December 02, 2008
Count Calories, Not the Pace
To tone muscles, think more cardio and less trying to target one area of the body.
Q: Can I reduce my love handles by twisting or bending side to side?
A: Nope, just as abdominal exercises won't flatten your belly, and leg lifts won't slim your thighs, side twists and bends won't reduce your waistline. You simply can't target an area with repetitive exercise and expect the fat to melt away.
Forget about twisting side to side, and spend the time on calorie-burning exercise like walking, hiking or cycling. Regular exercise, in combination with cutting calories, is the most effective way to shed body fat. And, while genetics largely determines where you will lose the fat first, at least some of it will come off your love handles.
Q: If twists and bends won't slim your waist, will these exercises at least firm up the muscles underneath?
A: Not really. Your obliques, a group of abdominal muscles that wrap around your middle like a girdle, barely benefit from these exercises. Meanwhile, twists can wrench your lower back.
A more effective exercise for the obliques is the side plank, which can help minimize back pain. Lie on your right side, propped up on your right forearm with your legs straight, abs tight and left hand on your hip. Balancing on the bottom edge of your right foot and your right forearm, press your body up off the floor, keeping it as straight as possible. Hold for 10 slow counts, and then switch sides.
Q: Is it better for weight loss if I do short workouts at a fast pace or long workouts at a slow pace?
A: For weight loss, what matters most is how many total calories you burn, not your pace. The harder you push, the more calories you'll burn; but too many killer workouts will leave you sore, exhausted or possibly injured, not to mention burned-out on exercise. Aim to strike a balance between high- and low-intensity workouts. Once or twice a week, rev up your pace and do a 20-minute workout, or do "intervals": alternate a few minutes of easy exercise with 1- to 2- minute bursts of high-intensity exercise. On other days, enjoy a longer, more leisurely workout.
If you regularly exercise on cardio machines, know that those slow-paced "fat burning" programs are misleading — vestiges of an outdated belief that long, slow workouts are best for weight loss. This myth does stem from an actual truth: At slower speeds, your body's primary fuel source is fat, whereas at higher intensities, you primarily use the carbohydrate circulating in your blood stream or stored in your muscle.
But using higher percentages of fat as fuel doesn't translate into quicker fat loss, since exercising at a slow pace doesn't burn as many calories. It's the total calories burned – not the fuel source – that matters most.
Including high-intensity workouts in your program not only boosts your calorie burn but also increases your fitness level and may help fight disease. Canadian researchers have found that interval training seems to jumpstart an enzyme that is integral to fat burning for up to six hours after a workout. The researchers suspect this enzyme helps prevent metabolic syndrome, the cluster of conditions including high blood pressure, high blood fats, insulin resistance and abdominal obesity that lead to diabetes and heart disease.
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About Our Expert: Suzanne Schlosberg is the author of The Ultimate Workout Log and The Essential Fertility Log and coauthor of Fitness for Dummies and The Fat-Free Truth. She's a health and fitness writer living in Bend, Oregon.
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