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Keep Moving!
You don’t need a health club membership or pricey exercise equipment
to get in shape. The key is to keep moving. Find an activity you love,
whether it’s walking, swimming, cycling, or aerobics, and stick with it.
Start slowly, then build up to 30-60 minutes of aerobic activity three to
four days a week. Regular exercise helps improve circulation, relieve
stress, increase metabolism, improve posture, increase energy and trim
and tone your entire body!
Best of all, the more you exercise, the more fat you burn! That’s right.
Muscles burn fat while you’re working out and while you’re at rest. The
more lean muscle mass you build, the easier it becomes to maintain a
healthy percentage of body fat and that’s important. Did you know that
the average person loses 1/2 pound of muscle and gains 1-1/2 pounds
of fat a year as part of the natural aging process? Building and main-
taining healthy muscles is very important to life-long fitness.
Aerobic Exercise or Cardiovascular Training raises your heart rate,
strengthening your heart and lungs while you burn calories. Cardiovas-
cular exercises include cycling, swimming, power walking or running, and
aerobic classes. To be effective, you must reach and stay within your "tar-
get heart rate," defined as 50-70% of your maximum heart rate.
To calculate your maximum heart rate, subtract your age from 220. To
determine your target heart rate, multiply your maximum heart rate by
50-70%. If you raise your heart rate above your target range, you will
still get an aerobic benefit, but you will not burn fat.
Examples:
Age Maximum Heart Rate Target Heart Rate
25 220-25 = 195 97.5-136. 5
30 220-30 = 190 95.0-133.0
35 220-35 = 185 92.5-129.5
40 220-40 = 180 90.0-126.0
45 220-45 = 175 87.5-122.5
The American Heart Association recommends 30-60 minutes of aerobic
exercise three to four times a week to promote cardiovascular fitness.
Resistance or Strength Training firms the body and tones the muscles.
While these exercises, which include weight lifting, sit-ups, and toning, do
not directly burn fat, they do build muscle. The more lean muscle you
have, the more easily your body can burn calories and reduce body fat.
Fitness professionals recommend at least 30 minutes of strength train-
ing two to three days a week.
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