In my last article, Avoid any excuse to Get Fit, I talked about easy ways to train at home without the use of any equipment. I explained why it is important for an overweight person who wants to lose weight successfully through exercise to go slowly so as not to over exert and in this article I want to discuss why cardiovascular exercise is important with weight loss.
Doing either weight training or cardiovascular training alone will not build a stronger, lean body. Cardio and weight training must be performed together or on alternate days to achieve long-lasting results.
Weight Training
Working with machine weights, body weight training, or using free weights will build muscle mass but weight training alone is not enough to burn off fat. Weight training should be any overweight person’s best friend. Many people who wish to lose weight go overboard on their calorie counting and may not take in sufficient food so the body’s metabolism starts to slow down. This is catastrophic. Using weight training, the body can be tricked because; when lean muscle tissue is added to the body it has no option but to burn more calories at rest. Expect to burn around an extra 50 calories per day for each pound of lean muscle tissue added to the body. This may not seem a lot but over a year, it equates to over five pounds in weight loss. This is real fat loss not water. Five pounds of sugar is equivalent to the fat lost.
Cardiovascular Training
Weight training is so important for anyone who wishes to lose weight but how do you burn off the excess fat to reveal the new lean muscle tissue? By getting the heart pumping and performing cardiovascular training, such as walking, running, skipping, cycling, swimming, tennis, badminton etc. When the heart is forced to pump through cardio, huge amounts of calories are burnt. Another thing to remember with weight loss is that it does not happen overnight. In a month, there will be a significant change if both weight training and cardio exercise effectively worked at. Clothes may feel looser, the muscle tone may start to show, and you will be more than likely craving healthier foods and feel healthier in yourself.
Weight Training and Cardio Together
This is why it is important to know that no matter how much cardio exercise you do, if you do not have lean muscle tissue to work with, the metabolism will start to slow. Cardio exercise will more than likely burn calories for a couple of hours afterward but weight training goes one step further and burns fat for up to forty-eight hours. An ideal fat burning workout would include a little weight training such as press-ups, sit-ups, burpees, jumping jacks, squat thrusts etc, and cardio exercise like walking or power walking (which burns more calories per mile than jogging). The bigger the muscles are used with cardio exercise, the bigger the calorie burn, so the legs worked during weight training and cardio will help anyone to lose weight and tone up. Spinning, jogging, and walking are perfect examples of effective cardio exercises that will help to shed fat.