How much should you exercise to lose weight?

How often and how much should you exercise are most basic questions people ask? here are the answers!

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Image: Priyanka Chopra; Photograph: Still from the film Don

Exercising has exponential benefits from losing weight to regulating your appetite, from detoxing, to helping you sleep better, the list is endless. A regular exercise routine is really important when you want to have a fit, toned and healthy body. But if you are looking to get down to some serious exercising to lose weight then the question is how often and how much should you exercise?

Under exercising or over exercising can affect your body adversely. Under exercising will not give you sufficient results and leave you short of your fitness goals, whereas over exercising can be dangerous, leading to permanent muscle damage, ligament injuries, chronic fatigue, etc.

How often should you exercise?

Being active is a key to a healthy body. But if your health goal is to shed some pounds or build some muscle mass, make a routine to exercise 5 days a week with 2 days of rest. Taking a rest day is an important part of working out because it provides the time for muscles recovery.

During the workout, the body undergoes many changes like depletion of energy stores and breakdown of muscle tissues. Therefore, it is necessary to provide recovery time to replenish these energy stores and to repair the wear and tear of muscles.

This also reduces the chances of over working out.

Over working out can damage your muscles adversely and can lead to degenerative damage to tendons, ruptured biceps or pectorals and muscle strain.

How much should you exercise?

If you are a beginner then you can start your workout with low intensity exercises like walking for a minimum of 30 minutes. And once you build up your stamina you can increase the intensity or frequency of your exercises such as running or jogging instead of walking, or increasing the pace and intensity of your walk.

If you are following a regime for weight training, then you should regularly increase the intensity of your lifts by adding extra weight or by increasing the difficulty level with more complex moves.

Doing any exercise should always be a challenge for your body, to force it to gain muscle or lose fat. But do not force yourself beyond your maximum endurance levels.

Always keep a target of finishing your workout within 45 to 60 minutes. Working out for longer than that may lead to over exercising.

Make the work out effective with shorter breaks and intervals. Do not waste time at the gym.

Diet and exercises always go hand in hand in achieving any health and fitness goal. Therefore, while focusing on your workout also keep a careful watch on your diet.