Exercise 101: The Basics of Exercise For Healthy Weight Loss

When it comes to healthy weight loss, diet is king. But that doesn't mean that exercise is not important. Exercise will cause your body to properly utilize the energy you give it and will burn the excess fat stores that your body currently hold. That is, it will do this if you exercise the right way.

Exercise will also help you build small amounts of lean muscle mass. This muscle will help increase your metabolic rate to help you burn more calories throughout the day.

Metabolism is the main focus of our healthy weight loss plan exercise program. We want to get you burning more calories over a 24-hour period, not just during the 30-60 minutes of exercise. This will not only help you lose weight in a healthy manner, it will help you maintain your weight loss once your reach your goals.

Here are some of the basics of exercising for healthy weight loss:

Our focus is on metabolism and the best way to target metabolism is through resistance training.  Get off the treadmill and pick up some dumbbells.  Don't have dumbbells?  Use your bodyweight.  Whatever your modality, resistance training at a high intensity will give you a nice metabolic boost and help you build muscle. 

Circuit workouts are a great way to get better use of your exercise time.  Keep your body moving and your blood pumping by moving quickly from one exercise to the next with limited rest.  Do total body circuits so you can move from working one muscle group to another, allowing one to rest while you work the other.

Don't just do the easy stuff that you see everyone else doing like arm curls and crunches.  Do the big stuff that is going to actually place a significant demand on your body for energy.  Do squats, lunges, deadlifts, pushups, chest presses, pull-ups, and rows.  These are big movement exercises that work big muscle groups.  They will place a great demand on your body and kick your metabolic rate up a notch.

Interval training involves working extremely hard for a short period of time and then actively resting for a short period before working hard again.  This will ensure an intense workout that will give you a metabolic boost without sacrificing the precious muscle that you worked so hard for through resistance training.

Most people make cardio a priority when trying to lose weight. And that's fine if you want some quick results that don't last. Traditional cardio, like running and ellipticalling (made-up word), burns a ton of calories because you can keep it going for a long time. Unfortunately, you may also burn some muscle tissue and your body will become efficient at using energy for this type of exercise rather quickly. In addition, you won't get the same metabolic boost as through resistance or interval training. Thus, I suggest using cardio only as a means to help recover from high intensity work and to burn a few extra calories if you have some extra time.


Remember, our focus is on the big picture. We are not just focused on your workout session. We want you to have some sustainable weight loss that builds on itself until your reach your ideal healthy body.

And that is precisely what I will show you how to do over the course of the next several articles.