Working Out and Working the Weight Off: Understanding the many benefits of exercise, Finding time to work out, Getting physical with aerobics and strength training, Including extra activities in your routine, Improving your mental health with mind-body exercises and Knowing when to quit.

Working Out and Working the Weight Off

In This Chapter

� Understanding the many benefits of exercise

� Finding time to work out

� Getting physical with aerobics and strength training

� Including extra activities in your routine

� Improving your mental health with mind-body exercises

� Knowing when to quit

Do I have to?” are words I hear more often than not when I recommend more exercise to someone who wants to lose weight. Some people even make faces at me and beg for menu plans low enough in calories that they can deal with their weight strictly by dieting. Sorry for the bad news, but diet and exercise go hand in hand. Unfortunately, you can’t have one without the other.

Many people certainly try to lose weight with only diet or exercise, but you probably won’t have any long-term success with weight control unless you pay attention to both the number of calories you consume and what you do to burn off those calories. That’s why you need to incorporate both diet and exercise into your new low-calorie lifestyle.

You can live a low-cal lifestyle to maintain a healthier weight throughout your life, but unless you’re an especially tiny person, you can’t stay on a strict low- calorie diet (of less than 1,200 to 1,500 calories) forever. And you shouldn’t. The point of your new lifestyle isn’t to eat less and less food or spend the rest of your life worrying about how many calories are in one food or another. Nor is the point to exercise yourself into a state of exhaustion to try to make up for an eating binge. Doing so is almost impossible anyway, because it can take hours of exercise to work off the calories from that pint of ice cream or triple deluxe cheeseburger that took only minutes to eat! And who has the time anyway? Your higher goal is to discover how to enjoy eating by finding a comfortable balance between the amount of food you eat, or the calories you consume, and the activity you do on a regular basis to burn those calories.

If you haven’t already developed an exercise plan, or if you need to improve on your usual routine, this chapter can help you form better physical habits. Just remember that this chapter is a fitness overview. It doesn’t include everything you need to know about working out and staying fit. However, you can find solid, basic information and the encouragement to kick-start an exercise routine. For more complete information on exercise and its role in weight control, pick up a copy of Fitness For Dummies by Suzanne Schlosberg and Liz Neporent (Wiley). If ever there was a good “companion” book to this one, that’s it.

If you’re older than 40, if you have any type of health problem, or if you plan to intensify your current program, check with your doctor. Even if you haven’t been diagnosed with a medical condition, you need to alert your doctor of any chest pains, back or leg pains, dizziness, or wheezing or breathlessness you experience during or after any mild exertion.

Recognizing the Advantages of Different Kinds of Exercise

Exercise boosts your metabolic rate, or the rate at which you burn calories. Burning calories is especially important when you’re on a low-calorie diet because, when you start to eat a lot less food than you normally eat, your body goes into a state known as starvation mode. Your metabolic rate slows down because your body doesn’t know you’re on a low-calorie diet. For all your body knows, you could be about to starve. In fact, your body is trying to conserve energy in case it doesn’t get enough fuel, and thus it’s not able to burn calories as efficiently. Exercise helps counter this effect.

Physical activity helps keep you fit, and when you’re fit, you look and feel your best. The more fit you are, the better you’re able to work, play, think, and even relax. When you’re healthy and in good physical and mental shape, you often feel as though you have energy to spare and you’re better able to focus on everything you do and enjoy every aspect of your life.

In the following sections, I explain the two basic types of exercise and tell you about the physical and psychological benefits of each one.

Distinguishing between aerobic and anaerobic exercise

Exercise helps you lose weight and maintain weight loss because it uses up excess calories that would otherwise be stored in your body as fat. Obviously, the amount of exercise you need to control your weight depends on the amount of food you eat as well as the amount and type of exercise. To lose weight, and then to maintain your weight loss, you have to find your own bal- ance between the amounts of food you eat and your amount of exercise. The more rigorous the activity, the more calories you’ll burn. However, don’t think you have to knock yourself out with intense exercise every day just to stay in shape. Intense workouts help burn fat while you’re exercising, but in the long run, steady, moderate exercise is more effective at burning calories than super- intense workouts because moderate activity burns a higher percentage of calories overall.

There are two types of exercise: aerobic and anaerobic.

 Aerobic means “with oxygen.” Aerobic exercise, such as running, biking, stepping, spinning, and fast dancing, helps get necessary oxygen into your body cells. While you’re doing aerobic exercises, you’re burning excess calories.

� Anaerobic, or nonaerobic, means “without oxygen.” Anaerobic exercises, such as slow walking, bowling, or strength training with weights, are important to your overall fitness level, but they generally don’t help your body burn excess calories while you’re performing the exercise.

Different types of exercise affect different parts of your body and have different effects on your health. That’s why cross training, or incorporating a variety of exercises into your workout routine, is so important. In that way, exercising is similar to eating: You want as much balance and variety in your daily life as possible. Different types of exercise affect different body parts, and each plays a role in losing weight and maintaining a healthy weight. (See “Putting Together a Safe and Effective Exercise Plan,” later in this chapter for more details.)

Exploring the physical benefits of exercise

Exercise does a ton more for you than just burn excess calories to help you lose weight. Aerobic exercises have terrific cardiovascular benefits, while anaerobic exercises benefit your muscle groups, bones, and joints. Some of the benefits also cross over. For instance, both aerobic and anaerobic exercises help you sleep better and reduce your blood pressure. Both play huge roles in weight control.

Following are many of the potential physical benefits of aerobic and anaero- bic exercise.

Aerobic exercises improve your health by

� Boosting your energy level by building cardio-respiratory endurance

� Conditioning your heart

� Controlling your appetite

� Reducing your risk of developing certain types of cancer and other chronic diseases

� Regulating your hormones

� Lengthening your life

Anaerobic exercises improve your health by

� Bolstering your posture, joint health, and flexibility

� Building up muscle strength and endurance

� Helping you sleep better

� Reducing your blood pressure

� Strengthening your bones

Examining the psychological benefits of exercise

Over time, regular aerobic and anaerobic exercise can have as many positive effects on your mental health as it does on your physical health. The following are some of the benefits:

� Building confidence

� Diffusing anger

� Encouraging other positive lifestyle changes

� Enhancing your ability to deal with stress

� Improving your overall sense of well-being

� Increasing your self-esteem

� Lessening anxiety

� Lifting depression

� Reducing the effects of stress

� Stabilizing your moods

Fitting Exercise into Your Life

The No. 1 excuse people give for not exercising is lack of time. They say they don’t have time in their hectic schedules to go to a gym on a regular basis, and they don’t have time to work out at home. However, don’t you find it funny that although many people can’t find enough time to work out, they always find time to eat?

What you really have to find is the motivation to make a commitment to some type of regular exercise. When you’re motivated, you find the time. To get your- self on a path to fitness, use the same motivators you use to stay on a diet (see Chapter 4 for more about finding motivation). To start with, focus on the many ways exercise can improve your health and make it easier to stick to a low-cal lifestyle. Include the way it will make you look and feel about yourself.

Before you actually start an exercise program, remember this: Everyone’s appropriate level of fitness is different, depending on age, gender, heredity, health condition, and individual eating and exercising habits. To improve your fitness level, you have to focus on the factors that you can control, such as your eating and exercise habits and your attitude toward food and physical activity. That’s where you have the power to make significant changes.

People who don’t have weight problems and people who are successful at losing weight and maintaining that weight loss are usually people who not only watch what they eat, but also get some type of exercise on a regular basis.

In order to get yourself on track and stay there, you need to analyze your life and how exercise can fit into it. The following tips can help.

� If you join a gym, be sure it’s convenient to your home or workplace.

� If you need other people to help you stay motivated, find a gym buddy or a running partner or join a group exercise activity.

� When you can’t do any type of formal exercise, try to walk more, use the stairs more, and generally move about more throughout your day. Vary your exercise routine and challenge yourself from time to time to keep it interesting.

� Use the reward system. (Flip to Chapter 7 for ideas on how to reward yourself for a workout well done!)

� Hire a certified personal trainer through a local gym or a personal refer- ral. Until you become more accountable to yourself, you may need to report to someone else. A professional trainer knows just how far to push you and can help you push yourself. A trainer can also instruct you how to be most efficient with your workout time.

In the following sections, I give you tips on setting up a regular workout schedule, increasing your amount of exercise, and adding some activity to your daily routine.

Easing into an exercise routine

Just as you manage your low-calorie diet by setting goals for changing your eating habits and losing a certain number of pounds in a certain period of time, you need to manage your fitness program by setting exercise goals. (You can read more about goal setting in Chapter 4.) Your first short-term goal may just be to sit down and start setting goals. After that, your goal may be to join a gym this week or to take your first brisk walk tonight after dinner. After you establish the type of exercises you’re going to do and when, your next set of goals needs to focus on how much time you want to spend on each exercise, how many repetitions you want to do, how fast you want to go, and so forth.

To help turn sporadic attempts at exercise into a real fitness routine, start by picking a time of day that’s best for you to exercise. For most people, that time means early in the morning, during a lunch hour, or right after work. You can start off exercising just two or three days a week, if that’s all you can manage.

If you’re new to formal exercise, start slow and work in a few more minutes of activity every day until you build up to a full routine. Start with a 10-minute walk, a 10-minute swim, or 10 minutes on the stair climber. If it’s 10 minutes more than you were doing before, then you’re making a great start! Later that same day, see if you can fit in another 10 minutes of similar activity.

A good long-term exercise goal is to get 30 minutes or more of steady, moder- ate exercise at least 5 days a week. At times, however, you may have to break those 30 minutes up and get your exercise in 5- or 10-minute spurts through- out the day. That’s better than no exercise at all, and in fact, some researchers now think that shorter bouts of activity repeated throughout the day can have at least an equal effect on metabolism as one continuous exercise session, especially in people who don’t exercise on a regular basis.

Too much exercise too soon can be more harmful than helpful, so if you haven’t been exercising recently, start slow. Normally sedentary people who suddenly get up and exert themselves are among those at high risk of dying from a heart attack. Gradually build up your fitness level. Walk before you run, and bike slowly before you race. Do 10 minutes of exercise a day the first week, build up to 20 minutes the second week, and so on.

Organizing your workout schedule

After you have established some sort of exercise routine, and you feel comfortable adding to it, you can start setting your sights a little higher. A good workout schedule includes

� Ten minutes of warm-up exercises at the beginning of every workout

� Thirty minutes or more of ongoing aerobic exercise at least three times a week

� Twenty minutes of weight lifting at least twice a week

� Thirty minutes of calisthenics, sit-ups, push-ups, pull-ups, and weight- bearing exercises at least three times a week to build up muscular endurance

� Ten minutes of cooling-down exercises at the end of every workout

� Ten minutes of gentle stretching, which can follow your warm-up exercises or be incorporated into your cooling-down exercises

For more about these workout elements, see “Putting Together a Safe and Effective Exercise Plan” and “Exercising Additional Workout Options,” later in this chapter.

Interval training, which means alternating between high intensity and low intensity activity, is a great exercise technique when you can’t fully commit to an aerobic exercise. You burn extra calories because you boost your metabolic rate during short bursts of intense exercise without having to commit to a full hour of high sweat. For example, say you’re walking or riding a bike for your daily exercise. First you warm up at a slow pace for about 10 minutes. Then you move into a brisk walk or speed up your cycling for a minute or two, and then slow down to a more moderate pace until you fully catch your breath. Repeat this cycle at regular intervals, taking as much time to catch your breath before you go back to full speed. Remember to cool down when you’re done. Besides helping you burn more calories, interval training helps you work up to more intense activity and it can alleviate boredom, which can help keep you exercising longer.

Although some people have a problem with overexercising (and you can read more about exercising too much in “Knowing How Much Exercise Is Too Much,” later in this chapter), many more have a problem with not exercising enough. Studies have shown that people who say they have a hard time losing weight tend to overestimate their amount of exercise by as much as 50 percent (and at the same time, underestimate the amount of food they eat by almost as much). That’s why consistent record keeping is an important weight-loss tool.

To keep consistent records, you can use an exercise log like the one in Figure 8-1 in two different ways:

� You can create an advance workout plan for the week and write down your exercise goals (see Chapter 4 for more about setting these goals).

� You can simply keep a record of how much exercise you do each day and track your progress.

Figure 8-1 gives you an idea of what a basic exercise log looks like. The follow- ing easy steps can help you fill out your own daily exercise log.

1. In the first column, write down the date.

2. In the next column, write down the actual exercise you did or plan to do.

3. Next, write down the category that particular exercise falls into.

Knowing this information helps you make sure your exercise plan has enough variety to cover different muscle groups and different body parts throughout the week.

4. In the last column, write down how long you exercised, how far you went, how fast you went, or how many sets or repetitions you completed.

You can add additional columns, such as a column for calories burned with each aerobic exercise if you have that information, steps walked if you use a pedometer, or even a column for jotting down any motivational tips or workout advise you come across.

Increasing activity in your everyday routine

Are you a little intimidated by all the muscle heads and sweaty 20-some things in your local gym? Don’t worry. You don’t have to set foot inside a gym to incorporate more exercise into your lifestyle. The following are just four examples:

� Turn your commuting time into exercise time. If you normally drive or take public transportation to work or school, consider walking, cycling, scooting, or skating.

� Get a dog. Dogs need to be walked several times a day, and if you get the right kind of dog, he’ll need to run as well. Take him to the park and run with him.

� Do it yourself. The price you pay for hired help may be higher than you think. Housework, gardening, lawn maintenance, and home repairs are all calorie-burning, strength-building, and flexibility-increasing activities. The more physical work you do around the house, the more calories you burn and the more fit you’ll be.

� Take fitness vacations. Next time you plan a trip, consider a fitness option. You can choose from any number of spa vacations, hiking trips, mountain climbing trips, yoga retreats, and cross-country skiing vacations, to name just a few fitness-oriented escapes.

Putting Together a Safe and Effective Exercise Plan

When you exercise to lose weight, you’re trying to hold on to calorie-burning muscle while you lose unwanted fat. In order to accomplish this, you need to exercise all your body parts and not just the ones that you don’t like! The more muscle mass you have, the higher your metabolic rate, the stronger you are, and the easier it is to stay active and become even more active.

Sticking to an exercise plan is much easier if you choose activities you enjoy. If you like group activities, you can choose numerous activities including taking classes at a gym, joining a bowling league, playing other team sports, finding a tennis partner, or joining a bike club or hiking group. If exercise time is time you’d rather spend alone, then walking, jogging, swimming, and bike riding may be more your style. The best exercise for you is the one that you’ll actually do!

In the following sections, I explain the importance of warming up before you exercise and cooling down afterwards, give you more details about aerobics, and provide a few ideas on strength-building activities to try.

Warming up, cooling down, and other workout essentials

The point of exercise is to get and stay healthy, not to hurt yourself! Warm-up exercises such as walking, slow jogging, slow biking, and arm and leg rotations reduce your risk of injury by sending blood to your muscles and connective tissue to literally warm up these areas before you go into full-blown activity. The additional blood flow increases the temperature in these areas

and provides additional oxygen needed for exercise. Warm up for at least 10 minutes with body motions similar to those used in the type of exercise you choose, so that you’re warming up the same muscles. For instance, swim a couple of slow laps before swimming at full speed or work up to a fast walk or slow jog before running.

A cooling-down period is just as essential to a good workout as a warm-up. Cooling down, or gradually reducing the intensity of your workout, allows your heartbeat to drop slowly back to a normal rate. Instead of stopping suddenly, you simply continue with your same workout at a slower rate. That means bringing your run down to a slow jog, lowering the speed on your treadmill, or slowing down your rowing action for at least 5 or 10 minutes before you call it quits.

When you’re exercising, don’t forget to breathe regularly because holding your breath can adversely affect your blood pressure. If you have a tendency to hold your breath while exercising, get into the habit of frequently reminding yourself to exhale. Most people get a little winded from working out, but you don’t ever want to find yourself gasping for breath.

One of the most essential pieces of workout equipment you can own, regard- less of what type of exercise you’re doing, is a water bottle. Carry one with you at all times and drink from it often during your workout. Drinking water throughout your workout not only prevents you from becoming dehydrated, but it also fills you up on a calorie-free fluid.

Burning more calories with aerobics

In Chapter 3, I discuss the magic number for losing a pound a week, which is 3,500 calories. That is, you have to consume 3,500 fewer calories, or burn 3,500 more calories than you normally do in a week to lose one pound that week. In numbers that are easier to swallow, you have to cut 500 calories a day from your diet or burn 500 more calories a day through some sort of physical activity.

But actually it doesn’t have to be an “either/or” situation. You can compromise. For example, you can cut 250 calories from your daily diet and add enough exercise to burn the other 250. Or you can cut 100 and burn 400. Or come up with any other combination that suits your needs for the day.

That’s the beauty of dieting and exercising at the same time. If losing weight by cutting calories means you have to be on a 1,000-calorie plan but you’d be happier with 1,200 or 1,300 calories, no problem! Just add 300 calories worth of exercise to your day.

Aerobic exercise is a surefire way to burn plenty of calories. The following sections tell you how to aim for the correct heart-rate range as you work out, show you different aerobic exercises that you can try, and give you the scoop on just how many calories you can burn with different exercises.

Targeting the right heart rate range

More important than anything else, calorie counts included, is the safety and effectiveness of your workout. The way to measure it is simple. It’s in the palm of your hands. Well, not quite in the palm, but up a little farther, in your wrist. It’s called your pulse. Your pulse measures your heart rate, or your heartbeats per minute (bpm). Your normal, resting heart rate, which is your bpm in the morning when you first get up and before you begin your day’s activities, needs to be between 60 and 90 bpm, give or take a few beats. Your target heart rate, or training heart rate, may be twice that, or more. You need to figure out this number so that when you do aerobic exercises, or any exercise that gets your heart beating faster, you can determine if your workout is safely and effectively helping you burn calories to lose weight.

Everyone has a safe and effective heart rate range (which is the number of beats per minute your heart should be beating during intense exercise) within which to work out. This range is 50 to 85 percent of your maximum heart rate, or the fastest your heart can beat. To estimate your maximal heart rate, you simply subtract your age from the number 226 if you’re female or 220 if you’re male. So, for example, if you’re a 37-year-old woman, your estimated maximal heart rate is 189. Your target heart rate range, then, is between 95 (50 percent) and 161 (85 percent). That information is useful but you now have to figure out if you’re working out at a rate that puts your heartbeat in that range.

The most accurate and convenient way to determine if you’re within your target range is with a heart monitor. (See the sidebar “Using exercise gadgets and gizmos,” later in this chapter, for more information on this exercise tool.) If you don’t have a heart monitor, you can count your own heartbeat. To do so, stop exercising and immediately take your pulse at your wrist or your neck, counting the beats for 15 seconds. Multiply that number by 4 to find your beats per minute. If your heart is beating faster than the high end of your target heart rate range, slow down. If it’s beating slower than the low end of your range, you can work yourself a little harder.

For example, if you’re the same 37-year-old woman in the previous example, and your target heart rate is between 95 and 161, then your beats per minute must be less than 161.

When you first start a new exercise program, and especially if you’re out of shape, you may not even be in your target heart range. At that point, your goal is to get your heart rate up to the low end of your range (50 percent). Your next goal is to work to the top of the range as you get fit.

Surveying aerobic activities

Any activity that brings your pulse up into your target heart rate range and keeps it there for at least 20 minutes is an aerobic exercise. If you stop and start again, as you do when you play basketball, you’re not getting a true aerobic workout because your heartbeat doesn’t stay in your target range long enough.

The following list includes activities such as running and bicycling that are considered aerobic exercises under the right circumstances, as well as activities such as tennis and boxing, which aren’t actually aerobic, but can provide a rigorous workout that promotes weight loss.

� Bike racing

� Boxing

� Cardio-stepping

� Climbing the stair climber/ step platform

� Cross-country skiing

� Cycling

� Fast dancing

� Fast walking

� Jogging

� Jumping rope

� Playing the following:

• Handball

• Racquetball

• Squash

• Tennis

� Riding a stationary bike/ recumbent bike

� Rowing

� Running

� Skating

� Spinning

� Swimming

� Using elliptical trainers

� Walking on a treadmill

Any aerobic exercise that involves running, jumping, or heavy stepping is considered a high-impact activity that can eventually take its toll on your knees and other joints. Exercises like swimming, cycling, rowing, and skating, on the other hand, are low-impact aerobic workouts that provide great cardiovascular benefits and burn a significant amount of calories without putting stress on your bones and joints.

Calculating the number of calories you’re burning

Aerobic activities burn anywhere from 5 to 15 calories per minute, depending on how much you weigh and the exercise’s intensity. The more you weigh, the harder it is to perform aerobic activities, so if you weigh more, you’ll burn more calories working out for the same amount of time than a person who weighs less.

Table 8-1 shows the approximate number of calories burned per hour for various activities performed by someone who weighs approximately 155 pounds. If you weigh less, you’ll burn somewhat fewer calories per- forming the same activity for the same period of time; if you weigh more, you’ll burn a few more.

Building your strength

Aerobic exercises increase your metabolic rate while you do them, and there- fore increase your capacity to burn calories while you’re working out, but they don’t necessarily build up your muscles. The more lean, healthy muscle tissue you have in your shoulders, arms, legs, back, chest, midsection (abdominals), legs, and butt, the more effective your body will be at burning calories all the time. The way to build bigger and better muscles is with strength training. Any type of exercise that involves weight resistance, either from lifting free weights, working out on weight machines, or using your own body as a weight, will result in better muscle health, which in turn results in a higher metabolic rate and more efficient calorie burning.

A strength-training routine becomes more important as you get older and your metabolism naturally begins to slow down. If you don’t build up your lean muscle tissue, it starts to wither away and becomes less metabolically active in the process. When that process happens, you start gaining weight even if you’re not eating any more than you ever did. Your body can no longer burn calories at the rate it did when you were younger so if you don’t work out, you have to eat less food to prevent weight gain.

Different types of strengthening exercises work out different muscle groups. Squats and lunges work your legs and butt, while abdominal crunches strengthen your midsection and back. A good goal is to exercise each muscle group at least twice a week. Because your muscles need to recuperate after weight training, skip a day between sessions.

The following are all considered strength-training/muscle-building exercises:

� Abs, butt, thighs classes

� Body ball exercises

� Body sculpting/strength-building sessions

� Elastic band or tube exercises

� Free weights

� Sit ups, pull ups, push ups

� Weight machines

� Yoga, pilates, t’ai chi

Fighting cellulite

Most women older than 35 are on intimate terms with cellulite. But you may be surprised to discover that the lumpy, bumpy, jiggly stuff on your thighs and butt isn’t really much different from any other fat in your body. It just looks worse. Cellulite is much more common in women than men because body fat is distributed differently in women. Nature took care of that, in an effort to make fat more readily avail- able for quick energy if needed during pregnancy and breastfeeding. With aging and lack of exercise, skin also loses much of the elasticity and firmness it once had to hold that layer of fat smoothly in its place.

The only way you can fight cellulite is by maintaining a normal weight and exercising; no cream or scrub will do it. I’m sorry, but you can’t deal with cellulite in any special way, and no special therapy is available to make it disappear. You can’t get rid of your cellulite without removing fat from your body, but you may be able to diminish its pitted appearance by dieting to lose some of your body fat, doing aerobic exercise on a regular basis to burn stored fat, and building up your muscles with weight training to help hold your skin more taut.

Whether you work out at home or at a gym, always enlist the aid of a trainer for at least several sessions when you first start weight training, to guide you in proper form, check your breathing, verify that you’re using the appropriate amount of weight, provide safety precautions, and make sure you get the best benefit from your workout. Ultimately, you’ll be able to gauge for yourself whether you’re lifting the right amount of weight by evaluating the effort it takes to lift a certain weight at least eight times. Generally, if you have to give up before you get to eight, you’re lifting too much. If you get to 12 repetitions and feel you could easily continue, you probably need to add more weight. Somewhere in between lies the appropriate amount of weight. To help pre- vent injury and make your workout easier, always remember to warm up and cool down before and after strength training, just as you do for aerobic exercise. See “Warming up, cooling down, and other workout essentials,” earlier in this chapter for more details.

Exercising Additional Workout Options

The more you move about in your day-to-day life, the more calories you burn. Someone who fidgets a lot, who gets up and down from her desk and paces around throughout the workday, and generally can’t sit still for very long, can burn up to several hundred calories more in a day than someone who sits very still. Any physical activity you do — gardening, walking, house cleaning, mowing the lawn — burns calories. The more you perform these activities, the more they count as exercise that can help improve or maintain your fit- ness level.

The following sections cover other exercises that you may want to include in your routine.

Stretching out

Besides making you feel lighter and looser, a good stretch can help prevent exercise injuries. So even though stretching technically has nothing to do with burning calories, it’s not a waste of your time, and it warrants as much attention as any “real” exercise when you’re developing a fitness plan.

One of the reasons exercise becomes more difficult as you get older is that physically you become less flexible with age. Flexibility exercises (also known as stretches) lengthen and loosen the tendons that hold your muscle to your bone so that you’re able to stand straighter, bend easier, and walk with a longer stride. Stretching can also help alleviate the back and leg pain that prevents some people from doing as much exercise as they could.

Never warm up or cool down with stretches. Begin your workout session with warm-up exercises and end with cooling down exercises that are appropriate to the activity. (See “Warming up, cooling down, and other workout essentials,” earlier in this chapter for details.) Many types of exercises, such as yoga and balance balls, incorporate stretches, and that may be enough for you if you practice these activities on a regular basis. If you’re adding stretches to your routine, however, add them just after you cool down from a rigorous workout, while your muscles are still warm and your heartbeat has fallen back down to the bottom of your target range.

Walking tall

Every fitness expert recommends walking because, if nothing else, it’s some- thing that anyone with working feet can do, regardless of individual lifestyle or athletic prowess. Walking is an especially good exercise option for anyone who, right now, can’t picture herself at the gym in leotards balanced on an elliptical trainer or spinning herself into a frenzy. Walking is also a good choice for anyone who lives near any types of trails, stretches of beach, or parks.

When you walk, you can actually do it the right way or the wrong way. If you’re going to make walking your primary source of physical activity and start walking longer distances, check the tips that follow to ensure you’re doing it right. Start by developing a walking routine, just as you would develop any other exercise routine, by picking a time of day that’s good for you to walk most days of the week. (See “Easing into an exercise routine,” earlier in this chapter for more info.) Consider walking to work, school, or another regular destination, to incorporate exercise into your normal every- day routine. Aim to increase the amount of time you spend walking as well as the distance you go and the speed at which you walk.

To keep your walking routine interesting, walk in different directions than you normally go and walk on different types of terrain. Walking uphill burns more calories and helps you work different muscle groups than walking on a straight path, so seek out opportunities. The following list includes some additional tips for walkers.

� Buy good quality sneakers or walking shoes that fit properly.

� Walk tall; don’t slouch!

� Warm up with a slow walk and pick up speed until you get to a brisk walk.

� Keep your arms relaxed and slightly bent at the elbows. Swing them gently as you walk.

� Carry a water bottle and sip from it often.

� Cool down for 5 or 10 minutes by gradually slowing down.

� Aim to gradually increase both the amount of time you spend walking and the distance you cover. If walking is your primary physical activity, gradually increase the distance you walk and the pace at which you walk over the course of a couple of months, until you’re walking briskly for at least 30 minutes most days.

� Invest in a pedometer, which measures how far you’ve walked and gives you a basis for challenging yourself to walk longer and farther.

Pedometers are available in all sporting goods stores and in the sporting goods section of most department stores. (See the nearby sidebar “Using exercise gadgets and gizmos” for details on this and other exercise tools.)

Standing burns more calories than sitting, and even very slow walking burns more calories than standing still. Choosing to move at every opportunity can help you burn up to 50 percent more calories than if you simply stand or sit still most of the day. That’s why, in addition to formal exercise, fitness experts always recommend nonexercise activities, such as walking instead of driving whenever you can, taking stairs instead of elevators or escalators, and parking your car as far away from the mall as possible when you go shopping, so that you have to walk a few extra steps (and burn a few more calories) to get to the stores.

Finding alternative ways to burn calories

You burn calories all the time, even when you’re eating. You burn calories working around the house, but unless you spend the entire day cleaning or repairing homes, housework won’t make a huge contribution to your fitness level.

Hard work can be fun if you like what you do. So if you don’t like going to a gym, you don’t like jogging, and you can’t think of anything else to do in the way of formal exercise, then think about what you like to do that involves some level of physical activity. The following are a few examples:

� Play basketball or handball with the neighborhood kids or volunteer to coach a little league team on weekends.

� If you watch television on a regular basis, invest in fitness equipment that keeps you moving in front of the tube. It may be as simple as a jump rope or a body ball, or as major as a treadmill or stationary bike.

� If you like to dance, take dance classes or just get out there and boogie.

If you can’t get out often, partner up with a dance video and shake it up

in your own living room.

Using exercise gadgets and gizmos

Many exercise “accessories” are available to help you measure your fitness level, monitor your progress, and make sure your exercise routine is safe and effective. While many are unnecessary, the following exercise tools can be quite helpful:

� A pedometer, which is a digital device you attach to your waistband to keep track of the number of steps you take, can help you determine if you’re taking enough steps to make a difference in your fitness level. Just remember: When you walk, you take steps, and the more you walk, the more steps you take. The more steps you take, the more calories you burn. So if you’re walking to lose weight, it makes sense to count the number of steps you take as a measure of progress. A pedometer can measure the number of steps you take.

The magic number of steps appears to be 10,000, the goal stated in many fitness arti- cles that recommend using a pedometer for step counting. But the truth, according to The American College of Sports Medicine, is that the goal varies from person to person, and 10,000 steps, or 5 miles, a day may not be optimal for everyone. To an exercise walker, building up speed can be as important as walking longer distances. That all translates to this advice: Use your pedometer as a motivating tool and a tracking tool, but not as your only goal-setting tool. As a walker, your best fitness goal isn’t to walk 10,000 steps, but to fit in at least 30 minutes of brisk walking on most if not all days of the week. If you like to walk for exercise, using a pedometer can help get you 10,000 steps closer to that goal, give or take a few steps. Some studies do show that using a pedometer is a motivator and a challenge for many people to walk more.

� During aerobic exercise you may consider wearing a heart rate monitor to measure the intensity of your workout and determine whether or not you’re working hard enough to reap cardiovascular benefits or too hard and need to slow down. A heart rate moni- tor eliminates the need for taking your own pulse and figuring out your heart rate as described in the section “Targeting the right heart rate range,” earlier in this chapter.

� Relatively new to the gizmo scene are calorie counters you can attach to your arm, chest, or wrist to find out approximately how many calories you’re burning while you exercise. They’re only moderately accurate, at best. You may have noticed that some exercise machines have built-in calorie counters that keep track of your burn while you’re working out. The new calorie counters may be slightly more accurate than the built-in counters. Some calorie counters measure your heart rate to determine how much oxygen you use and how much heat you produce while exercising. Others mea- sure your skin’s temperature and electrical conductivity along with how much heat you’re producing and losing while you work out. Extra features include built-in programs to help you keep track of calorie-burning goals and progress.

None of this equipment can claim 100 percent accuracy, but for adults who like their grown-up toys, any and all of these devices can be helpful as motivators and tracking tools. Some gad- gets even do double duty, measuring your heart rate and your calorie burn at the same time, for instance. The one thing they can’t do is lose weight for you. That’s your job!

Exercising for Body and Mind

Some people are as motivated by the mood-elevating and stress-busting effects of exercise as by the promise of improved physical health and weight loss. If stressful, emotional issues are at the core of your overeating (see Chapter 9 for more about this topic), then you stand to gain multiple benefits from adding mind-body exercises such as yoga or t’ai chi to your fitness routine. These ancient, meditative practices are designed to improve both your mental and physical conditions.

The proven physical benefits of mind-body exercises include improved flexibility, balance, and coordination, better breathing and blood circulation, and reduced muscle tension. These benefits can also help prevent injury when you exert yourself during more strenuous exercises. The most often cited psychological benefits include increased self-awareness, mental relaxation, and a general feeling of emotional well-being.

Yoga, pilates, and t’ai chi are three different exercises with a common objective of uniting mind, body, and spirit with the goal of improving your overall health. You don’t wear your MP3 player or watch the news while you practice these three arts. The focus is on your inner self, not the outer world. These practices are widely recognized by medical professionals and alternative practitioners as healthful adjuncts to a sound fitness program. Following are brief descriptions of each:

� Yoga exercises are designed to quiet the mind in order to reduce psychological distress and develop more physical and emotional self- awareness. It’s also a stretching, toning, and strengthening exercise. (If you’re interested in finding out more about yoga, check out Yoga For Dummies by Georg Feuerstein, Larry Payne, and Lilias Folan [Wiley].)

� Pilates exercises, which are often compared to yoga and grouped with yoga, consist of strengthening movements that work all your body parts, but focus on the abdomen as your core source of strength. Many pilates floor exercises incorporate yoga-like movements. Because the intense movements of pilates require tremendous concentration, the benefits include a self-awareness similar to that developed by practicing yoga and t’ai chi. (If you want more information about incorporating pilates into your exercise program, check out Pilates For Dummies by Ellie Herman [Wiley].)

� T’ai chi exercises promote the development of balance, alignment, and coordination through a series of slow, graceful movements performed in a dance-like fashion. These unique movements also promote relaxation of body and mind. (If t’ai chi interests you, check out T’ai Chi For Dummies by Therese Iknoian [Wiley].)

Mind-body exercises were once relegated to private studios, but now they’re often the most popular classes at most gyms and fitness clubs, so you can find one just about anywhere. Because these formerly alternative activities are strength building and incorporate plenty of stretching, you can substitute one of these classes for an “abs, buns, and thighs” class or a weight-training session once or twice a week.

Knowing How Much Exercise Is Too Much

Can there be such a thing as too much exercise in this land of couch toma- toes? (I prefer the term couch tomato to couch potato, because it’s more realistic. Potatoes can sit around for months and still stay firm, until you cook them. When tomatoes sit around, they quickly get squishy, just like a body that doesn’t get enough exercise.) Believe it or not, sometimes you do need to slow down your physical activity rather than keep going. One of those times is when you begin a new exercise program. If you start off too fast or push yourself too far at first, you may burn out, both physically and mentally, before you finish your workout. If that happens, you could quickly lose your motivation, or worse, hurt yourself.

Identifying the warning signs of too much exercise

As good as exercise is for you — and it’s very good for most people — too much can take its toll. Exercise puts physical stress on all your body parts and can ultimately lead to permanent damage to muscles, joints, and bones if you work too hard, too soon, or if you don’t follow recommended safety precautions.

Even after you’ve established your workout routine and you’re comfortable with the exercises you’re doing, sometimes you may need to slow down or call it quits. Keep the following points in mind when exercising:

� Whenever you’re doing aerobic exercise, you should be able to carry on a conversation at the same time. If you’re gasping for breath, feeling faint (or dizzy), feeling any pain, or getting nauseous, slow down or take a break.

� Anytime you’re sick, injured, or tired from lack of sleep is a good time to take a day or two off. Just don’t let your exercise break last any longer than it has to or you may find it very difficult to get back in the swing

of things.

Overexercising to the extreme

Believe it or not, some people become addicted to exercise in the same, obsessive way a food addict becomes addicted to eating certain foods or a gambler becomes addicted to games. It’s a psychological addiction, and many experts believe that there’s probably a physiological explanation as well. Exercise “addicts” constantly think about exercising, and they work out frantically, every day, to burn off as many calories as they can. If you work out more than an hour a day, seven days a week, and you’re not a professional athlete, consider that you may be exercising too much to the detriment of your own health.

Overexercising can be a sign of a true eating disorder. Someone with an eating disorder is obsessed with food, dieting, and, often, exercise. There are several types of eating disorders, but the two that often involve overexercising are anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa.

� People with anorexia are underweight, extremely afraid of being fat, usually eat very little, and spend most of their time trying to purge any and all calories they consume by vomiting, using laxatives, and exercising excessively.

� People with bulimia are usually normal weight or overweight, often eat excessive amounts of food, and purge or resort to extreme exercising to burn off the extra calories they eat.

Both of these eating disorders have severe nutritional and medical consequences, which in some cases can result in death. Most people who overeat or focus a great deal of attention on their diets don’t have eating disorders, but if you or anyone you know shows signs of an eating disorder, immediately seek the help of a professional. You can start by calling any hospital, university medical center, or trusted physician, who can steer you toward the appropriate type of help.