With so many weight loss and weight management plans on the market why are so many people struggling to lose weight?  Because we cannot just go on a diet, lose weight, and expect to keep it off.  We need to find a way to integrate weight loss, fat loss, building muscle and weight management into our everyday life. We need a healthy plan.

At its most basic, losing weight is about burning more calories than you eat. Sounds simple right? If it were that simple, we wouldn’t be overweight. The real secret to weight loss is to make small, lasting changes. The key is to forget about instant results and settle in for the long run.

To lose one pound of fat, you must burn approximately 3500 calories over and above what you already burn day to day. That’s a lot of calories, and you can’t burn 3500 calories in one day. But if you take it step by step, you can do it.

Obviously, exercise is a key component in any weight loss program. The best way to lose weight is with a combination of cardio, strength training and a healthy diet. But how do you pick an exercise that will maximize calorie burn? The best cardio exercise for weight loss is one that you will do regularly.

• Impact cardio exercise like walking, will boost your heart rate quicker than no-impact exercises like swimming or cycling.
• High impact cardio exercise like running or jumping, burns more calories than lower impact cardio.
• Whole body cardio exercise, exercises that involve the upper and lower body, like step, group kick and group groove make it easy to get the heart rate up, and keep it up. This is a great way to burn excess calories.

 Contact Answer is Fitness in your area for more information on a weight loss program.

Most People associate weight loss with cardio work outs and weight lifting with increasing muscles. Unfortunately, this causes people to not reach their potential results when they don’t understand how weight lifting relates to weight loss.

Weight lifting can be a very effective method for losing weight, when you do it the right way. Weight lifting increases your metabolic rate in the short and long term. Immediately after a weight-lifting session your metabolic rate will increase. But weight lifting also helps you maintain lean muscle mass, which creates a permanent increase in your metabolism. Muscle burns more calories at rest than fat.

With cardio training, your metabolic rate will increase, but only for a short time during and after your workout.

Now, while cardio will definitely help you lose weight, weight lifting will help you lose body fat, so you are changing your body composition. When you lose weight with cardio, you don’t look different, just smaller, because you may have lost 10 or 20 pounds. This is because you still have the same proportion of muscle mass to body fat.

Through weight training the way you look will change, because you will have in a sense replaced fat with muscle. This makes you look healthy and fit. This is when people will say to you, “you look great, have you lost weight?”

Weight training for weight loss is a great alternative to cardio and will give you better, more visible results.

Choose weight lifting as an avenue for weight loss, and get help in designing a routine that is right for you from the personal trainers at Answer is Fitness.