Some people absolutely love going to the gym, for others it's a necessary evil, only a means to help in their efforts to shed a few pounds. It really doesn't matter how much you do or don't love the gym I think we can all agree that it would be ideal if we could make the absolute best of the time that we do spend there.
Here are two of the biggest cardio blunders that hurt your weight loss efforts. By eliminating these two mistakes, your ability to shred pounds will dramatically improve.
1. You absolutely must not perform slow, steady-state cardio.
This will torpedo you weight loss efforts for two reasons.
First, when you stop exercising, you stop burning fat at an accelerated rate. You don't get an "after-burn" effect when doing slow steady-state cardio. To solve this, do high-intensity interval training instead.
What you do is vary the intensity from all out, unbelievably intense to relaxed and slow. By going up and down like that, you shock your body into speeding up your metabolism and creating an after-burn in which you burn calories at an accelerated rate for up to 18 hours after you've stopped exercising. Not bad, huh?
The second reason has to do with all of the time you need to devote to slow, steady-state cardio just to burn off a lot of calories. It's just not efficient. Without the after-burn effect, you'd have to exercise for 30 or more extra minutes just to make up the calories lost to the after-burn. So to increase your fat loss efforts, you have to increase the time you do your cardio. That's simply not a practical way going about weight loss. I'm sure you're busy enough as it is, so it would be hard to squeeze in even more time to exercise.
2. You absolutely must not forget to drink enough water while, or after doing your cardio routine.
Forgetting to drink water is so bad for you. Your body is 70% water, your blood is 90% water, and your muscles are around 75% water. Water is absolutely vital to your weight loss efforts. Just sip water constantly through your workout... and throughout your day as well. It's pretty much the simplest thing you can do help along your weight loss efforts. A good rule is to drink at least one ounce of water for every pound of body weight. |
