anything! Once you start, the momentum will build and have a mind of its own!


About the author:

Jake Berlin is the creator of "The Killer Ab Workout System" and knows exactly what it takes to get your abs in shape... even if you've been out of shape for months.

For more information on Jake and how he can help you increase your core strength and dramatically improve your athletic performance, visit:

http://www.killer-ab-workout.com