If You Already Exercise

Maybe you exercise and you are still overweight. If that is the case, your body may have become very efficient at doing your current work-out. That means you are burning fewer calories and not building new muscles. Therefore, your body needs to work harder.

You may have to increase the frequency of your exercise, vary the activities you do to work a variety of muscles, enhance the intensity of what you do, or spend more time exercising.

The most efficient way to make exercise more effective is to add strength training. For instance, hold hand weights when you do lunges, do your situps slowly, push yourself harder in pilates class, or raise the elevation on the treadmill. When your muscles are worked hard, your body burns fat for energy.

If you want to lose weight, it isn’t enough to just stroll around the neighborhood a couple of evenings a week, take the stairs instead of the elevator, park your car a few blocks from your destination, and get up every hour or so from your computer. These movements will burn some extra calories, improve your cardiovascular health by getting the blood pumping regularly throughout the day, and keep you from getting stiff - but they are not enough if you want to really drop pounds.