Exercise and Your Metabolism: How it can help you to Lose Weight?
Someone that has a hard time losing weight most likely has a very slow metabolic rate since their body burns few calories over time.
Why is it so important to have a high or fast metobolic rate?
The higher your metabolic rate is, the more calories that your body can handle without gaining any fat, or the easier and faster you can lose weight, especially when exercising.
Also, if your metabolic rate is higher than normal, you will put on less weight when eating a healthy and well balanced diet. Basically, with a high metabolic rate, you do not need to be so careful with what, or how much, you eat.
You probably know some people that one can lose a lot of weight very easily while still eating a lot more food and calories than you. This can be very frustrating to see, but it is quite natural. We are all built differently.
Having a faster metabolic rate mean that you can process calories easier and more efficiently than the someone with a slower metabolism.
A good example of this in action are professional bodybuilders, such as Dave Henry and Dexter Jackson. These bodybuilders have very high metabolic rates, which allows them to eat not only very high amounts of food, but also lots of "forbidden" foods, like pizza, fried chicken wings, fast food, all without ever getting fat. Bodybuilders generally eat differently to normal people, in that they consume smaller meals at more frequent intervals throughout the day. This ensures that the body always have a good supply of protein for muscle repair and growth. The type of eat, akin to grazing almost, is a good way to keep the metabolic rate high while also consuming a lot of calories.
Cardio exercise can raise your metabolic rate. But how much can it help to increase your metabolic rate? Cardio exercise is not as effective as intensive weight training, but it does help. Cardio will raise your metabolic rate for a couple of hours afterwards, at most, but intensive weight training, on the other hand, has been reported to cause increases in metabolic rate that last for up to a couple of days.
When you consider all the people that regulary attend gyms and workout intensively on treadmills, rowing machines, cross trainers and in aerobics classes etc. they never seem to actually get any more ripped, toned, or defined. However, consider bodybuilders and professional athletes. They do not do as much cardio, yet have very high metabolic rates and show up at competitions much more ripped and toned than the bodybuilders that do hours of cardio per day.
So, if you wish to increase your metabolic rate through exerise, then you should seriously consider doing some intensive weight training. GO heavy, aim to workout with free weight if possible. Do compound exercises, and aim to do 2 or 3 sets of 8-12 reps for each exercise. And remember to rest. For more information on weight training routines and exercises check out our weight trianing pages.
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