How often should I exercise?

Question

I am about 50-60lbs over weight. I have decided to start an exercise regiman but am concerned about how often I should exercise. I want to lose the fat, flab, and look long, lean and tone. I was told that if I exercise everyday that I will build muscle and look bulky, which is the opposite of what I want to achieve. What worked for you?

Answer 1

find calorie/fitness calculator on the net, enter your stats and it will tell you how many calories a day you need to maintain your weight. take 300-400calories off that number and that's how much you need to lose weight.
eat 5-6 small meals a day instead of 3 big ones.
5-8 servings of fruit and vegetables a day.
8 glasses of water a day.
4-6 times a week cardio work out for 30-50min plus light weight training.
no junk food, no sodas, no white flour (white bread, pasta, cookies, cakes etc)

Answer 2

Hello! Exercising everyday would actually do the very opposite, because your body would not have a chance to recover. This is called overtraining. The first this I tell people is to ignore the scale. Your focus should not be on weight, but on body composition. I don't know what your limitations are (injuries, recent surgeries, etc.), but always start out slowly. Cardiovascular exercise 3 times a week for 20-30 minutes is a great start. Next, weight training must be included. Please start very slowly, focusing on technique and form first before increasing the weights or the difficulty of the exercise. Finally but most importantly, eat a clean diet full of nutritious foods that come from all of the food groups. I find that women use this word 'tone' to describe a well defined body with a fat percentage. It's muscle definition! Don't be afraid of muscle. It will totally change the shape of your body. Increase your aerobic capacity and your caloric deficit with cardio. Increase your strength and your muscle with weight training. Maintain overall health and keep your body fat low with healthy nutrition. I hope this helps.

Answer 3

ideally, you should be exercising every day for at least 30 mins. but, if you start doing this immediately, you could injure yourself and you will put a ton of stress on your joints.

here are a few things you can do to start:

1) speed walk for about 30 mins/day. make sure you h ave good shoes. Stretch a little bit before (not too much, bc you can hurt yourself stretching when your muscles arent warmed up), and a bunch after (well, for like 5-10 mins).

2) every other day, lift really light weights (like if you are a woman around 5'5'', start with 8lb weights for arms, doing sets of 3 with 12-15 reps). Don't do your whole body each time though... like one day you go, do upper body. another day, do lower body. you can do crunches and push ups everyday though. these are good to do after your cool down.

3) once you start feeling better about the speed walking, and have lifted a bit (this is presuming you dont work out at all), start running slowly for about 15 mins, then speed walking the next 15. eventually you want to build up to 30 mins running/day (somewhere between 7mph and 8.5 mph). but you prob wont get to this for a month or so (if not more, depending on how tall you are/how fit you are to being with.

4) what you eat is important. just because you burn more calories does not mean that you dont need to change what you eat. cut out fats (a little bit is ok, but you are already trying to burn a ton). eat a lot of leafy greens and protein, limiting your carb intake to the AM hrs. No soda. no diet drinks. only water and green tea (green tea is very cleansing).

5) it takes a while to lose weight and actually keep it off. do not expect to see results for a couple months. and no this does not mean you will be 50 lbs lighter in a couple months. but you will be on your way, and will have done so in a healthier fashion that will be more permanent and maintainable than any other extreme regime.

Answer 4

I lost 40 lbs by doing cardio, 5 days a week 30-40 minutes each time. Your body needs a day off, so don't do more than 6 days a week. I lost all the fat, then once I was my goal weight I started to do pillates and other toning exercises (low weights, but high reps) to get that that toned look.

It's true that if you are doing heavy weights every day, rather than losing fat you are turning it into muscle. Not that that's bad; in fact the more muscle you have the more your body burns fat, but you end up getting bulky rather than lean. My suggestions is to do cardio to lose the majority of fat, and then intoduce toning exercses. I should mention that I did do some ab workouts three times a week in conjuction with cardio.

I took me 8 months to lose it and I have kept it off for 2 years now. Another thing I should mention is that exercise is useless for weight loss if you aren't eatig healthy. Diet (meaning healthy eating) and exercise go hand in hand. I followed the weight watchers program in conjuction with exercise.

Answer 5

sure... ranching itself is a super style of workout (lifting, pulling, jogging, working)... I walk a minimum of four-5 miles an afternoon as area of looking after the valuables. I additionally swim a mile on a daily basis (360 days a 12 months)... and Mon, Wed, & Friday I nonetheless do the previous military wrestle seek and Rescue Swimmer workout consultation (a hundred @ push-ups, take a seat-ups, pull-ups, and a a million.5 mile run) and nonetheless get an marvelous score for a 30-35 12 months previous (even nonetheless i'm 40 8 now). Oh, and twiddling with the Grand-toddlers additionally retains me limber and agile.

Answer 6

you shouldn't exercise every day...it puts too much stress on your body and is bad for your joints. you should exercise every other day, making it about 3 or 4 times per week.

plus, building muscle doesn't necessarily mean looking bulky. that's a HUGE misconception among girls. think about this: what makes up your body, other than your organs? you have skin, bone, and muscle. when you TONE, you're building MUSCLE. there are different ways to train your muscles for a different physical appearance. you can train your muscles for size, power, or endurance. training for endurance is what makes your muscles look "toned" but not bulky.

Answer 7

Pilates...it will trim you down & produces lean (not bulky) muscles...it is great and you can buy pilates videos & dvds for $5 at walmart...I would suggest doing it at least 3 times a week also check out www.weightlossbuddy.com it is great as well!

Answer 8

Only one thing, statistically, works. WALKING, 7 days per week. Have a great time! Congrats on starting this. Buy some nice music, and walk around!

Answer 9

My advice for anyone who doesn't want to strength train and look muscley is to ignore that and strength train anyway. If (big IF) you actually do get to the point when you think woah I'm too muscley then you should back off. When you back off, it'll reduce quickly. There is no point in stopping until you get to that point.