Easy Fat Burn » cardio

The Truth About Cardio – Part II

BusyMOM — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 16:43:49 +0000

As I mentioned in The Truth About Cardio – Part I, I signed up for Rob Poulos’ Fat Burning Furnace newsletter to give me some good pointers. Here’s the second installment from his newsletter. You can sign up for his newsletter below.

Here’s what Rob says:

In the last newsletter, I talked about the truth about long duration frequent cardio or aerobic exercise for fat loss, fitness, and health. What I concluded was that this type of exercise can actually give you the exact opposite results you’re after. Here’s a quick recap why:

With this type of exercise, your body will be burning stored body fat as its primary source for fuel. While this may sound good, its actually bad news. What happens after the workout is far more important than what happens during the workout. After this type of workout is over, your body responds by holding on tightly to its stored body fat so that it’s available the very next time you perform this exercise.

From a health perspective, this type of cardio can actually reduce your body’s natural ability to deal with stress (or life, as I like to call it!). You see, long duration moderate intensity exercise conditions your body and cardiovascular system to be efficient. And efficiency means a smaller everything…heart, lungs, muscles, etc.

In effect, you are shrinking the core elements of your body’s powerhouse, and while it may get better at jogging for hours at a time, when faced with something truly stressful, you’ll be outmatched and in big trouble. How often does life require you to continuously jog for great distances? That’s right, almost never.

Now, a lot of experts out there have discovered that if you perform cardio with intervals (where you alternate short burst of high intensity with low intensity) is far better for fat loss and actually quite powerful and efficient. And normally I’d recommend it, but I don’t. Let’s talk about why that is.

Well, first off, instead of burning stored fat as fuel during the exercise, interval cardio burns the calories stored in your muscle tissue.

Instead of training your body to store fat for the next session, you’re teaching your body that it doesn’t need body fat for fuel… because you’re never using it! Your body stores more calories as fuel for your muscles this way, preparing for the next time it needs it (your next interval cardio workout). Literally the complete opposite effect of regular cardio.

And would you believe that this exercise also makes your cardiovascular system (your ‘powerhouse’) stronger, not weaker?
It’s true…you are preparing the body to handle intensity instead of duration…a big benefit to long term health.

So at this point you may be asking, “Why, Rob, do you say no to interval cardio if you just espoused it’s benefits?!” Well, I actually do recommend interval cardio to my students on occasion, depending on their unique situation. But let me explain why that is rare…

You see, while interval cardio training helps you burn fat and stay healthy, if you truly want life changing results fast you must include some form of resistance training in your workouts. Building lean muscle and strength has an overwhelmingly positive fat burning and health building effect on the body…in fact, no other type of exercise can even compete.

And the proponents of interval cardio would mostly agree with me on that fact. When I discovered interval cardio a few years back I incorporated it into my weekly workout scheme, which included resistance training too. Well, it didn’t take long for me to realize that, while this was a whole lot better than regular cardio, I still had 2 separate workouts to perform (cardio and weight training).

This kept me in the gym longer and more frequently than I’d wanted. I knew there had to be a way to combine these two forms of exercise, get all of the benefits and save even more time.

Well, after several months of experimenting, I discovered there was a way to get the benefits of both types of exercise in one short simple workout. It takes less time and it’s more effective the way I do it.

And that’s why I don’t typically recommend cardio of any type to my Fat Burning Furnace students. Interval cardio is ‘built-in’ to the FBF resistance training workouts. Now, don’t get me wrong, the FBF workouts are far from easy, because they call on maximum intensity combined with several other key variables to deliver such kick-butt and permanent results fast.

But that’s why I enjoy workouts that last 15-20 minutes and must only be performed 2-3 times each week. Any more than that and
most people will actually get worse results!

But don’t rush out and try just any resistance training program while dropping the interval cardio…there are key elements that
must be included if you are to reap the benefits of both type of exercise properly. It’s not rocket science, but it took me several years and lot of my own money to put it all together.

To get all the complete information: Read the Fatburning Furnace Blueprint – you can download it today!

Sign up for Rob Poulos’ newsletter today!

More tips for burning the fat!

The Truth About Cardio – Part I

BusyMOM — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 22:27:45 +0000

The Truth about Cardio – Part I

I got off to a rocky start on this so-called adventure. But… I will not be deterred! I signed up for Rob Poulos’ Fat Burning Furnace newsletter to give me some good pointers. This email seemed so radical to me, but in a strange way, made lots of sense. I plan on following his advice. Let me know what you think!

Here’s what came the other day to my email box:

If you’ve read any of my past newsletters or articles regarding exercise and its role in burning fat and getting healthy, you probably already know that I don’t recommend performing cardio or aerobics as your primary exercise method.

And I’m not only talking about traditional moderately paced long duration cardio, but that interval cardio stuff too. I’m not saying interval cardio doesn’t work, it does, and I’ll talk about that a bit later. But even still, I have a lot of people angry at me… in fact I get emails almost every day from people who think I’m nuts for telling them they don’t have to perform exclusive cardio of any kind.

Well, I’m kinda tired of answering all of those questions ‘one on one’, so I thought it was time to let loose some of the solid reasons why I make these bold recommendations I’m going to go into some depth here, so this email is ‘part 1′… I’ll finish the topic off in a couple of days in ‘part 2′.

First let’s tackle the traditional cardio… you know, the type that has you on a treadmill or something similar where you try and stay in your target heart rate for fat burning. This has you jogging at a slow to moderate pace for typically 30-60 minutes at a time, 3-5 times each week. If you’re trying to burn fat off, this is a big mistake. Here’s why:

Even worse, what you are doing here is telling the body to make more fat when possible, just in case it encounters this type of cardio again. Guess where your post workout meal is going… that’s right, your fat stores. It should be obvious that we would want to avoid this exercise if we want to burn fat and stay lean.

Now if you want to be good at taking long hikes or running a marathon, then this type of cardio will help you. You’ll become better by increasing your endurance. But this is a trade off, as you’re making your body more efficient, but reducing it’s ability to deal with life’s activities and burn fat maximally.

There are also long term health implications associated with this exercise, including overuse injuries and muscle imbalances from the repetitive pounding on your joints and targeted muscle groups. There’s a reason there are injuries named after this type of activity! (anyone heard of ‘runner’s knee’?)

One last point about long duration moderate intensity cardio… most of these problems occur when performing this exercise for more than 10-15 minutes… that’s when the body taps into its fat stores for fuel… that’s also the point when you start getting efficient and shrinking your powerhouse. Sure you could stop after 10-15 minutes, but the low intensity level will have little effect on burning body fat or providing significant health benefits.

Alright, hopefully I’ve scared you off of the treadmill with that information. But wait, you say, many health and fitness experts have started to realize the same things about long duration cardio… and they’ve found the answer… interval cardio training! OK, let’s talk about that…in ‘part 2′ of this topic which I’ll cover in the next eNewsletter…keep you eyes peeled for it in the next couple of days.

By the way, have you had a chance to read my Fat Burning Furnace blueprint yet? If not, you need to go and do that right now.

I lost over 40 pounds of fat, totally reshaped my body, boosted my energy and health immensely… and I did in just a few months with workouts that last just 15-20 minutes performed 2-3 times each week. It took me years to learn all of the secrets I use…but you can download my system right now and discover them for yourself in just a few minutes here:

http://www.fatburningfurnace.com/specialoffer

Let me know what you think!

Go ahead and read The Truth About Cardio – Part II!

More tips for burning the fat!

Ugh! The beginning is always painful…burn the fat

BusyMOM — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 16:07:22 +0000

Painful beginnings when it comes to FINALLY commit to losing my over-40 extra weight that just NEEDS to come off! But, I am on a mission…. to burn the fat.

My goal! No more muffin top!

I do not have a lot of weight to lose. 10-15 lbs. and I would be most happy. But it means the following:

I have to commit to changing my lifestyle
I have to give up amend the amount of crackers with cheese that I eat on a daily basis.
I need to get back to exercising. Ugh! There, I said it again.
I need to find out the truth about cardio… does it work or is there an easier way?

I like my life the way it is… but I don’t buy new clothes – unless forced to because of some kind of event that my closet can not cater to.

I think about how much I DON’T want to go to our local swimming place this summer with my kids. The thought of putting on any kind of bathing suit just about fries me.

This is not a new story. I am not unique in wanting to lose a few pounds. But, I thought if I first committed to writing about it, it might make the difference.

See, I’ve tried everything. Almost. Jenny Craig – yuck! Sorry, but that did not work for me at all and seems like it was always a black hole to my pocketbook.

Weight Watchers - both the meetings and the online approach. Great recipes, but too much work involved with keeping track of points, or blocks or whatever the measurements of food was. Couldn’t stand going to the meetings. That gets a double yuck in my book. I know, it works for lots of people. But, it felt like an AA meeting for foodies like me…

Herbalife – Weight Loss, Inner Nutrition, Outer Nutrition, Energy & Fitness
– worked for awhile and then I couldn’t stay on it… too many supplements to take!

Pills. Oh right. I’m laughing my head off now. What a crop of crap that is! Pills do NOT make you skinny. And some of them made me feel just like I was ready to take off for the space station without needing a rocket! I hate feeling like my sentences were tripping over themselves to come out of my mouth. My head was buzzing so much, I couldn’t sit still or concentrate. Not a good thing at all. There went $35.00 down the toilet. Good riddance.

And so many other methodsthat it seems stupid to list them all here. Suffice it to say, I just want to feel good in my (old) clothes again - without having that darn muffin top spill over the top of my jeans for gosh sake! I never had this problem growing up.

But it’s the sad reality of turning 40 – having kids – being too busy to make it to the gym – and loving cheese and crackers just a little too much that finally makes me want to get a life and get that happy and lasting body weight back again.

So, here I am. Join me on my journey. What helps me – I will share with you, Dear Reader. I plan on making it fun, not arduous. Check back as I build this blog and fill it with good stuff for you to legally chew on!

Yours in healthy weight,

BusyMOM