Is Aerobic Exercise The Key To Keeping Weight Off?

If you've been going to the gym for any length of time, you'll notice that at certain times during the year the cardio equipment gets more crowded and if your gym has aerobics classes, the rooms fill up a lot quicker.

Those crowded gym times of year usually correlate to the month or so before the weather gets nice enough to go to the beach, hit the pool or any other activities where people have less clothing on.

Here in NYC it's usually around Mid April.

Obviously most of us would like to be at an acceptable body target.

(“I won't be in great shape but I won't be embarrassed and that's good enough for me”, if not an enviable body target (“I look like a million bucks”).

One thing you'll also notice is that the weight room does not get proportionally crowded. Yes, there will be a few more people hitting the weights, but nowhere near the explosion in cardio equipment and aerobics classes.

My advice is don't follow the crowd and get caught up in just doing more and more aerobics to lose weight or keep it off. There are many forms of weight training, resistance bands, and bodyweight workouts that are much more efficient and effective.

Too much aerobics can burn off precious muscle tissue, which is the backbone of your metabolism.

So What Can I Do To Lose Weight And Keep It Off?

women's group exercise class
It can be really frustrating when you're trying to get in shape because there are so many different options out there, and it's hard to know which one is right for you. You might even feel like you're wasting your time with some of them.

Instead of doing the treadmill 5 days a week for an hour each time, you'd get much better results by doing  high intensity cardio for 3 of those days and doing some bodyweight training the other 2 days.

The bodyweight training will burn the same amount of calories if not more during the actual exercise itself but more importantly will help sculpt the muscle and strengthen it without bulking you up.

Over time, your metabolic rate will increase with this new found strength. This increase in metabolic rate can help produce a significant decrease in body fat because you'll be burning a few extra hundred calories without any extra exercise.

Or you could ignore me and stick to the treadmill or those dance classes 5 days a week and burn calories while you're doing the activity, but there's no metabolic rate increase.

Heck, adding the bodyweight exercises can actually produce more caloric burn on the 5 day schedule than if you added a 6th day of treadmill!

Hmmm… exercise 5 days a week and burn more calories or exercise 6 days a week and burn less calories? I know I'd go with 5 days and go live life on that 6th day.

Doing only aerobics and ignoring weight training can send you into an endless loop where you are working harder and harder but getting less results in return.Carb Manipulation banner 4

I know those bikini body days are approaching so it's your choice.