Why aerobics isn't the best choice for losing excess weight?

---By Deepa Khare

Fitness is not just about maintaining the right weight and looking good. It is the efficient functioning of mind and body that involves perfect co-ordination between the two. So you see a fit person always shows agility, mental balance, rhythm, power and speed. His thoughts and actions are in perfect harmony and he is free from diseases.

For you to achieve any kind of fitness level, it requires your passionate involvement and complete dedication. For example athletes exhibit highest level of fitness. Unless, you arm yourself with the right knowledge and constantly update yourself, you will not make informed decisions about health and fitness.

Most of us feel satiated with aerobic exercises. By aerobics, I mean all exercises that involve cardio like running and jogging on the treadmill/cross country, kickboxing, pilates, skipping and so forth.

Aerobic exercises consume muscle mass and defeats the purpose of staying fit. Your primary concern is to build muscles as much as possible. It’s a myth that women will form bulky muscles if they do weight lifting. The truth is that women have really low testosterone levels.

The worst approach to losing weight is employing aerobic exercises. As far as fat burning is concerned, the only principle that works is when the number of calories burnt is more than the number of calories consumed.

Lets see why aerobics don’t work for weight loss. When you eat a meal, food get converted into sugar, this is stored as glycogen in the muscles and the liver while the excess sugar gets converted into triglycerides or fat. During the first 30 minutes of any aerobic work out, the body utilizes the glycogen stores and only then starts the fat burning process.

So no matter what activity you take up, for the body to get into the fat burning mode, these reserves have to be depleted first. Aerobics take about 30 minutes to do this. So by the end of forty five minutes of a good cardio work out, you haven’t accomplished much except fatigue and muscle loss. To add to your misery, the glycogen stores get refurbished when you eat the next meal.

However strength training on the other hand burns 6 times more calories than aerobic exercises during a work out session and also helps build muscles in the process. This is an efficient way of using up the glycogen stores. That way you can target the fat stores much quickly.

So now you know, why build muscles and keep them. Muscles provide the support system to the body and aid in –

1. Movement
2. Joint Stability
3. Posture
4. Heat Production.

This is not all, muscles burn calories even when you don’t lift a finger. By performing strength training, you will increase your strength and endurance, improve bone density and boost your stamina.

Keep in mind that all aerobic exercises are good for warm ups, period. They do not promise weight loss unless you add another dimension to it – the anaerobic exercises!