Tuesday, July 29, 2008 by Dr. Manny
The Medifast diet is designed to help you lose weight, but sometime during the diet you will want to begin exercising. The Medifast diet does not contain large amounts of calories so you must begin exercising slowly.
Exercise and Health
Let's talk about exercise and why it is essential for good health and weight loss. Most people who exercise regularly will tell you that it is the key, the most important single thing they do to stay healthy and fit. Many of those people won't be reading this newsletter or going to our diet site because they don't have any weight they need to lose. This newsletter is really intended for those of us who do have weight to lose, be it ten pounds or a hundred pounds.
Exercise is an essential component of any weight loss plan. Without it, you will have to diet much more strenuously to achieve your goal. Now I'm not talking about running five miles and then hitting the gym for two hours of weight lifting every day. The kind of exercise needed in a successful weight loss plan is basic and easy. Walking for one half hour daily is a very good start. Kenneth Cooper showed the world through very well done scientific studies over several years, that walking is a safe and effective way to get the benefits of exercise. Swimming is also great. Riding the stationary bike works too. The key is to start slowly and slowly progress. Many people make the mistake of overdoing their new exercise program in the beginning and after two days they are so tired and sore, they just quit. That won't do you any good at all. That is not the way to do it.
Begin any new exercise program slowly. Let's use walking as an example of how to do it right. Figure out a time that you can walk each day. Begin with just thirty minutes of moderate speed (normal) walking. After two weeks, increase the time by fifteen minutes. Now do this forty five minute walk for one month and then increase by another fifteen minutes. Now you are walking for one hour daily. Do this one hour walk for another month before any increase in duration or intensity. Now you may be ready to start jogging instead of just walking. Maybe you don't really want to jog. No problem, you don't have to. You can stay with your walk forever if you like; just pick up the speed a little. The formula described above works exactly the same for swimming or riding a bike.
Now let's talk about why exercise is important to losing weight and keeping it off permanently. Daily aerobic exercise (walking, swimming, biking) raises your basic metabolic rate (BMR). It resets your metabolic thermostat to a higher setting. Your BMR goes up during exercise and stays at a higher level than normal throughout the day. You burn more calories and you lose weight. Simple really, but many people fail to include this essential ingredient in their weight loss plan. Exercise also increases blood flow in you brain, and makes your heart and lungs stronger and more efficient. You will think better, feel better, and even sleep better. All good things.
Let's finish by talking a little about lifting weights. Weight lifting is basically an anaerobic form of exercise; not at all like the aerobic types that we talked about before. When you lift weights you stress an individual muscle or muscle group and strengthen it through a process of muscle breakdown and repair. Building lean muscle is a good idea, and it will help you stay trim, but it should only be added to your weight loss plan after you have lost approximately twenty percent of the weight you want to lose. At that point, it is a very good thing to do. Again, start slowly. You can, and should, eventually combine aerobic exercise with some weight lifting in you routine to achieve optimal health. I personally do aerobic exercise every day and lift twice a week.
That is all for this month. Please visit out website at medifasttucson.com. You will find all the products you need for losing weight and also many informative articles on health. My next newsletter in August will focus on diabetes and weight loss. As always, "the key to good dieting is good nutrition."
Dr. Brad Manny
Owner/Director Medifast Tucson
