Which exercises are best for fat loss and why….

Today's Post:  Thursday, 11-14-2013

A.  Introduction:

1.  The best exercises are those that cause you to exert intense effort but very briefly and can be done between 4 and 30 minutes a day.  The periods of effort are between 15 seconds and one minute each.  And particularly when you are rushed or just beginning, you can do them in 4 to 6 minutes total per session.

They cause your body to build muscle and add bone and strengthen it.

They boost your burning of calories for up to several hours AFTER you do them.

They have large and even dramatic health benefits too.  They literally have improved or even reversed diseases.  These benefits begin to be substantial after the first few weeks! 

Best of, all social science studies have found that once people exercise regularly, they literally become enabled to make many other large scale health improvements that they could not have done before.  Quite literally, according to the studies, their self esteem and ability to do these things increases. 

Both of the major kinds are well worth doing and if you can do both your health and fat loss results will be better.

They each have slightly different benefits.  But having both sets of benefits is ideal.

The good news is that most people can do both.  And each CAN be done at home in as little as 4 to 6 minutes per session AND deliver significant fat loss

Almost everyone can manage to do those sessions by doing these short versions at home!

Best of all, you can benefit from as few as two sessions a week of one and one session a week of the other. 

And, by doing all or most of the sessions at home, you can literally do one or the other 5 to 7 days every week – particularly if you do them in the morning before the demands of the day side track you. 

Morning exercise at home is MUCH easier to start doing and continuing to do.  This makes sense but has also been confirmed in many studies.

2.  The question is which one you should do first and which one should you add later – OR should you start out doing both?

a)  One is slow motion strength training.  Surprisingly this is MUCH more difficult at each session than the kind most people do.  But it gets dramatically greater results once you learn to do it well and keep doing it!

Surprisingly, it is also much safer to do than the normal version of much faster up and down exercises.  (The key to that is that injuries happen when you jerk at the weight – and when you begin with a slow and steady effort that increases gradually until the weight moves, there is no such snap to cause those injuries.) 

Again a surprise, some people have known of this method for over 60 years now.  But it has only recently begun to be more known and used!

It was originally tried to see if it would help reverse early stage osteoporosis in people over 65.  And, it WAS successful at doing so!

A personal note:  I read that doing just a few repetitions – 3 to 7 -- with a weight I could easily lift over 20 times the old way but taking 15 seconds to lift the weight and 15 seconds to lower it got the best results.

So I took my routine with those exercises and did just that.  I was startled at how hard the repetitions were after the first 2. 

But after doing about 5 repetitions in each exercise, when I was done, I was even more surprised at how MUCH more exercised my muscles felt!  The improvement was dramatic!

It has been a lot of work to improve and become stronger.  But I HAVE become stronger and either do more than 5 repetitions or use more weight now.

The key is to make a very strong effort on the last few until you can’t do more.  The great news is that despite how frustrating that feels, it is exactly that and how hard you can work just before you stop that builds your muscles and strength!  When I was younger and ran into that thought I had failed.  But now I know that it is good news indeed.  And by simply continuing to make the effort over many sessions my power to do the exercises HAS improved.

You do have to rest those muscles from this kind of exercise at least one or two days until you do that exercise again.  And, it improves your results if you get enough quality health OK protein and sleep for your body to rebuild and add the extra capacity.

This kind of exercise reduces your fat two ways:

The extra calories burned by the exercise directly and those burned by your greater amount of muscle once you do add some, tend to remove fat.  And, the exercises make your insulin work enough better you have an average level of insulin that is less.  Since insulin tends to put calories in storage and lock them in place, turning down insulin means you add less fat and can remove fat more easily.

For more information see:  www.ThePerfectWorkout.com .  They do personal training by appointment in a facility that uses Nautilus machines.  They get great results and provide a lot of information for free.  But even one session a week for a month costs enough to make a car payment.

(We are working on a how to set of such exercises you can do at home and how to do them well. It will adapt the exercises I have been doing myself.

 That will be text at first. Then it will have how to make progress and overcome problems.  Then we will do a video and text version.  The earlier versions will be at no charge and we will charge for the video version.)

The second benefit of this superslow strength training takes longer but is extremely important and prevents you from ADDING FAT every year as you would otherwise do.

People who don’t do either this kind of exercise or the one we will cover next LOSE 10% of their muscle every 10 years.  Then, when they eat what they are used to more and more of the calories that were once used by their muscles are added to their fat instead!  After 20 or 30 years you may well become as many as that many pounds fatter – or more.  And this happens eating the same foods in the same amount you are used to.  The change is so slow you hardly notice it but the effect is relentless and eventually becomes very large!

And this kind of strength training prevents that best.

b)  The other has many names: burst cardio, HIIT (High intensity training); interval cardio; and variable cardio.

You do an exercise you can do and keep your movements under control and keep your balance and ramp up smoothly but quickly from moderate speed to as fast as you can go for just 14 to 60 seconds.  Then you rest completely or slow down until you catch your breath and are mostly recovered before you do it again.  (Interval cardio has rests and Variable cardio has slowdowns.)

At first you want to focus most on doing the movement under control and stopping a bit earlier than you feel you have to.  Then after a few sessions you gradually build up to faster speeds and a bit longer efforts and more sets or you can move faster or have your rest or slowdowns become shorter.

The trick is to do the sessions regularly every week and keep pushing for progress.  But take it very easy for the first month or so.  You actually do less than you feel able to and increase slowly.  But that makes it much safer to do!

(Shoveling snow or running a race longer than a mile combines no breaks with very hard effort over long enough time that it causes heart damage and can often trigger heart attacks. 

If you do such things, you need to force yourself to take strategic breaks or slowdowns.  Once you are fit these can be less.  But not doing this can permanently harm your heart or kill you and has done so we now know.)

There are two versions of this kind of exercise too.

One is to do one exercise and simply improve how well you do it.

I do that with my jump rope sessions and my Nordic Track sessions.

The other is to do a sequence or routine using several kinds of body weight exercises some of which can have a bit of a strength component.

You do a few seconds of one and then another and then another.  Then you rest briefly and do a few more of these sets.

Those sessions according to Craig Ballentine and the research he has found remove fat best AND remove belly fat best!

In fact even 4 minute routines cause fat loss and have reversed insulin resistance in some studies.

Craig’s specialty is making videos of these routines that take between 4 and 19 minutes to do AND making new videos for people who want to keep trying new things.

For more information see:  http://www.homeworkoutrevolution.com .

He likes to sell packages of videos so people can pick and choose and change up when they need or want to.  But his research and information is available for free and it’s of first rate quality! He is very enthusiastic too which is helpful.

3.  There is a third kind of exercise that can and does help with hunger free fat loss. 

You do wind up eating enough more to cover the calories you burn.  But as long as you don’t eat more than that, you can eat more without gaining fat or eat a bit less occasionally and lose fat.  That way you can eat more and be less hungry and still be fit and trim.  That can REALLY help. 

And the health benefits if you do enough are high as well.  Even an hour or so a week total can give you 40% of the health benefits of doing it 3 hours a day, 7 days a week!

But it is NOT necessary for fat loss and few people have time to fit much of it into their day. It’s one to three hours a day of moderate exercise or activity such as walking or gardening and the like.  Even an hour or so of this a week can help but it does take more time than most people have and is far harder to do consistently than the first two more effective  kinds of exercise.

(For people who work at desks for most hours of every weekday, they need a way to do this at their desks that can fit their existing desk and not have it distract from their work.  That solution exists technically now.  But it has not yet been turned into a product you can buy. We hope to be in a position to have it made.  If we succeed, it will be surprisingly affordable.)

4.  Which one should you do first of the two most effective kinds or do more of if you do both?

a)  Surprisingly for people with a lot of fat to lose, the strength training is far easier and safer to do.

You do have to do specially modified versions of bodyweight exercises to make them easy enough to do at first.

BUT since your muscles and bones have had to deal with the extra weight, such people often start out much stronger than the realize for exercises that use weights!

People who want to be stronger also should start the slow motion strength training first.  This tends to be either men or older people who want to stay strong enough to not need a walker or to have people lift things for them and be able to live independently – or women who want to prevent or begin to reverse osteoporosis.

b)  The second kind, the various versions of short duration, high intensity cardio is best for people who are young and light enough to do them safely &/or who want to be able lose fat and belly fat quickly.

The good news is that even for people with more fat to lose, you CAN adapt the kind where you use walking and then fast walking as you become more able.

One woman with about 100 pounds to lose -- which she lost – literally started with taking one step every other second for 45 seconds as her entire session and then gradually became able to do more at first.  Then, as she lost fat from her food and drink upgrades, she was able to make faster and faster progress.

You can literally go from taking ONE step while holding on to a support and resting until you feel recovered and then taking a second step for your entire session and make progress from there if you have to!

3.  There is a third kind of exercise that can and does help with hunger free fat loss.  But it is NOT necessary for fat loss and few people have time to fit much of it into their day.

(For people who work at desks for most hours of every weekday, they need a way to do this at their desks that can fit their existing desk and not have it distract from their work.  That solution exists technically now.  But it has not yet been turned into a product you can buy. We hope to be in a position to have it made.  If we succeed, it will be surprisingly affordable.)