How Long Will It Take To Lose My Fat?

This is a frequently asked question. The answer is different for everyone. If you are only 20 pounds or so over your goal weight, then a 200-pound man can expect to lose about 2 pounds a week. If you’re a woman who weighs about 140 and wants to lose 20 pounds then 2 pounds every week might be too much to expect. And it also depends on your age. For instance, a young woman who has had a baby recently will lose 20 pounds faster than a woman in her late 40s who has carried the extra weight for a few years. If you have been overweight for some time, it will take longer to lose it. As the fat in your body ages, it becomes hard and is more difficult for the body to burn that kind of fat. The good news is that your body has to burn some fat every day, but it will usually pick the newest fat. The fat you just ate that day. 

If you want to burn that old fat that has been hanging around for years, You need to stop eating fat. That's the simple answer, but that's difficult to do. 

So several things being considered, 20 pounds may take 2 months for a new mom to lose, or it might take a man 200 pounds age 65, one year to drop the weight. This is what you need to consider; your weight and your age, what kind of physical shape am I in? The better the condition the more exercise you’ll be able to do. How motivated am I? You have to stay with it. And don’t forget the diet, you can’t cheat, if you’re going to reach your goal. So changing your diet doesn’t mean cutting back, it means changing what you eat. Eating fresh foods, forgetting about all those foods you were eating and starting eating better quality foods, eating your big meals early in the day, stopping snacking, and stop eating after dinner. Also, the best way to cut calories is to stop drinking calories.

If you’re on a 2-pound-a-week weight loss program, it doesn’t take much to stop losing and start gaining. Yes, it will take time but if you’re going to be thin for the rest of your life, go slow and keep it up. Once you reach 10 pounds of lost weight, you’ll start feeling better, but don’t stop and don’t start cheating. Even after you reach your goal, don’t stop. That’s how everyone else gains the weight back. Whatever your eating stay with the program. And I did have to stop drinking alcohol until I reached my goal and then I could go back to a drink occasionally without gaining. You see, alcohol will mess with your metabolism, and that stops the fat-burning process. Now after you reach your goal your metabolism is back to normal and an occasional drink doesn’t hurt.

I stopped smoking cold turkey back in the seventies and it’s just as tough. But when you make up your mind that you must do it, then and only then will you lose weight. Remember it’s a change of lifestyle and not about dieting for a few weeks.

How long it takes to lose weight is a question that’s impossible to answer. Most people don’t want to make a long-term commitment to a new way of living, even though that’s what it’s going to take.

If you follow this blog, in the archives, there are over 200 posts, all the posts are related to diet, exercise, and losing weight. Most people fail at weight loss because they’re not really serious, their clothes are starting to get tight and they don’t want to buy a new wardrobe. O.K., that’s a reason, but not a good reason. They will probably fail. Another popular reason for losing weight is if someone is nagging you, maybe it’s your spouse or your doctor. Those reasons will carry a little more weight and you’re going to try harder but most people just end up on diet pills. They take the easy way out. And most of them won’t keep the weight off.

I always tell people that they have to change their life. Make time to exercise, start eating the right food, and quit eating junk. Stop over-eating and only eat good snacks.

And I go through a list of do’s and don’t’s and they have to stick to it and don’t give up. That’s why most people fail to lose weight, they give up.

Follow me on X, the former Twitter, @ray0369 to get a link to my latest posts.

If you want to lose your body fat look for my e-books at the websites listed below. You’ll get information on Healthy eating, exercise, and diet. Instead of spending hours on the internet reading dozens of posts, you can save time by picking up one of my e-books. There are two e-books. “How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight?” is available at all the online bookstores selling for $3.99. Go to any of the websites below and search the title to find my e-book. This book gives you all you need to lose weight without spending money on gym memberships, diet plans, or meal plans. 

Look for my first book at Amazon.com, bn.com, iBooks, Kobo.com, Scribd.com, or Gardner Books in the U.K.

My new e-book is available on Smashwords.com and other online bookstores. Just type “getting to a Healthy Weight” in the search box at the top of the home page. 

Look for my podcast by searching “How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight” on the podcast app that you use. You’ll see a piece of my book cover.

You Can't Exercise Away a Bad Diet

               

When it comes to losing weight, the evidence is pretty clear – “you can’t outrun a bad diet,” according to a recent editorial in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. The food in the picture above looks pretty good, right? Lunch meat is full of animal fat and it’s high in cholesterol, processed cheese, fried onion rings,a nd french fries aren’t any better. If you make a meal from the food in that picture and add a soda you will be eating more than 1000 calories. That’s one meal.

Americans consume on average about 3500 calories a day. It’s no wonder 2/3rd of Americans are overweight.

If your goal is weight loss, that gym membership is going to do little to drop the pounds when your diet is out of shape. If you hit the gym five days a week for 30 minutes a day and you’re not losing weight, you now know why. It’s not your metabolism. It’s not your hormones. It’s what and how much you eat.

We’re talking about more than just your expanding belly and butt. A wicked diet causes more disease than physical inactivity, alcohol, and smoking combined, according to the editorial. Even those with a normal body mass index (BMI) often have metabolic abnormalities we usually see with obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and heart disease. Why? Their poor diet, despite their weight being seemingly healthy.

You often hear, “You’d have to jog 30 minutes to burn off that double cheeseburger.” But it’s more than that. The editorial cites a study showing an extra 150 calories of sugar causes more diabetes than the same number of calories in fat or protein. This isn’t permission to load up on all the fatty foods you want — too many calories is still going to lead to too much body fat.

In addition, research has shown that cutting carbohydrates in your diet is the most effective thing you can do to reduce problems including high blood pressure and high cholesterol, and manage diabetes, the editorial notes. Those benefits are seen even if you don’t lose weight.

Don’t sit down just yet. Exercise is still critically important for optimal health. Exercise is medicine. If you’re active, your risk of developing heart disease, diabetes, dementia, and some cancers plummets by at least 30%. No drug can do that. Exercise just doesn’t help much with weight loss.

If you’re looking to slim down for bathing suit season, take a good hard look at what’s on your plate. Load up on veggies and lean protein. Skip the starchy carbs and junk food. And when you’ve hit your goal weight, hit the gym to continue on your journey to good health.

Follow me on X, the former Twitter, @ray0369 to get a link to my latest posts.

If you want to lose your body fat look for my e-books at the websites listed below. You’ll get information on Healthy eating, exercise, and diet. Instead of spending hours on the internet reading dozens of posts, you can save time by picking up one of my e-books. There are two e-books. “How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight?” is available at all the online bookstores selling for $3.99. Go to any of the websites below and search the title to find my e-book. This book gives you all you need to lose weight without spending money on gym memberships, diet plans, or meal plans. 

Look for my first book at Amazon.com, bn.com, iBooks, Kobo.com, Scribd.com, or Gardner Books in the U.K.

My new e-book is available on Smashwords.com and other online bookstores. Just type “getting to a Healthy Weight” in the search box at the top of the home page. 

Look for my podcast by searching “How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight” on the podcast app that you use. You’ll see a piece of my book cover.

About Weight Loss

 An article by the Mayo Clinic Staff

When it comes to weight loss, there's no shortage of diet plans. Check any magazine rack, and you're bound to see the latest and greatest diet plans. But how do you know if a diet plan fits your needs and lifestyle?

Ask yourself these questions about any diet plan you're considering:

Does it include various foods from the major food groups: fruits, vegetables, grains, low-fat dairy products, lean protein sources including plant protein, and nuts?

Does it include foods you like and that you would enjoy eating for a lifetime — not just for several weeks or months?

Can you easily find these foods in your local grocery store?

Will you be able to eat your favorite foods or, better yet, all foods (even if some are in small quantities)?

Does it fit your lifestyle and budget?

Does it include proper amounts of nutrients and calories to help you lose weight safely and effectively?

Is regular physical activity part of the plan?

If the answer to any of these questions is no, keep looking. There are better diet plans out there for you.

The best plan is the one you can stick with for life.

Now that you heard what the Mayo Clinic had to say, let's face it we know we can't cheat eat, and still lose weight. We have probably all tried that. "I just cut back a little but I can still have some cake, right". Yeah, sure, how do you think you gained weight in the first place.

There is a difference between dieting to lose weight and dieting to maintain weight. To lose weight you have to cut out 500 calories a day just to lose 1 pound a week. Do not expect miracles. The first 10 pounds is the easiest but after that, it gets tougher.

Follow me on X, the former Twitter, @ray0369 to get a link to my latest posts.

If you want to lose your body fat look for my e-books at the websites listed below. You’ll get information on Healthy eating, exercise, and diet. Instead of spending hours on the internet reading dozens of posts, you can save time by picking up one of my e-books. There are two e-books. “How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight?” is available at all the online bookstores selling for $3.99. Go to any of the websites below and search the title to find my e-book. This book gives you all you need to lose weight without spending money on gym memberships, diet plans, or meal plans. 

Look for my first book at Amazon.com, bn.com, iBooks, Kobo.com, Scribd.com, or Gardner Books in the U.K.

My new e-book is available on Smashwords.com and other online bookstores. Just type “getting to a Healthy Weight” in the search box at the top of the home page. 

Look for my podcast by searching “How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight” on the podcast app that you use. You’ll see a piece of my book cover.

Foods to Avoid on a High Blood Pressure Diet

 

By Craig O. Weber, MD Updated on October 14, 2021

 Many of us trying to lose weight, are doing it the old-school method but aren't having much luck, this post might help. The biggest problem for most of the overweight group is that they are treating medical disorders that are caused by their excess weight. High blood pressure is a common problem that overweight people have. 

The topic of dietary recommendations for high blood pressure is an interesting one. On one hand, it is exceedingly complex and has been the continued focus of research for at least three decades. On the other hand, the vast majority of dietary recommendations for high blood pressure are very similar to healthy diet recommendations in general.

But regardless of the latest research, there are certain things you should avoid if you have hypertension. So if you're following a high blood pressure diet to help manage your condition, be sure to watch out for these three potential spikers.

Before reading any further, I want to put in my 2 cents. People who take medications for high blood pressure often get a false sense of security that because their condition is under control they can eat as usual. No really. If you are trying to lose weight while on the medications there are still certain things you need to avoid.

Alcohol

Various alcoholic drinks

People with high blood pressure should not drink alcohol. While studies have demonstrated that low levels of alcohol intake can have protective effects on the heart and can possibly reduce the risk of developing high blood pressure, research has also clearly demonstrated that consuming alcohol in the setting of existing high blood pressure is unhealthy.

Alcohol directly raises blood pressure, and further acts to damage the walls of blood vessels, which can elevate the blood pressure further and make it more difficult to treat, while simultaneously increasing the risk of complications.

If you don't want to take the step of cutting out all alcohol, the American Heart Association says to drink alcohol only in moderation, no more than 1 to 2 drinks per day (one for most women, two for most men). A drink is one 12 oz. beer, 4 oz. of wine, 1.5 oz. of 80-proof spirits or 1 oz. of 100-proof spirits. 

Salt

A salt shaker next to a pile of salt

In some people, eating too much salt can make high blood pressure much worse. In others, the same amount of salt consumption may have no effect.4 The problem is that no doctor or scientist can tell which is the case for an individual patient until it is too late.

This, combined with the fact that too much salt is bad for the heart regardless of blood pressure status, means that reduced sodium is a strongly recommended part of a healthy diet. These recommendations are especially important in the setting of secondary high blood pressure due to kidney problems.5

While it can be difficult at first to eat a low-sodium diet, you will quickly readjust your taste buds when you stick with it for a couple of weeks. Preparing your own food at home from whole ingredients rather than eating processed food or eating at restaurants is an easy way to control the sodium in your food.6

Fats

Cheeseburger and fries

 Ebmarketa / Getty Images

Saturated fats and trans fats are bad for both the heart and blood vessels.7 Because the circulatory system is already under a lot of stress in the setting of high blood pressure, the extra strain can be devastating.

The balanced high blood pressure diet should include sparse amounts of saturated and trans-fats (red meat, fast food), and moderate amounts of other fats (olives, canola oil), avoiding tropical oils. Instead of red meat, enjoy fish, poultry, seeds, nuts, and beans. You can still have the occasional meal of the leanest cuts of red meat. Enjoy fat-free or low-fat dairy products.

Heart-Check Shopping

When you are buying products at the grocery store, look for the Heart-Check mark from the American Heart Association. This mark on the label shows the product meets the AHA criteria for saturated fat, trans fat, and sodium for a single serving.

DASH Eating Plan

If you want a more structured way to dive into a diet for hypertension, look into the DASH eating plan, which stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension, this plan will also help you lose weight.

Follow me on X, the former Twitter, @ray0369 to get a link to my latest posts.

If you want to lose your body fat look for my e-books at the websites listed below. You’ll get information on Healthy eating, exercise, and diet. Instead of spending hours on the internet reading dozens of posts, you can save time by picking up one of my e-books. There are two e-books. “How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight?” is available at all the online bookstores selling for $3.99. Go to any of the websites below and search the title to find my e-book. This book gives you all you need to lose weight without spending money on gym memberships, diet plans, or meal plans. 

Look for my first book at Amazon.com, bn.com, iBooks, Kobo.com, Scribd.com, or Gardner Books in the U.K.

My new e-book is available on Smashwords.com and other online bookstores. Just type “getting to a Healthy Weight” in the search box at the top of the home page. 

Look for my podcast by searching “How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight” on the podcast app that you use. You’ll see a piece of my book cover.

Will Red Meat Put You In An Early Grave?

 If you turn to red meat as your main source of protein, you could be shortening your life, a new study suggests. This statement was part of a new study about cholesterol and High Blood Pressure. Many of us take pills to control our blood pressure and cholesterol medication for good blood flow, but your body does that on its own if you eat the right foods.

People who get more of their protein from plant sources have an overall lower risk of dying early than those who consume a lot of animal protein, the researchers said. That’s somewhat true. Some cultures in other parts of the world will consume more animal meat than we do, for example, in Africa, but it’s not the same as the meat we buy.

However, not all animal proteins carry the same level of risk. “We found protein from red meat, particularly processed red meat, is strongly associated with mortality,” researchers said. “The protein from fish or chicken is not really associated with mortality.”

For every 3 percent increase in plant protein in their daily diet, participants in this research study experienced a 10 percent lower risk of death from all causes and a 12 percent lower risk of heart-related death. All the studies that I read always compare only those people in the study to each other. No one really knows how long humans can live. Research is being done today that will prove humans can live 180 years. Other research being done now is trying to prove humans can live 300 years but that hasn’t yet been confirmed. This information will be important to “space travel” and should be completed in a couple of years.

Longevity to 180 years is not just a theory. Researchers say that millions of years ago, humans did live to 150 years and that some even lived to 180 years. This is fact, not fiction. The reason we don't live that long today is caused by many factors. The increased population in this country has caused more disease and pollution. Air pollution is a fact but that might take generations to fix. The biggest factor that is killing most of us today is caused from the food and drinks that we consume.

Participants in the study experienced a 2 percent increased risk of death from all causes and an 8 percent increased risk of heart-related death for every 10 percent increase of animal protein in their total daily calories.
Swapping 3 percent of calories from animal protein with plant protein lowered the overall risk of premature death, based on the type of animal protein being substituted.

The risk of early death dropped 34 percent if people ate less processed red meat (lunch meat and sausage), 12 percent for less unprocessed red meat (fresh cuts like steaks), and 19 percent for fewer eggs, the findings showed. Why is red meat so bad? It's the animal fat that's marbled in red meat. You can't avoid it. 39 million Americans take medication for cholesterol. That's 34 percent of all adults.

Processed meats contain loads of sodium and nitrates, which have been linked to heart disease and cancer. Fatty cuts of meat, particularly red meat, also contain loads of saturated fat, cholesterol, and extra calories, researchers said. The problem with red meat is that you can’t avoid the animal fat that comes with it. That’s the reason doctors always stress lean meat. Animal fat is the source of most of our health problems. Your liver can only process a very small amount of animal fat in one meal, about 12 grams or one-half ounce. What happens to the rest of the fat? Some will simply clog up your liver and the rest will be stored in fat cells. 

What's so bad about that? Most of us don't have an enlarged heart. Your heart reaches maximum size about the same time you become fully grown. For most of us that might be age 21 to 24, or somewhere in between. Your organs and other body functions will work best when you reach the fully grown stage in your life. Adding size after you are fully grown can start to put a strain on your organs and that will slow down body functions. Slowing down body functions will cause you to process your food slower and as a result, more of your food will be stored in food cells.

Learn more about your body. Follow me on X, the former Twitter, @ray0369 to get a link to my latest posts.

If you want to lose your body fat look for my e-books at the websites listed below. You’ll get information on Healthy eating, exercise, and diet. Instead of spending hours on the internet reading dozens of posts, you can save time by picking up one of my e-books. There are two e-books. “How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight?” is available at all the online bookstores selling for $3.99. Go to any of the websites below and search the title to find my e-book. This book gives you all you need to lose weight without spending money on gym memberships, diet plans, or meal plans. 

Look for my first book at Amazon.com, bn.com, iBooks, Kobo.com, Scribd.com, or Gardner Books in the U.K.

My new e-book is available on Smashwords.com and other online bookstores. Just type “getting to a Healthy Weight” in the search box at the top of the home page. 

Look for my podcast by searching “How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight” on the podcast app that you use. You’ll see a piece of my book cover.

Getting too much protein in one sitting can cause uncomfortable side effects, experts said.

 “It is possible to get too much protein,” Beth Czerwony, RD, a dietitian at Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Human Nutrition, told Verywell. “Our bodies can [only absorb so much] protein in a sitting.”

What counts as “too much” protein for one sitting varies from person to person. “Everyone is different,” Abby Langer, RD, a Toronto-based dietician, told Verywell. “Body composition, body size, age, sex, activity levels, and medical history should all be taken into account when we assess if someone is consuming too much of any macronutrient.”

Since it is possible to eat too much protein in one sitting, experts recommend spreading your protein intake throughout the day so your body can absorb it more easily.

 How Healthy Is Protein Powder?

How Much Protein Do You Need Each Day?

The recommended dietary allowance (RDA) for protein is 0.8 grams of protein a day per kilogram of body weight, Traci McCarthy, PT, DPT, PhD, an exercise physiology instructor at New York University, told Verywell. “But that’s just supporting general life,” she said. “If you’re getting 30 minutes of exercise, you’re going to need more.”

Depending on how active you are, you may need 1.2 to 1.7 kilograms of protein a day per kilogram of body weight, Czerwony said. This is advisable if you’re trying to gain muscle, she added.

I did a quick calculation for me. I'm 160 pounds, that's 72.5 kilograms. At 1.2 per kilogram that's 87 grams of protein on the days I exercise but only 58 grams on the days I don't exercise. 

What Is a Protein?

How Much Protein Should You Get In One Sitting?

Research on just how much protein you should eat at one time is inconclusive, experts said. “While 25 to 30 grams of protein for one meal is the standard recommendation, further research is needed to quantify a specific upper threshold for per-meal protein intake,” Perri Halperin, MS, RD, CDN, clinical nutrition coordinator at the Mount Sinai Health System, told Verywell.

Just like your daily protein intake, the amount of protein you need at each meal will be influenced by factors like your activity level and body composition goals, experts said.

High-Protein Foods for Every Eater

Why It’s Important to Spread Out Your Daily Protein Intake

If you’ve had a busy day and you haven’t been able to optimize your diet the way you would have liked, that doesn’t mean you have to cram your daily protein intake into one meal. “Getting all your protein in one sitting would be challenging,” McCarthy said. “I find it hard to consume a lot at once.”

Eating all your protein at one meal may make you less likely to eat a balanced meal with the other food groups you need. Langer explained: “For most people, [protein] would end up being the only thing they consume just because of the volume and satiety factors.”

For reference, McCarthy explained, someone who’s 150 pounds would need about 80 to 160 grams of protein, depending on how active they are and their workout goals. One serving (100 grams) of chicken has 32.1 grams of protein; one medium egg has 5.54 grams of protein; and one serving of lentils (100 grams) has 9.02 grams of protein.

Given how much protein is found in common sources, it would be difficult to consume your daily protein intake all at once, experts said, and doing so can cause various issues. This is true no matter your workout goals or activity level.

“Consuming more protein than what is needed can cause unintentional weight gain, as the calories are stored in the adipose stores instead of being utilized for muscle growth,” Czerwony said. “[Other] side effects of excessive protein include elevated blood lipids. [This] can result in issues with cardiovascular health and gastrointestinal issues like constipation, dehydration, and overtaxing your kidneys and liver by creating excessive ammonia in some rare situations.”

Because eating too much protein in one meal can be uncomfortable, you should aim to spread your protein intake between three to six meals and snacks daily, McCarthy said. “Everybody’s meal preferences are different,” she explained. While some people have three meals a day, “other people like to have [between]-meal snacks, and that’s fine too.”

Getting too little protein can also cause problems, McCarthy said. Not getting enough protein may mean you’re less likely to get enough calories daily. When this happens, “we start seeing changes in mood states—where people are more irritable and quicker to anger—and changes in sleep,” she explained.

It’s important to remember that there will be days you don’t get to eat exactly the way you want, and that’s normal, Langer said. “I wouldn’t worry about getting the exact amount of protein at each meal, and certainly not day to day.” If you don’t get enough protein for a few days due to a busy schedule or other circumstances, there likely won’t be any long-term consequences. “It’s what you eat overall, over time, that matters,” Langer said.

Follow me on X, the former Twitter, @ray0369 to get a link to my latest posts.

If you want to lose your body fat look for my e-books at the websites listed below. You’ll get information on Healthy eating, exercise, and diet. Instead of spending hours on the internet reading dozens of posts, you can save time by picking up one of my e-books. 

There are two e-books. “How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight?” is available at all the online bookstores selling for $3.99. Go to any of the websites below and search the title to find my e-book. This book gives you all you need to lose weight without spending money on gym memberships, diet plans, or meal plans. 

Look for my first book at Amazon.com, bn.com, iBooks, Kobo.com, Scribd.com, or Gardner Books in the U.K.

My new e-book is available on Smashwords.com and other online bookstores. Just type “getting to a Healthy Weight” in the search box at the top of the home page. 

Look for my podcast by searching “How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight” on the podcast app that you use. You’ll see a piece of my book cover.

Exercise To Lose Fat The Right Way

 Working out burns calories and fat and boosts your metabolism by building muscle. But those trying to lose weight are notorious for overestimating the number of calories they burn and underestimating the amount they take in. Unfortunately, your system is biologically programmed to hold on to extra pounds, says Louis Aronne, M.D., a professor of metabolic research and the director of the Comprehensive Weight Control Center at Weill Cornell Medicine. That means when you start exercising, your body senses the deficit and ramps up its hunger signals, according to a review of weight-loss studies. If you're not diligent, you'll eat everything you burn and then some.

Now that we understand how the body works, we can change the exercises to concentrate on burning fat. I learned the hard way how to do this. You can do this by walking, then running, then walking, alternating about 6 or 7 times. I have bad knees so I used a stationary bike and did the same thing. I alternated speeds on the bike repeatedly, 6 or 7 times.

Sounds easy right, not really. The idea is to start out at a moderate speed for 5 minutes, then increase the speed to the max you can move. That raises your heart rate to double the BPM. Then after 5 minutes, you slow down to a slow speed under you recoup or 5 minutes. Do not stop. Then repeat until you have done 6 or 7 cycles. Each cycle is 10 minutes. At the end don't stop until your BPM has dropped below 100. I repeated this routine 5 days a week.

Don't panic if 5-minute intervals are too long, start out doing 3-minute intervals. The idea is to keep the heart working at the High BPM for more than 30 minutes.

If you change your diet by eating healthier foods and stop drinking calories, I lost about 10 pounds a month. I don't want to deceive you, your diet is very important to weight loss. Exercise won't do it by itself.

Follow me on X, the former Twitter, @ray0369 to get a link to my latest posts.

If you want to lose your body fat look for my e-books at the websites listed below. You’ll get information on Healthy eating, exercise, and diet. Instead of spending hours on the internet reading dozens of posts, you can save time by picking up one of my e-books. There are two e-books. “How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight?” is available at all the online bookstores selling for $3.99. Go to any of the websites below and search the title to find my e-book. This book gives you all you need to lose weight without spending money on gym memberships, diet plans, or meal plans. 

Look for my first book at Amazon.com, bn.com, iBooks, Kobo.com, Scribd.com, or Gardner Books in the U.K.

My new e-book is available on Smashwords.com and other online bookstores. Just type “getting to a Healthy Weight” in the search box at the top of the home page. 

Look for my podcast by searching “How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight” on the podcast app that you use. You’ll see a piece of my book cover.

If You Can Only Workout On The Weekends

 

If You Can Only Workout on the Weekends, Here’s How Long You Need to Exercise

By Laura Hensley 

Updated on March 01, 2024

Fact checked by Nick Blackmer

I re-posted this from VeryWell Health

This will blow the myth that you have to workout 3 or 4 times a week.

Sergey Mironov / Getty Images

Here’s some good news for weekend warriors. New research suggests that people who cram their sweat sessions into a weekend have body fat levels that resemble those who hit the gym throughout the week, as long as they're hitting at least 150 minutes of exercise total.

The study, published in the research journal Obesity, looked at abdominal fat and overall body fat. The Chinese researchers used dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA scan) to measure abdominal and whole-body fat mass and also looked at BMI and waist circumference in nearly 9,700 participants aged 20 to 59 years old.

Researchers collected data from 2011 to 2018 via the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) and then sorted it into groups. Questionnaires grouped participants as inactive, “weekend warriors,” and regularly active.

The findings: Weekend warriors and regularly active participants both had lower abdominal fat and whole-body mass fat compared to the inactive group. 

Based on the data, the researchers suggest that the weekly nationally recommended total physical activity amount—which is 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity aerobic activity and two days of muscle strengthening—can be done either evenly throughout the week or during one to two days. Both workout methods are associated with lower body fat.

Gregory Katz, MD, a cardiologist with NYU Langone Health who was not involved in the study, told Verywell Health that he is not surprised by these findings. Previous research has found that any amount of exercise has beneficial health effects.

“There’s nothing special about when that exercise happens; doing it clustered in a couple of days together is not better or worse than doing it spread out throughout the week,” he said.

While “weekend warrior” is a popular term for this method of exercise, you can work out on any two or three days during the week, said Peter T. Katzmarzyk, PhD, FTOS, associate executive director for Population and Public Health Sciences at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center at Louisiana State University.

“It could be Monday, Wednesday and Friday—it doesn’t have to be a Saturday and Sunday,” he told Verywell.

Listen to Your Body

While the researchers suggest that the weekly recommended exercise amount can be done over one or two days, exercising intensely for more than an hour in one go isn’t for everyone. Your age, fitness level, and any injuries all determine what you’re capable of when starting out.

“It’s important to start slow and gradually build up,” Katzmarzyk said. “You don’t want to go from being completely sedentary to suddenly spending three hours doing an exercise that can really hurt yourself.”

Katz said that the important takeaway from these findings is that any amount of exercise is better than none. You don’t need to relegate your workouts to the weekend, and you don’t need to be intimidated by the 150-minute guidelines. The important thing is to just start moving when you have the time.

“Being consistent is so much more important than doing what’s ‘optimal,” he said. “I look at the research on people who are ‘weekend warriors’ and [see] that’s what they do because it fits with their lifestyle, and they’re able to be consistent.”

Does the Type of Exercise Matter?

The Department of Health and Human Services recommends Americans get at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity exercise (or a combination of the two) each week. It also says adults should get in at least two days a week of muscle-strengthening activities that target the major muscle groups: legs, hips, back, abdomen, chest, shoulders, and arms.

“Any exercise has health benefits, but we recommend the majority of the activity you do be aerobic, such as walking, running, bicycling, yard work, etc.,” Katzmarzyk said.

Still, Katzmarzyk said the strength-training component of weekly exercise is extremely important and has its own set of benefits. It’s important to maintain muscle mass as you age. Regular strength-training exercise, such as resistance training or lifting weights, helps with that.

A variety of movement matters, Michael Graham, PhD, a senior lecturer in sport and exercise science at Teesside University in Middlesbrough, England, told Verywell. If you’re losing weight from aerobic exercise, you’ll need to strength train to prevent losing muscle mass too. Plus, changing things up can help keep boredom at bay and encourage motivation while targeting different muscle groups.

“Varying what you do, or how you do it, can maintain interest and motivation while offering new stimulus for the body, which will encourage further beneficial physiological adaptations,” Graham said.

“For example, moving from a bodyweight squat to an overhead squat (using a ball, dumbbell, or barbell) challenges the core, shoulders, and back in new ways,” he said. “Changing to a barbell back squat is a good way to start introducing additional weight to the exercise, which increases your strength and muscle size—both of which have protective properties for your bones and metabolic health as you age.”

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