Activity for weight management
Build Muscle
Increasing muscle mass directly increases the BMR. Imagine muscles as the engines doing all the work just as engines in a car. When you are at rest this equates to being in tick-over in your car. The bigger the engine, the more fuel required in tick-over, the more muscle you have, the more calories you require to keep your BMR ticking over.
Increase your Physical Activity Level
In a car when you accelerate you burn more fuel commensurate to the engine size, when you have bigger muscles and you increase your workload with exercise you will also burn more calories compared to having smaller muscles. Also the more you do, the more fuel you burn.
Females shouldn’t worry about building like ‘Arnie’. Due to having a lot less of the male hormone ‘Testosterone’ females will put on muscle without bulking up. Also the increased fat deposited on the female body keeps most females from looking too masculine.
Make Body More Efficient At Fat Utilisation
Improving your aerobic capacity directly improves fat utilisation at any given intensity so instead of using the limited supply of CHO as fuel you use the unlimited reserves of fat. The body then transfers this fat burning potential to your resting metabolism.
Intensity & Duration of CV exercise for Optimum Fat Utilisation
Primarily carbohydrates are used during the first few minutes of exercise.
For an average fit person, it takes 20 to 30 minutes of continuous aerobic activity to burn 50% fat and 50% carbohydrate.
There is approximately a 7-fold increase of fat mobilisation after 1 hour of exercise. The longer you exercise for the greater the amount of fat you utilise
During low intensity prolonged exercise (ie greater than 30 minutes), a gradual shift from carbohydrate to fat metabolism occurs
During High intensity, low duration exercise more calories are burned in less time and more carbohydrates, or glycogen are utilised. Greater lactate production inhibits fat metabolism however fat is utilised many hours after anaerobic exercise
Examples of high intensity exercises are weight training, plyometrics, sprinting, or high intense interval training.