Wonderful World of Cardio

Men and women alike can benefit from the power of the heart pump.  It has long been believed that cardio is for the athlete and women, however, it is just as necessary for men, teens, kids and senior citizens.  The awesome thing about cardio is that it burns through the calories that are hanging around in your body just waiting to turn into fat, especially belly bulge.

When you eat food it goes through a long process to be turned into energy for your every day bodily functions that affect every aspect of your life.  In layman terms this “energy” shuttles oxygen and nutrients to internal organs, muscle tissue and to your brain.  However, when all of these functions are accounted for and there is still energy left over your body rapidly starts turning it into fat.  It is much easier for your body to burn the food energy or ATP (Adenosine triphosphate) than it is for your body to turn fat back into ATP to be burned as energy. 

This is where it gets really cool; if you do nothing except burn off excessive ATP every day then you can STOP weight gain!!! Of course that’s not going to happen if you continue to eat 3 Twinkies and 3 snickers a day.  But let’s get back on topic and focus on just the cardio aspect of weight maintenance.  Let’s use a treadmill as an example because it’s really easy to understand what I am going to explain next with a treadmill.

Let’s say you are a 175 lb female with a daily caloric need of 1200 but you are eating 1600 calories a day.  That’s a 400 calorie surplus that will find a comfy home on your waist if you don’t use them up.  If you were to hop on a treadmill and you stayed on the treadmill until you hit 400 calorie burn you have now broken even and not gained weight that day.  Now you will obviously want to create a deficiency if you want to lose weight.  This is the important part, I know most of you like me are not mathematicians; however, I need you to stick with me for this next part. 

1. +5 calories/day = 5-7 pound gain a year
2.  -3500 calories= 1 lb weight loss

Look at that math twice.  It doesn’t seem fair does it?  Let’s go back to the treadmill.  Now we are aiming to burn 600 calories per session so that we are creating a deficiency and we are now starting to lose weight.  That extra 200 calories a day 4 days a week creates a deficiency of 800 calories week and you will lose a whopping 1 1/3 pounds a month.  That is a start but let’s dig deeper and find a way to create a bigger calorie deficit.  This is my favorite, it’s called accidental exercise!  WOW what is that?  It’s a bunch of small things you can do every day that will burn extra calories without much effort.  A few simple examples of this would be, the ones you have always heard, parking as far away from your destination as possible, taking the stairs, and walking around the block to get your mail instead of straight to your mail box and straight back.  But again let’s dig deeper and think outside the box on this, there are literally 1,000′s of ways to burn those extra calories a day.

1. Speed cleaning is my favorite, I hate cleaning my house so I make it game to see how fast I can do it and do it well, this will burn massive calories.
2. Every 30-45 minutes you spend at your desk at work stand up and sit down rapidly 10 times, you may look a little funny but as your waist line gets smaller are you really going to care?
3. Use a workout ball as your desk chair, this will whittle your waist by engaging your abs the entire time you sit on it and your energy will be better due to higher heart rate.
4. Hand wash your dishes instead of using the dishwasher.
5. Fire your gardener.
6. Get your kids and wash your car at home.
7. When you walk your dog go for the extra block OR try to start beating yesterday’s time for time around the block.
8. Find a salad and sandwich shop within walking distance from your office and make it a point to start frequenting it for lunch instead of driving to a fast food place.
9. Physically open the doors at shopping centers instead of using the automatic doors.
10. Use a hand cart instead of a push cart whenever possible.
11. On Friday night you and your sweetie walk to your favorite frozen yogurt or gelato place instead of driving.
12.  This next one my husband makes so much fun of me for: calf-raises while I chop the dinner salad.

I hope these suggestions help you start to think outside the box as far as accidental exercise.  Stay tuned for the next article when I give you the ultimate secret to fast weight loss.

• I want to hear what your favorite accidental exercises are; contact me.
• If you would like to better understand ATP click here.

Katie Stumbo, a nationally certified trainer with the National Council of Strength and Fitness, is the founder of FitLife, a Phoenix-based personal training business that offers in-home customized workouts as well as structured Boot Camps. Katie also holds certifications in yoga, Pilates, Aikido, Shinkendo and is a U.S. certified swim coach. 

Katie Stumbo is founder of FitLife.  She can be reached via email at katiestumbo@live.com.  For more information, visit www.succeedwithfitlife.com/.

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