If you get an overweight person to do the right exercise at the right time, they can increase their caloric intake way above the amount used by the exercise and still lose a lot of fat..The key is to do the right exercise. The usual advice in the weight loss industry is aerobics and more aerobics, and the more intense the better..wrong! Aerobic exercises that raise your heart rate above about 120 beats a minute, including running, rowing, swimming, cycling, and many of the fancy aerobics classes in health clubs, all strip off muscle almost as much as they strip off fat. What muscle loss does is; it reduces your ability to burn fat, and sets you up to become fatter.
Remember, muscle is the engine in which body fat is burned. You should do everything you can to maintain it lifelong. Mild aerobics such as; walking is good exercise for many health reasons. It also burns some fat and will not burn muscle. But far and away the best exercise for fat control, is wide variety, high repetition resistance training, using weights or machines. By exercising muscles all over, your body it burns more fat. Resistance exercise yields a further fat-loss bonus. It not only maintains muscle mass, it increases, thereby providing more muscle cells in which fat will be burned. Its a real health bargain. * DO HIGH-REPETITION WIDE VARIETY RESISTANCE EXERCISE*
In many, gyms I see women especially doing high repetitions with weights so low they spend the whole workout chatting while exercising. That's pretend exercising. It does nothing at all. The basic rules of muscle work is simple. If you use heavy resistance, so that you can complete only 3-6 reps of an exercise, and you do 5-6 sets, you build maximum strength but you dont lose much fat. If you set the weight so that you can just complete 8-12 reps, and you do 3-4 sets you build muscle well and burn medium amounts of fat. If you set the weight so you run out of steam in 20-25 reps, and you do only one set, you build a little muscle and burn a lot of fat. *FOR MAXIMUM FAT-LOSS DO ONE SET OF EACH EXERCISE WITH A WEIGHT THAT EXHAUSTS YOU IN 20-25 REPS*
You also need to know, the right time to exercise. Despite all those calories charts showing that running burns more calories than walking, and cross-country skiing burns most calories of all, fat loss has little to do with calories used during the exercise session. Numerous recent studies show that the right exercise raises your metabolic rate not only while you are doing it, but for up to 18 hours afterwards. If you exercise in the evening and got to bed, you lose most of the fat-loss effect, because sleep causes your metabolic rate to drop like a stone. So you have to exercise in the mornings, and the earlier the better. *EXERCISE IN THE MORNINGS*
Last but not least, the number of exercise sessions per week is also crucial. Studies show that folk who exercise five times weekly lost three times as much fat as those who exercise only twice or three times weekly, even if they exercise longer. Those who exercised only once per week lost no fat at all. In order to keep the metabolic rate churning, frequent exercise is key. *EXERCISE FIVE MORNINGS WEEKLY FOR A MINIMUM OF 30 MINUTES*