How to exercise to lose weight

Have you ever wondered why, despite taking up more exercise, you are not shifting those unsightly pounds that motivated you to join the gym in the first place?

Well, the answer could be simple. Experts say that simply taking up more exercise is not always enough to help an individual burn fat and, furthermore, to lose weight the right kind of physical activity has to be undertaken. If, for example, an individual is doing a muscle-building workout, while they may feel more toned afterwards, the muscle they gain is likely to make them heavier, as muscle weights three times more than fat.

Experts at the University of Pittsburgh say that women who want to use exercise as a way of controlling their weight need to exercise for almost an hour, five days a week. This is the minimum a female can do to drop ten per cent of her body weight.

The researchers came to their conclusion after studying a group of women over a four-year period and monitoring their progress. The women were split into four different exercise groups, and those who managed to keep the ten per cent drop in weight off were the ones who exercised regularly in hour-long bursts.

Professor Paul Gately, a specialist in exercise and obesity from Leeds Metropolitan University, told the BBC that the government's current recommendation of 30 minutes' exercise a day will keep an individual healthy, but will not help them to lose weight.

He explained: "Thirty minutes a day is good for general health, but if you want to lose weight, you need to be doing more, and if you want to sustain weight loss, you need to be doing even more than that.

"In this country, between an hour and 90 minutes of exercise a day is the recommended level for maintaining weight loss."

However, even these guidelines could be deemed vague. What is meant by an hour's exercise – does this have to be aerobic exercise and how strenuous should it be?

The answer would seem to be that to burn fat a workout should be at least moderately strenuous, but what is taxing for one person may be easy for the next. Therefore, an exercise regime should be tailored to the individual's fitness level.

The main idea is for the individual to get their heart pumping and to feel challenged in their work out. Each time, they should try to push themselves a step further in order to up their fitness levels another stage.