Vary your exercise routine regularly

Traditional thinking would say that the secret to losing weight was to do lost of cardio vascular exercise and to reduce your calorie intake. What made it so hard to do in practice was despite the miserable feeling you would have continually, burning energy on a low fat, low excitement diet, your body often didn’t seem to take any notice. The problem is that the body is a very adaptable piece of equipment and to keep getting results, you’ve got to mix up your training.

Any exercise that increases your heart rate and is maintained for a reasonable period of time will have benefits for weight loss. Whether it’s walking, running, cycling, swimming, rowing or a gym class workout, as a general rule, if it makes you sweaty it’ll do you good.

BUT

If that’s all you do, and you do the same routine week in week out, you won’t see earth shattering results and what results you do see may start to peter out.

BUT FEAR NOT

It’s easy to keep things interesting. Make sure you vary the kind of activity you are doing – different exercises or sporting pastimes use different parts of the body in different ways. A game of basketball for example is making the body work in a completely different way than going on a bike ride. If you are happy with the type of exercise you are doing, mix up the way you are doing it! Interval training is a very important part of progression in any weightloss program (more on that later), so try adding in short bursts of extra energy, increasing your effort levels above normal for set levels.

For example if you normally go for a 20 minute jog 3 times a week, try a minute’s sprinting for every four minutes jogging for one of your sessions. Once you feel comfortable with that try and reduce the recovery time (or sprint for longer).

You should try and change your workout every 4-6 weeks, whether it’s increasing intensity, changing the order of your exercises, or the exercises themselves. Don’t always feel you have to just push yourself harder for longer, just keep pushing yourself in different ways, you’ll be amazed at what you achieve!