More recently elliptical trainers have come on the market, and that was what we planned to purchase this fall to keep me working out over the winter. But when someone offers you the use of a good quality treadmill free of charge--and you're not exactly rich to start with--it's easy to push off the purchase for another year.
I believe in strength training. As a member of Curves International, I've come to see first-hand what strength training can do to benefit weight loss.
Gary Heavin, Curves' founder, says:
If you have failed in the past with your exercise and weight loss plans, let's assess your experiences. If your exercise program omitted strength training, you may not have been protecting muscle tissue as you lost weight. With up to 40% of your weight loss in the form of muscle, you drastically lowered your metabolism, thus setting yourself up for failure. If you had no exercise regimen while you were dieting, you never experienced the physiological advantages of exercise. Exercise required energy. Sustained cardiovascular exercise burns more stored fat as energy. The more regularly you exercise, the better your body becomes at accessing fat stores. A complete exercise program will burn more fat and protect metabolically active muscle tissue. Every study shows that those who add exercise to their weight loss program are most successful.
If you followed a traditional low calorie/ low fat diet plan, chances are that you were feeding fat while starving muscle. When you consume as little as 1200 calories, and only 10 to 15% of those calories are in the form of protein, your muscles do not have an adequate supply of essential amino acids. With 65% of your calories coming from carbohydrates, insulin levels are kept high, which feeds and protects fat stores.
Conventional dieting methods have no way to deal with metabolism which has slowed in response to dieting. Whenever you start to burn stored energy, your body protects itself by becoming more efficient. This survival mechanism lowers metabolism when you are dieting.
The Curves recommended diet is quite similar to South Beach, urging protein regardless of fat content and shunning carbs regardless of glycemic index rating. I've come to believe that the Curves workout and a low GI diet gives me the best possible combination. But either way, the key is to REV up the metabolism rather than shut it down.
Strength training requires *off* days to allow time for your muscles to heal. The goal is to over-work them and stress them: true strength training requires that you move a resistance that is greater than the muscle is accustomed to. However, to keep the metabolism going, cardio training on those *off* days is still a good thing. Plus, of course, it burns calories.
Over the spring and summer, I walked (moving up to a walk/ run combo) or rode my bike most mornings that I wasn't at Curves. Now it's the treadmill. A benefit of the treadmill is that you can see exactly how hard you're working out. On a day when I wasn't running up to snuff outside, I might not really know that until I got back home and discovered that extra time had elapsed.
I'm actually enjoying the treadmill now. I think a lot of it has to do with my attitude. Ten years ago (when I went to a gym) I hadn't wrapped my head around this commitment to lose weight and to get AND STAY healthy. I'm there now and I want to stay there. A half hour walk/ run on the treadmill three days a week is a small price to pay.
Besides, sweating actually feels good. Whodathunkit?
