How Exercise Benefits Fat Loss
By following a diet alone, whether it’s a hormone diet, a low carbohydrate diet, the Mediterranean diet or any diet for that matter, your weight loss will not be as rapid and your results not as obvious and spectacular unless you add exercise to the equation.
We already know that there is a connection between diet, exercise and hormones. Hormones such as oxytocin, the endorphins and serotonin help you to feel happier and reduce anxiety. Exercising reduces stress and anxiety and thereby reduces cortisol hormone levels in the body. Excess cortisol caused by stress and anxiety causes menopause weight gain – unwanted belly fat, slows down your metabolism, disrupts your sleep and speeds up muscle loss. strengthen your muscles, your heart and blood vessels will become stronger increasing blood flow and improving your circulation. Your muscles and overall activity level will experience greater endurance. Bones and the connective tissues will improve and strengthen. Health wise, your risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, breast cancer, diabetes and stroke will decline dramatically. Your lungs and respiratory muscles will strengthen, you won’t be having to catch your breath during workouts or just walking upstairs. Exercise boosts immunity and increases you natural anti oxidant defenses. Exercise will decrease your carbohydrate and sugar cravings and naturally decrease your appetite, another benefit to adding exercise to your life. You will decrease the amount of estrogen in your body and avoid the dangers of excess estrogen.
But exercising will also facilitate faster weight loss, firm up saggy muscles, and burn excess fat. As you grow older, the metabolism slows down. The thyroid which is responsible for the metabolic rate begins to produce less thyroid hormone which results in a lower metabolism. A lowered metabolic rate means that we burn less calories per hour. We need to lower the calories we eat or else we gain weight. All this occurs as early as our late 30s. Unless we increase our energy output by exercising, we gain weight, especially belly fat. Our waist lines begin to expand. The simple solution is to eat less and exercise more.
If we include weight resistance training with our daily exercise routine, we will build muscle and therefore we will burn more calories long after we have stopped exercising. Exercise will stimulate the muscle building hormones, DHEA and testosterone. Muscle burns 50 times more calories than fat, even when are bodies are simply relaxing and not doing anything. With exercise, the levels of excess estrogen are decreased. Remember, excess estrogen is dangerous. Exercise will help to rid the body of excess estrogen.
Exercise will promote the levels of hormones which help us to lose weight. Hormones that help us lose menopause weight include as already mentioned, thyroid and testosterone, human growth hormone, leptin, noradrenaline, dopamine and serotonin.
Through exercising, we will build up our bone mass and prevent osteoporosis from setting in. With weight resistance training, the muscle stimulates bone growth. Strength training is most beneficial for strong bones. Healthy hormone levels are activated by strength training.
Adding yoga to your routine will help stretch and strengthen your body. It will also help you to de-stress and lower cortisol levels. You probably already know how bad high levels of cortisol are for you and how high cortisol causes sleep problems, weight gain and a host of quite serious health problems. Yoga helps both men and women to keep the body lean and supple as we age.
Exercising improves mood, memory, cognitive function of the brain and reduces pain. Anxiety and depression can be combated successfully by exercising. Serotonin levels, the “happy” hormone or the “feel good” hormone, rise with exercising and are proven to beat stress, anxiety and depression. Have you ever known anyone to complain of still being stressed, anxious or depressed after a yoga class? Quite the opposite is true, they will tell you how great they feel.
With aerobic exercising, not only are you burning fat at a higher rate during the exercise, but you will be burning fat for a long time after stopping. Aerobic exercise increases our metabolic rate and reduces fat fast. It also increases lung capacity and oxygenates our blood. With more oxygen in our blood, we will heal faster, develop stronger immunity and endurance and be blessed with higher energy levels. Blood pressure and cholesterol levels decrease. More blood is pumped to the heart.
And finally, exercise reduces inflammation and decreases our appetite and that’s probably what we wanted in the first place. You cannot expect to lose much weight, burn fat and firm up sagging muscles on any of the hormone diets listed here or elsewhere by diet alone. To accompany any diet, you must exercise to burn up the fat. There is no other way. Embrace exercise and make it a part of your daily routine. No time to exercise? Then you must read the previous article on Dr Oz Seven Minute Workout.
Kathy Smith sells a workout DVD called “Moving Through Menopause“ in stock at Amazon and sells for $34.89 and ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping. Kathy’s DVD contains menopause advice, low-impact cardio (for heart, bones, weight, and mood), bone-building strength training, and stress-reducing yoga.
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G. Broker @ October 29, 2011
Human growth hormone Energizer is developed to help you promote the production of growth hormones in the body once more.
Yes, Ashton, there are a variety of supplements which help promote human growth hormone in the body. Totally agree.