The problem of obesity continues to grow and studies show that over three quarters of all Americans have tried to lose weight at some stage in their life. Most people that try to lose weight struggle to do so and many who do manage to reach their goal weight struggle to maintain that weight.
Exercise is a necessary tool for losing excess weight but unfortunately some people just don't know where to start or don't know what type of exercise routine would be most effective. Sometimes they aren't sure how much exercise to do in a day, how often to exercise and what type of exercise to do.
Every person needs a minimum number of calories per day and any calories over that need to be burned off to maintain a good weight. To lose weight you need to be burning off more calories than you need and to do this you need to exercise. For the best results it is recommended to exercise for an hour every day so you find people walking for miles and wearing themselves out. When this happens they lose interest and soon forget the exercise altogether. Even a 20 minute walk a day will help to lose weight as long as it's combined with a healthy diet. If you overdo the exercising you will lose energy and struggle to cope with the rest of the day.
Some people prefer short bursts of high energy exercise and others prefer one longer exercise session. These are both effective and will improve fitness and help with weight loss. It often depends on what type of exercise routine you prefer and what fits better into your lifestyle. Some will find that shorter exercise sessions fit better into their day while others prefer to take the time out to fit in one longer session. The main thing to remember is to be regular with your exercise routine and complete them each day. Different types of exercises will burn off more calories than others so you will also want to consider that fact when deciding how long to exercise for.
If you are doing low impact, low cardio exercises then you will want to do them for a longer period than if you are doing high impact, high cardio exercises. High cardio exercises will burn more calories faster so you can do them in shorter bursts and still burn off the same amount of calories as you would in a long session of low cardio exercises.
It isn't so much the length of time a person exercises that is important but also the frequency of exercise and the rate that one performs the exercise. Less time needs to be spent on high-rate activities because they burn up calories faster than moderate activities. So choose an exercise routine that you would like to do and then take these factors into consideration when deciding how much time to spend exercising.
