The Exercise Illusion: It’s Not About Burning Fat!

The amount of time, money, effort and disappointment that go toward attempting to ‘burn fat’ must be enormous. Perhaps if generators were attached to all the treadmills, stationary bikes and rowing machines, we could make a fair contribution to clean energy production.

I have chosen to make exercise an important part of my lifestyle because I enjoy it and the health benefits are irreplaceable; incapable of being achieved as well by any other means.

As an added benefit, the more energy you expend physically, the more calories you burn, right? So you keep chasing ‘The Ultimate Fat Burner’ workout, thinking that you simply haven’t found it yet.

That notion, I’m sure, factors mightily in the billions of dollars generated selling the prospect of a beautiful body.

Diet and exercise are always mentioned together when it comes to losing weight. One does compliment and enhance the effectiveness of the other; but diet is, by far, the most important component of weight loss and maintenance.

If your goal is to lose weight and the major focus is not on the quantity of food you are eating, your efforts are directed at lesser effective issues.

Multiple times weekly an important component of my exercise routine centers on cardiovascular/respiratory fitness. Using the stair step machine, I elevate my heart rate and respiratory tempo to the desired levels for twenty minutes. This type of exercise rejuvenates the body at the cellular level. That’s my purpose with this activity.

A side benefit is that it takes about 200 extra calories during the session to achieve my goal.

ONLY 200 calories?

Obviously, it makes much more sense to avoid the two cookies for desert that I can consume in about 30 seconds if my goal is to reduce calories.

If you don’t catch the significance; or you’re simply not willing to change your eating habits, you will always be on the unfortunate side of the equation.

There is not enough time in the day to work off calories that can be so quickly consumed in excess if you’re careless.

Focus On the Basics,

Steven
UPDATE: http://www.m.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/news/20160128/exercise-diet-calories-weight?src=RSS_PUBLIC
UPDATE 3/14/16 Must have read my blog… http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/04/exercise-in-futility/471492/
The Senior Health and Fitness Blog by Steven Siemons is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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Everybody Stores Fat Differently, So Stop Stressing!

There comes a time when you have stop stressing over what you lack, and work with what you’ve got. Try as you might, you can’t negate the reality of your genetic characteristics. No sense wishing to be tall if you happen to be short.

In a significant way; genetically, of course, you’ve got what you’ve got, so get your head on straight and move forward.

How and where your body stores fat is not under your control. How many calories you consume is, theoretically, under your control. I’ve been as light as 160 pounds at 6′ 1″, and still had enough of a layer of abdominal fat to obscure definition. By the way, ‘spot reducing’ (targeting the specific area with an exercise to reduce fatty tissue in that specific area) is a myth. Your metabolism is not under your control to direct to certain areas of your body; rather, it’s the process by which your entire body processes food for energy. The ‘spot reducing’ trend will never dissappear, for two substantial reasons:

1. the concept sells things

2. people like to believe it’s true

Do Your Homework,

Steven

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The Senior Health and Fitness Blog by Steven Siemons is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-living/weight-loss/in-depth/metabolism/art-20046508

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