Embracing Exercise Two Minutes at a Time

It’s easier to cut 500 calories from your diet than it is to burn off 500 calories through exercise – much easier. Exercise alone is not a particularly effective method for losing weight-especially large amounts of weight, and people who attempt weight loss through exercise alone have a difficult task ahead of them. However, while reducing calories in your diet is an essential part of initial weight loss, increasing activity is critical to ensure you can keep the weight off in future.

Exercise is essential for overall health and well-being, and it makes a valuable contribution to your weight loss and maintenance efforts. Thirty minutes of moderate activity each day helps lower blood pressure, blood sugar, and blood cholesterol levels. It reduces the risk of breast and colon cancer, type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome-a collection of symptoms that leads to an increased risk of a variety of weight-related diseases and conditions. Exercise can also help reduce emotional stress. Burning an extra 150-200 calories each day through exercise can help you lose an extra pound every 18 days or permit you a small dessert during weight maintenance.

If you have recently begun a weight loss program, you may be wondering how to start an exercise program. There are nearly as many answers to this question as there are dieters.  Some overweight people have been dedicated couch potatoes for years; others are fairly active and typically walk about two hours per week, but still manage to eat more calories than they burn. The following general guidelines can help you develop a program that fits your specific needs and will help you achieve your goals.

First and foremost, don’t undertake any exercise routine until your physician has cleared you for it. Very heavy people in particular may need to lose some weight before they can begin exercising safely. If you are one of those individuals, your physician may recommend chair exercises, sometimes called chair aerobics, to help you improve circulation, build some stamina, and get in the habit of being active.

Don’t undertake a new exercise routine during the first week you begin a full meal replacement diet. Your body needs a chance to adjust to the new, much lower level of calorie intake before you rev up you metabolism with activity.

Forget the old adage “no pain, no gain.” This approach has put an end to many “fitness” attempts before they even began because it led to injury. Pain is nature’s ways of letting you know you are at risk of joint or muscle damage. If you feel pain when you are active, stop. It is very important that you listen to your body.

Think “slow and steady.” By gradually building your exercise level, you are more likely to develop an active lifestyle in the long term.

If you have been inactive until now, chose an activity that takes your physical limitations into account. Be sure that your chosen program of activity fits into your existing lifestyle. If you have too much joint, back, and or foot pain to try a walking program, use an exercise bike or water aerobics instead. If you chose water aerobics but are unlikely to make it to a pool more than once or twice a week, choose a second activity you can perform on alternate days.

Begin with a 2-minute walking or cycling program. Chose 5 times during the day when you can walk or cycle for 2 minutes (during TV ads is a popular time period). Enter these times into your calendar and start moving. If, at the end of a couple of days, you find this is more activity than you can tolerate, cut back to 1-minute intervals.

If, at the end of the first week, you are tolerating the 5, 2-minute exercise sessions well, add a sixth 2-minute exercise period to the following week’s schedule. Assuming you can handle the 6, 2-minute exercise periods, add one minute to each of your exercise sessions during weeks 3, 4, and 5. By week 5, you will be fitting 6, 5-minute exercise sessions into your day.

If at any point in this process you find that you are not able to comfortably increase your activity level, repeat the same work out routine for two or more weeks in a row. Only increase your activity when you are ready to move to the next level.

If you have been moderately active, but your activity level does not seem to be making a dent in your weight management efforts, pick up the pace at which you are exercising and/or extend the time you spend being active. Short bursts of intense exercise, known as interval training, burns off fat more effectively than longer slower periods of exercise. If you currently walk 20 minutes each day, walk faster for two minutes several times during each exercise period to maximize your calorie burning efforts.

For example, break up your 20-minute walk into the following intervals: 

If you are particularly creative, you can record music with different tempos and match your walking to the music. This is a more enjoyable way to time the intervals than using a clock or stopwatch.

The next week, extend each walking session by 5 minutes. Start by walking the first two minutes of your extra 5-minute period very fast, then slow down for the last 3 minutes.

Add another 5 minutes of walking to each walking session the following week. Again, begin the extra time with a very fast 2-minute walk, followed by 3 minutes at your usual pace. With this extended plan, you will be walking for a total of 30 minutes, and for one third of your time, you will be walking extra fast. Your heart will have to work to increase blood flow during each of those faster intervals and that help you burn more calories during each 30-minute walk. 

If you struggle to stay active on your own, enlist friends or family to support you by being your exercise buddies or join an organized fitness program. Many gym and fitness centers offer group fitness challenges designed to help you reach your goals and offer support. For example, YMCAs across the US have an Activate America program designed to help Americans increase their fitness levels.