Health & Lifestyle Nutrition & Fitness

Weight loss itself is an ambiguous term, a more appropriate definition is weight training. This is not to say you want to build yourself up as a bodybuilder but rather you want to convert your fat into 'lean muscle tone'. That's the whole point of keeping fit and losing unwanted body fat. If you follow a well thought out exercise routine with an end objective in mind, coupled with a sensible diet, not only will you improve your general cardiovascular or strength fitness but you will keep those unwanted pounds off.

If you are over weight it just might be that your body composition has a slow metabolism. It is a proven scientific fact that lean people burn fat more efficiently than overweight people and this is true more so of those with lean muscle tone. Overweight people who go on crash diets do not fare so well and probably end up worse after a course of dieting as the body seeks to restore to it's old level. Diets alone and crash diets in themselves are the worst possible choice if you want to lose weight and keep it off permanently. The best way of achieving weight loss and keeping it off long term is to do it slowly over a period of time so that your body can adjust to the changes you are thrusting upon it by changing your eating habits and taking up regular cardiovascular exercise.

Simply choose a diet which is low in fat and cholesterol, moderate in sugar and salt and high in fibre but at the same time has a variety of everything thus making it a balanced diet.

It is very important to warm up before an exercise routine and to cool down after wards, this is so that you don't suffer from muscle soreness and tenderness after wards and besides it keeps the muscles and ligaments supple and with less chance of muscle tear and injury during a workout.

Remember muscles work better when they are warm.

If you follow this program after a few weeks you will notice considerable improvement and will want to either increase the intensity, duration or weight in your program as it gets easier. Increase the reps to 20 for each exercise if you want to carry on getting leaner.

Remember to burn fat and get lean defined muscle do more repetitions at a less weight, to build heavy muscle and gain strength do less reps at a heavier weight.