This is a guest post by Shannon Wills.
It’s a demon that all of us have to deal with, especially as we get older. Even though we eat healthy food and exercise on a regular basis, there are some parts of our body that cling on to fat and refuse to be separated from it no matter what we do. And in what can only be called an irony, stubborn fat is most often found where it looks the worst – under your arms, around your waist, in the area above your thighs and below your waist, and around your abdomen. For women, it’s the pear shape with extra flab that has them looking bad while men have to contend with looking like apples that are likely to topple over because of the extra fittings around their abdomen.
Spot reduction never works, so no amount of abdominal crunches and twists are going to be enough to help you get rid of that unseemly flab. But it is possible to get rid of it, so if you’re looking to achieve a toned body and lose stubborn pockets of fat, you must:
· Change your workout: If you find that you haven’t been able to lose weight even though you’ve been working out regularly, you probably need to change your workout routine. If you do the same thing every day for months together, your body begins to get used to the exercise and it hits a weight loss plateau. What you must do then is to is to trick your body into losing more weight by mixing it up and changing your workout so that it is confused into losing weight. So if you’re into jogging, start playing a sport or get into weight training, and vice versa and see difference it makes.
· Mix strength training with cardio: The best and most efficient way to lose weight is to build your muscle mass and tone your body with strength training and burn calories with cardio workouts. You could either combine both in a single 60 minute workout or do one each on alternate days. This combination of cardio and working with weights also keeps your body from adapting to a fixed routine and you avoid hitting weight loss plateaus.
· Take up interval training: Most people are not aware that interval training is probably the fastest way to lose stubborn fat. It burns the most calories in the shortest period of time, so if you know how to do it correctly, you could lose a whole lot of weight in no time at all. Interval training consists of alternating short, high intensity bursts of exercise for 30 to 90 seconds with brief recovery periods where you give yourself time to catch your breath. Exercising for just 20 minutes a day will do when you take to this form of working out.
· Persist with your plan: And finally, to achieve weight loss, you must be patient and persist with your plan instead of giving up because it is taking way too long. Plod away at your routine, mix it up, continue to find ways to motivate yourself, and you’re sure to be rewarded with a great body and good health.
By-line:
This post is contributed by Shannon Wills, who writes on the topic of x ray technician schools . She welcomes you comments at her email id: shannon1wills@radiffmail.com
Good advice, especially getting strength training in. I see too many people doing too much cardio. I sit in my office watching the same people run by every day and they still have bellies. Of course, who knows what they’re eating when they get home. You can watch live exercise online for free. Grab some resistance bands and watch anytime. All shows are recorded. Soon to come will be workouts for women, teens and kids.
Interval training is essential. I find doing 3 peaks of high intensity mixed with a few minutes of low intensity works really well.
Get’s the heart going, and gives you a nice time to breathe in between ’sets’