Of the many reasons people have for working out, starting weight management programs and dieting are the most common.
The thinking behind that is quite simple - weight management is far easier for those who exercise regularly. For those for whom try weight management programs, it is a real issue and the central struggle is to maintain the appropriate balance between calories in and calories out. There are actually three strands to maintain this balance.
The first concerns calories in - put simply this means controlling the amount that you eat. While there are a thousand different diets that you can choose from, the real key is to find a way of eating a healthy diet on a long-term basis. A fad diet may help you to shift a few pounds in the short-term but will not be a long-term answer. Controlling the calories out - that is how many calories you burn in a day - has two parts to it. The first concerns your overall levels of daily activity. This includes everything from whether you climb the stairs or take the lift, through to how often you exercise.
The second part of this concerns your metabolism. The turn metabolism is often misunderstood, but simply refers to the rate at which your body burns calories. The good news is that there are several things that you can do to increase your metabolic rate, for example certain types of workouts (resistance training and interval training among them) have been shown to boost the metabolic rate, as has drinking green tea on a regular basis. The beauty of increasing your metabolic rate is that the effects will be with you 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Now that's a trick that no fat diet can duplicate!
