“I know I need to exercise. For some people, exercise is like breathing; for others, like me, it takes effort. Exercising is what I need for my metabolism and for a better sense of well-being.” ~Al Roker
Physical activity is essential for maintaining a healthy metabolism and weight. It can add years to your life.
By increasing your metabolism, you can lose weight up to five times faster. Studies have shown that workouts as short as 4-10 minutes can lead to faster metabolism and faster weight loss.
Short workouts can help many people who are trying to lose weight and stay healthy, but they’re too busy for long workouts. These quick workouts can be done at home, in the gym or anywhere.
Physical activity is essential for maintaining a healthy metabolism and weight. Short workouts can speed-up metabolism and weight loss. This can help many people who are trying to lose weight and stay healthy, but they’re too busy for long workouts.
A Sedentary Lifestyle Leads to a Slower Metabolism and Weight Gain
Dieting and long workouts are not required to improve metabolism. Dieting that involves starvation actually slows down metabolism.
A sedentary lifestyle involving little or no physical activity leads to a slower metabolism and weight gain.
Most people in our society are living a sedentary lifestyle.
This involves sitting or lying down while reading, watching television or videos online, playing video games, socializing online, browsing or shopping online as well as using your mobile phone or computer for much of the day.
To avoid gaining weight, obesity-related diseases and other unhealthy effects of inactivity, increasing your physical activity can boost your metabolism and lead to faster weight loss.
What is the biggest roadblock for most people trying to increase their metabolism, lose weight and stay healthy?
Most people are too busy to participate in long workouts.
Here’s the good news for people who are too busy to carve out a 60-minute block of time to work out…
Exercise research studies have shown that shorter workouts can boost metabolism and lead to greater fat burning compared to longer workouts. The secret is interval exercise.
Short Interval Exercises Can Help You Burn More Fat and Lose Weight Faster Than Longer Workouts
Researchers at Australia’s University of New South Wales and the Garvan Institute found that interval exercise can burn three times as much fat as running twice as long at a moderately hard, steady pace.
They studied 45 overweight women over 15 weeks. They went through a 20-minute cycling regime in which they sprinted on a stationary bike for 8 seconds followed by 12 seconds of cycling lightly. They lost three times more weight as other women who exercised at a continuous, regular pace for 40 minutes.
Results from this study can also be applied to swimming, rowing, running and walking.
Non-exercisers and sedentary people can achieve significant gains going from zero to 10 minutes a day…
A study involving 464 women who weren’t exercisers was done by researchers at Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
After six months, a group who walked about 10 minutes a day (an average of 72 minutes a week at two to three mph) had significantly improved heart strength and general fitness; this nearly matched the efforts of women exercising almost twice as long.
According to lead study author Tim Church, MD PhD, “your body responds very positively, very quickly to even small amounts of exercise. If you’re sedentary, you’ll see a lot of your greatest gains going from zero to 10 minutes a day.”
Many Americans are overweight or obese and they’re not able to participate in high-level activities. Walking is an ideal workout for most people. Even overweight and obese individuals can participate in a walking exercise program.
The problem is that walking for 60 minutes, seven times a week does not result in much fat loss for most people. The solution for a lot of overweight people is interval walking.
Starting even with just 10 minutes a day and increasing to 30 minutes of interval walking can boost metabolism and increase weight loss.
A study done at the University of Virginia showed that women who did three shorter, fast-paced walks a week (in addition to two longer, moderate-paced walks) lost 5 times more belly fat that those who strolled at a moderate speed 5 days a week — without dieting!
These studies show that long workouts are not required to speed-up metabolism. This can help many people who are trying to lose weight, but they’re too busy for long workouts.
Workouts as short as 4-10 minutes can lead to faster metabolism and faster weight loss. Interval training can trigger a metabolic response that can lead to three times the amount of fat burned.
Too Busy to Increase Your Physical Activity? A 4-Minute Tabata Workout Can Help You Burn Fat and Lose Weight Quickly
Studies have shown that a 4-minute Tabata workout can torch serious calories and burn fat quickly.
Tabata training is a form of high-intensity interval training (HIIT). Based on research by Japanese scientist Dr. Izumi Tabata and a team of researchers from the National Institute of Fitness and Sports in Japan (1996), an effective Tabata workout lasts four minutes. It requires 20 seconds of all out intensity, followed by 10 seconds of rest; by repeating this eight times, you get a total of 4 minutes of exercise.
The study found that 4 minutes of Tabata training improved aerobic capacity to a similar degree as 60 minutes of moderate-intensity continuous training. It also resulted in a 28% increase in anaerobic capacity.
Although there are many different ways to perform high-intensity interval training (HIIT), all of the workouts are characterized by periods of heavy effort combined with periods of either complete rest or low intensity recovery.
No matter how busy you are, you can perform short workouts which can help boost your metabolism and lose weight faster.