All you need is 150 minutes in a week to workout so you can remain healthy and fit, suggests celebrity nutritionist and wellness expert Neha Sahaya.
Strength or resistance training with weights, bands or your own body weight is extremely helpful in creating lean muscles and to increase your metabolism.Photograph: Kind courtesy Neha Sahaya/Instagram
Want to fit into your old denims hanging in your closet?
Desperately hoping you can get rid of your pot belly?
The only answer to your desires is to move that body and exercise.
Like the wise say, there's nothing like starting today, don’t wait for that Monday or next month.
Exercise is not only helpful for weight loss but also helps in maintaining the weight loss.
Exercise can increase metabolism and how many calories you burn in a day. It can also help you maintain and increase lean body mass, which also helps increase number of calories you burn each day.
Remember for effective weight loss a combination of different types of workouts with different intensity works best.
1. High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)
To get the maximum benefits of your workout when you have less time than intensity is the key.
HIIT -- High Intensity Interval Training -- involves short intervals of exercise at high intensity with your maximum effort, followed by recovery periods.
The secret to optimising HIIT lies in how hard you work during your intense intervals.
Your body's fat-burning capacity increases during HIIT which is an effective strategy with weight loss.
High-intensity exercise increases the release of growth hormones and creates EPOC (exercise post oxygen consumption). So your 20-to-30-minute workout ends up burning more calories not only when you are doing the HITT but throughout the day as well.
It's a smart way to help you lose weight fast at the convenience of your home and in a short time period.
2. Strength Training
Strength or resistance training with weights, bands or your own body weight is extremely helpful in creating lean muscles and to increase your metabolism. Especially compound movements that use multiple muscles like squats, dead lift, lunges, pull ups, push ups and so on.
It's a misconception that doing weights bulks you up; it in fact helps you to burn fat and improve your metabolism permanently.
If you want to reduce weight and change your body you must try and build muscles.
If you have less of time and can’t visit the gym every day, try circuit training, which involves moving quickly from one exercise to the next, and burns more calories than a typical weight workout.
3. Surya namaskar
The most commonly practiced basic yoga asana actually focuses on various parts of the body and is excellent for weight loss.
The Surya namaskar literally translates to sun salutation, and comprises a series of 12 different poses encompassed in one including the prayer pose, forward bend and the bhujangasana.
It helps strengthen your overall body, skeletal system and great for your ligaments.
It can easily can be done anywhere and is a great way to keep the body active. It also helps in reducing stress and anxiety.
If you breathe right in and out during the poses, it further enhances your weight loss
4. Walking
If you have never exercised before, starting with a walk is an excellent way to loosen up your muscles.
If you are obese and have certain health issues then it's best to start with a walk.
By simply adding 30 minutes of brisk walking to your daily routine you could burn about 150 calories a day.
Walking is the easiest exercise for weight loss.
If you're a beginner, start by walking 4 days per week for at least 20 minutes and then gradually increase the duration and speed of your walks until you are walking 60 minutes per day and six times a week.
Eventually you can start adding other form of workouts besides walking to accelerate your weight loss.
5. Zumba
Zumba is a feel-good way to improve your fitness and an effective way of incorporating exercise into your daily routine by simply dancing your way out.
Zumba is all about loosening up those muscles and burning calories. It is not only effective for weight loss but is also found to help relieve stress, increase energy, reduce anxiety and improve overall strength.
It is a vigorous exercise which helps to sculpt your body.
Simply switch on your favourite song and dance your heart out.
Bottom line: There is only one route to quick weight loss -- Work out.
Having variety in your workout is the key to effective weight loss.
The more variety in workout you do the more different muscles get targeted and used. So do a mix of low intensity to high intensity workouts.
All you need is 150 minutes in a week to workout to remain healthy and fit.
So move that body, switch on the music and sweat it out.
Let the endorphins do the magic to make you happy and the workout to change your body not only physically, but also mentally.
