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Professional Fitness Tips to Help You Reach Your Weight Loss Goals

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Are you looking to lose weight? You have likely set goals for yourself and have specific areas on your body that you would like to improve. However, one of the most common misconceptions when it comes to weight loss is that you can point to an area of your body and work to lose weight in an exact location on your body. But your body is not designed to respond that way.

The good news is you can tone and strengthen a specific area. Follow these tips and learn how to enhance your fitness plans for healthy weight loss.

The Impact of Your Body Type

The natural shape of your body can impact how you lose weight. People with pear-shaped bodies have the hardest time losing weight in a specific zone. This body shape is typically genetic, and you often carry most of your excess weight in your hips and thighs. When you are apple-shaped your body type usually has a faster response time when you are trying to lose inches in a particular area.

Regardless of your body type, you must take into consideration how much you are exercising, along with what your current nutrition plan looks like. Stress also plays a big role in weight loss, so important to maintain control of your stress level as well.

The Function of Your Core and Trunk

It is good to have a solid grasp of your body fat percentage, along with how much of your scale weight is fat versus how much is lean body mass. If your goal is weight loss and inches lost, you may not be too far off from your goal weight if you have a higher lean mass composition. When you have good lean number, then you do not necessarily need to add more lean mass.

Many women do not have enough lean tissues and have more fat. If women were to work and adjust their body composition, an increased lean mass will burn fat more quickly, but it may slow the progress on the scale. You could be losing fat, but you are also adding lean muscle, so the scale may not reflect your progress.

The best way to build lean muscle mass is to focus on the core when you do exercise movements. Your abdominals are designed to partner with the back to stabilize the spine in a neutral position while you move your body. There are simple ways to incorporate the core into what you are doing.

For example, if you are doing an exercise move that works your upper and lower body together, you will have to stabilize the spine by using your stomach and back muscles. Due to the movement of those larger muscles, you will increase your heart rate and burn more calories. Watch a video to see an example of this type of movement.

The same principle applies to the lower body. Walking lunges are more beneficial than sitting on a quadriceps extension on a machine. Since you are traveling in walking lunges, the body recruits more muscles to balance and push each movement forward, resulting in more calories burned.

Cardiovascular Activity and Weight Loss

If you are new to fitness, ideally you will get to a point where you can do 15-20 minutes of a steady state cardiovascular activity and 35-45 minutes of high intensity interval training (HIIT) where you mix cardio into your weight training. Try to incorporate this type of workout three times a week.  On the days you are not doing strength training, try 50-minutes of a steady state cardio activity.

The idea behind interval training is you are creating a zigzag pattern in your heart rate, so you burn more calories. During a HIIT activity such as Tabatas, you can burn anywhere between 30-40 percent more calories depending on your intensity than if you did a steady state pace for the same amount of time. HIIT is more efficient for people who do not have a lot of time and is even more beneficial for those looking to lose weight.

If you are in a psychological place where you are dreading your workouts, try breaking up your workouts into short sections throughout the day. Do part of your workout in the morning and the rest in the evening. All of those burned calories accumulate in the same way.

A Professional Fitness Trainer is a great asset to help you develop a plan and focus on overall inch loss. Hopefully over time, you will see results as you begin to regularly exercise and burn more calories than you are taking in.

For more information about Cooper Fitness Center Dallas, click here or call 972.233.4832.
 

Article provided by Cooper Aerobics Marketing and Communications.