It is time to start talking about movement. If you haven’t read the first three installments of this foundational series, you can check them out here:
https://sandiegopremiertraining.com/start-your-path-here/
https://sandiegopremiertraining.com/the-fundamental-weight-loss-habits/
In those posts, I discuss how to set your self up for success, how to change habits, and how to improve your food quality. Now we will shift our attention to the calories out side of the equation. If you want to lose body fat and improve your overall health, you must move often. You have to burn calories.
I am going to break movement activities down into two categories. These are activities of daily living and exercise. Calories burned from activities of daily living is also known as nonexercised activity thermogenesis or NEAT. This would involve any movement you do throughout the day such as walking to your car, cleaning the house, playing with the kids, etc. Then you have your intended movement or exercise activity thermogenesis (EAT). This refers simply to the energy you burn during workouts.
Let’s first focus on NEAT. I am focusing on this one first, because it is often forgotten. Every time you move it counts. When you walk up stairs, walk your dog, or any other movement. While this may not burn a ton of calories with each activity, it adds up to significant caloric expenditure over the day. This is one of the reasons why sitting is so bad. The more you move the better.
I’m sure you have heard things before like avoid escalators or parking your car further away. These are all sound advice and things you should be doing regularly. Even just standing versus sitting will be a step in the right direction. So, before you even think about an exercise program, think about how you can involve more movement throughout your day in general.
This is where activity trackers come in handy. It can be difficult to separate steps in your workout versus not, but at least if you are making sure you get as many steps as you can. Your goal will be to work up to at least 10,000 steps per day. The more the better though. See if you can start tracking this every day and hit that number.
Once you have the low hanging fruit down, not we can talk about exercise. There are so many different forms of exercise you can include, so make sure you pick things you really enjoy. If you hate running, even though it may burn a lot of calories, you probabl
y won’t stick with it.
To make it simple we will break down your exercise into two types: cardio and strength training. This is probably an oversimplification, but it will work to get you started. Cardio and strength training do completely different things and they are both needed for your body. And really, they both are necessary.
Many fall into the trap of thinking to lose weight you need to up your cardio. Well, maybe. But why would you think that? When you look at the research really to improve your body composition you need to include some of both. One study that compared cardio only, strength only, and both cardio and strength on fat loss, found the combination was the best group. While the cardio group did lose weight, they not only lost fat, but muscle mass as well. While you may not want to be a body builder, you do not want to be losing muscle mass. In that same study the combo group has the highest fat loss and gain a small amount of muscle for the best body fat improvements.
You goal should be at least 2 days a week of total body strength training. Your sets and rep ranges will vary depending on your specific training goals, and where you are in your program, but to get you started you can aim for 2-3 sets of 8-15 reps.
In your training your goal is not to just sweat, get sore, or lift as heavy as you can. Your goal is to focus on quality movement that will help you move better throughout the day. You will focus on big movement patterns such as, squatting, lunging, deadlifting, pushing, pull, and rotating. While this might not sound like a lot, there are hundreds if not thousands of variations of all these exercises you can do.
Next up is your cardio training. First, we need to remember what cardio is. This is any form of exercise that improves your cardiorespiratory system. This refers to your heart and lungs. The goal is to increase your heart rate and breathing rate for an extended period. You can run, swim, bike, walk, dance, jump rope, calisthenics, or any other activity that gets you out of breath.
Your first goal is to move on a regular basis. Your minimum should be 3 days per week of at least 30 minutes. This is a great start to develop the habit. Once you have the habit down you can get more specific with your training.
To do this the best way to maximize your cardio is to track your HR. If you are doing three days per week you can start mixing up your workouts. Each week you might have a low intensity workout where you keep your heart rate (HR) around 75% for at least 30 minutes. Then you can add a moderate workout keeping your HR around 85% of your max HR for 20-30 minutes. Finally, you can add in high intensity interval training or HIIT. This will be alternating hard bouts of exercise, getting your HR up to 90% or higher, followed by a low intensity bout until your HR returns to around 65%.
This may not make sense at first and don’t get caught up in the numbers too much. Your first step is to just get a regular routine down at least 3 days per week. That might be all you need. But if you find yourself needing more of a challenge you can add in heart rate training.
This is a lot of information that I crammed in a short post, but I hope you at least get the basics. The main idea if you need to move as much as possible. Sitting down all day and relying on a workout a few days a week is not going to cut it. You need to be conscious on both sides of exercise (EAT and NEAT)
Your goals for exercise are:
- Move as much as you can throughout the day. Find any excuse to get up and walk more.
- Include at least 2 days of total body strength training focusing on bigger functional movements.
- Include at least 3 days of cardio with any form of exercise you enjoy.
Just start there and you are on your way.
I know many of the topics we have discussed are not mind-blowing. They are not supposed to be. You want to be brilliant at the basics. Be so good at these little things and squeeze everything you can out of it. Then, you can move on to higher level challenges.
If you need help getting started and staying accountable for the items discussed in these three articles, please email me at mike@sandiegopremiertraining.com for more help. We are always here to help you get better.