How to lose fat without becoming a slave to the treadmill.
Ask anyone what the best way to lose weight is and inevitably a workout will be near the top of the list.
American gyms are filled with people who are sweating, straining and pushing their limits in an effort to ditch the fat.
While getting some more activity is not a bad idea, our notion of what a workout is and how it affects our waist line might be.
The bottom line is that to lose more weight you must expand more calories than you consume. The good news is that you can lose those calories doing anything you can imagine. You don’t have to work up a sweat, stay within a certain heart rate or even have a strict work out routine.
A calorie burned is a calorie burned regardless of how you do it. In fact, I know one friend who lost 60 pounds in a year simply giving up her desk job and working the isles at the local Home Depot.
I always recommend that people ditch their boring and mindless workouts for some sort of activity they gain something from. While watching the clock tick down as you ride an exercise bike might burn calories, so will building a stone wall, pushing a lawnmower, walking the dog or washing the car. It’s far easier to burn calories when you have a task to complete rather than simply doing an activity just to burn calories.
So no matter what you do, make sure there is something you are actually getting accomplished. Workouts are done just for the sake of burning calories or changing the body. I say ditch the workouts for some manual labor jobs instead.
One of the reasons why workouts fail many people is because they are short. By nature most workouts are only about an hour in length. The reality is that it’s nearly impossible to make up for 23 hours of sitting, sleeping and being sedentary with only 1 hour of activity. I know time is short for us all, but believe me; you can gain far more activity through your day if you stay as active as possible all day long.
So look for opportunities for activity through the day. You can do the obvious like take the stairs or go for a short walk during lunch, but there is more. I recommend parking ½ a mile from work so you end up walking an extra mile each day just getting to your car.
In the end, your goal is to refuse to be still. If you move more during the day you will burn more calories and that will certainly show.
In the end, the more you move the more you lose. Make movement an obsession, refuse to let yourself sit for too long and even though you might not have a gym membership and you could care less about heart rate zones, you will look and feel like you do.
Do what you Love! Losing weight is like climbing a mountain, there are many pathes and they all lead to the top. So why pick a path you don't enjoy? Once you find an activity you like it will be far easier to torch loads of additional calories.
Be Sure to also watch your food intake. It's very easy to erase any additional calorie burn with just one donut or an extra beer or two.
Be fit and live free,
Matt Schifferle
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