Weight Loss Help: When Exercise is not Enough to Lose Weight as fast as you want

When Working Out Is Not Enough

Although it may sound strange, adhering to a particular working out regime is not always enough to encourage fat loss. Weight loss may be less than satisfactory when you focus solely on dieting and working out especially if you have an inflexible routine.

Below are some tips to help you revitalize your weight loss program

1. See a Doctor to get a physical
Although we hardly consider this, there may be a medical reason why you added so much weight. The same reasons prevent you from easily losing the weight. The doctor will consider issues like anxiety, hypothyroidism, use of prescription drugs and the menopause.

Use the opportunity to bring up all your fears and misgivings about your weight loss program for discussion.

2. Conduct Frequent Self Examinations - Your heart and breathing rate

You should neither gasp or pant excessively for air during workout sessions.You can practically analyze your heart and breathing rate using the Borg Scale of Perceived Exertion. The idea is that using a 1 to 10 scale, 10 for fast jogging and 1 for sleeping, you should exercise at a rate between 5 to 8.

No matter your exercise level, carelessness with your diet will defeat all your efforts. It is difficult to convert food on the plate to calories, so keep track of all you eat. Note it in a book and then settle down and convert it to calories with a guide book. You will be surprised how many calories are packed into a standard cup of cream coffee or a pack of crackers.

Over time these 'minor' things add pounds to you and defeat your exercise program.

A simple strategy as explained above is to avoid accidentally loading up with calories. Whip out your food note book every weekend and calculate the calories. It will help you plan for the next week as well as pointing out your diet busters.

When you have maintained the food diary for 3 months, make an appointment to see a dietician. She would be glad for the background information in the diary and would help you make wise changes and substitutions.

Experts have shown through research that with 2,000-2,500 steps every day, you can burn approximately 100 calories extra daily.

But how do you know when you have taken 1,000 steps or how many more steps to take before it becomes 2,000 steps?

One of the best investments you can make in your bid to lose weight is to buy a pedometer.

This will keep track of all the steps you take in a given period. If you wear it for a day and realise you took just 700 steps then it is easy for you to set a target for 2,000 steps and work towards achieving it.

The pedometer gives you feed back as soon as you require it.

5. Expand your exercise program - include resistance or strength training

One way to lose weight is to change the proportion of fat to muscle in your body.

Muscle is more active metabolically than fat, so by adding strength training to your workout a couple of times a week, you can slowly boost your lean tissue mass and boost your metabolic rate.

The thing to avoid is overdoing it, consistently lifting weight will surely give your bulging biceps. For best results, attempt to incorporate the use of light free weights and resistance bands. You could also carry your shopping bags to the car insted of using a stroller.

6. Increase your pace
Most times after we have been on an exercise program for a while, our body acclimatises to the routine and we get into a rut. Even of you don't gain weight it becomes difficult to achieve more weight loss.

Try pushing yourself more. Include short sharp bursts of quick paced activities during normal exercise. You can consider adding hills to your routine on the treadmill. Or suddenly cycling as fast as you can for a minute or two before you fall back to your customary pace.

Be imaginative and incorporate a minor change every day.

Do not be distracted even if your routine seems dull. Repetition of your exercises helps to ensure you lose the weight fast. Remain focused and do something in addition to the routine every day.

8. Get plenty of sleep
Sleep is important. When you lose sleep, your body assumes there is an emergency in the future and prepares for it by storing up fat. Also we tend to snack more when we are tired.

To overcome this, try to sleep for at least six to eight hours per day.

So try to shake some things up to add some speed to yor weight loss efforts.