Related topics: •  Weight Loss 101, Part 1: Getting Started •  Weight Loss 101, Part 2: Eating for Health •  Weight Loss 101, Part 4: Everyday Strategies •  Weight Loss 101, Part 5: Sticking With It

Part 3: Get Moving

•Did you track what you ate in your daily food plan?

•Did you follow the healthy eating tips? Get more inspiration here.

After eating well, the second important key to losing weight is to exercise regularly. Exercising not only burns calories, it makes you feel better and can even give you more energy to get through your day. Really! If it's been a while since you exercised, it may seem impossible to get started. But with a little planning, and the right mix of activities, exercise shouldn't be too difficult to fit into your schedule or budget.

You might feel that with work and family taking up so much of your time, you don't have time to exercise regularly -- but it is possible. Here are a few tips to make it easier:

•Look at your exercise session like you would a doctor's appointment or a class, and keep that appointment with yourself every day.

•Enlist your family's support. If they know it's important to you, they may take up the slack around the house so you have time to work out. Or, they may even join you!

•Establish a routine. Get up a little earlier and get in a short workout, or go for a walk when you get home from work. Once you've established a routine, you'll miss it if you don't exercise.

•Let something less important go. If you find yourself watching TV shows you're not even interested in, why not use that time to exercise instead? Or if you don't want to miss your favorite shows, why not buy a stationary bike and ride while you're watching?

Simply put, the best type of exercise is the one you'll do. Choose an activity you like, or alternate between a few different activities so you don't get bored. When starting out, focus on gentle, low-intensity activities such as walking, swimming, cycling, or dancing (yes, dancing is good exercise). Check out our Fitness Finder tool -- it can help you find a list of activities that will fit your goals and personality.

Aerobic exercise is a very important element of a fitness plan for weight loss. Aerobic, or "air-using" exercises -- like running and swimming -- increase your heart rate (and breathing), so they're an efficient way to burn calories while also strengthening your heart and lungs. Aerobic activities are also very valuable to your health: They're great at relieving stress and mild depression, and may help lower your cholesterol and blood pressure and fend off certain cancers.

While running for 20 minutes will burn more calories than 20 minutes of walking, remember that you can just choose to walk for longer and burn off the same amount of energy. You don't have to push yourself hard to benefit from exercise. Go slow and steady for the first four to six weeks, and gradually increase the effort over the following four to six months as you're ready to handle it. That way you won't get discouraged by a difficult activity, and more importantly, you won't injure yourself.

•A pound of fat equals roughly 3,500 calories.

•If you eat 3,500 extra calories over the course of a week, you'd gain a pound.

•If you ate the right amount of calories (based on your calorie need) and burned 3,500 instead, you'd lose a pound.

Let's take a look at how this works:

•If a 150-pound woman walks briskly (4 miles an hour) for 45 minutes, she burns 200 calories.

•If the same woman runs (at 6 miles an hour) for the same amount of time, she'd burn 500 calories.

Any way you look at it, exercising regularly really adds up! To find out how many calories your favorite activity burns, check out our Calorie Burn Calculator.

If you're over 35 and haven't exercised in a while, or if you have any health problems, the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports recommends that you see your doctor before you begin an exercise program. Your doctor might recommend that you undergo a graded exercise test before you get started -- or he might say you're good to go!

A walking program is a good way to start out if you haven't been exercising regularly. Any exercise program, whether it's a walking program or a step aerobic class, should begin with a warm-up and end with a cooling-down period. Here's a sample walking program from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. The short walks during the first weeks of this program won't give you enough of an aerobic workout to shed pounds from the exercise alone, but you will still strengthen your muscles and gain other health benefits. And by the time you work up to 45 minutes or so of brisk walking, you'll be burning some serious calories!

Each session starts by walking slowly for 5 minutes to warm up, and ends with walking slowly for 5 minutes to cool down. This is very important. Aim for walking at least three times a week.

Week 1: Walk briskly for 5 minutes. Total time with warm-up and cool-down: 15 minutes.

Week 2: Walk briskly for 8 minutes. Total time with warm-up and cool-down: 18 minutes.

Week 3: Walk briskly for 11 minutes. Total time with warm-up and cool-down: 21 minutes.

Week 4: Walk briskly for 14 minutes. Total time with warm-up and cool-down: 24 minutes.

Week 5: Walk briskly for 17 minutes. Total time with warm-up and cool-down: 27 minutes.

Week 6: Walk briskly for 20 minutes. Total time with warm-up and cool-down: 30 minutes.

Week 7: Walk briskly for 23 minutes. Total time with warm-up and cool-down: 33 minutes.

Week 8: Walk briskly for 26 minutes. Total time with warm-up and cool-down: 36 minutes.

Week 9: Walk briskly for 30 minutes. Total time with warm-up and cool-down: 40 minutes.

If you really want to help your heart and burn calories efficiently, many fitness experts say it pays to exercise in your target heart rate zone. Your target zone depends on your age and your fitness level. The total range (from low to high fitness) varies from roughly 55 to 85 percent of your maximum heart rate. If you're just starting to exercise, aim for the low end of the range (55 to 60 percent of your maximum heart rate) to promote heart health. As you get more fit, aim for the middle of the zone (70 to 75 percent of your maximum heart rate) to promote higher aerobic activity and fat burning.

You'll know you're in your zone if it's hard for you to carry on a conversation while exercising. If you feel totally out of breath, you should stop and rest. On the other hand, it shouldn't feel like a stroll in the park either! If you're seriously interested in keeping track of your heart rate while exercising, you might consider a heart-rate monitor, a little gizmo that straps onto your chest and sends a signal to a watch-like device on your wrist.

If you've completed your walking program, or if you're ready to start at a more advanced level, put together a fitness program tailored to suit your needs -- one that includes a variety of activities you'll enjoy. The President's Council of Physical Fitness says every good exercise program has four essential components:

•Aerobic activities like swimming, running, stair-step machines, brisk walking, etc.

•Muscular strength activities like weight-lifting.

•Muscular endurance activities in which muscles are worked repeatedly, such as pushups.

•Flexibility activities like stretching, to keep joints and muscles operating smoothly.

Note that some exercises could fit into more than one of these categories: Pushups, for instance, would meet both the muscular endurance and muscular strength requirements. Here's what the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports recommends you include in your weekly fitness program:

•Each workout should start with a warm-up period of 5-10 minutes of activities like walking, slow jogging, knee lifts, arm lifts, and so on.

•Each workout should end with 5-10 minutes of cool-down activities like slow walking, low-level exercises, and stretching.

•Aerobic activity: Aim for at least three 20-minute periods of aerobic exercise per week. Continuous-motion games like racquetball and handball qualify as aerobic activities, as well as jumping rope, bicycling, jogging, swimming, cross-country-skiing and brisk walking.

•Muscular strength activity: At least two 20-minute sessions of weight-lifting per week.

•Muscular endurance: A minimum of three 30-minute sessions each week that could include calisthenics, pushups, situps, or weight training for all the major muscle groups.

•Flexibility: Do 10-12 minutes of daily stretching. This can be part of your cool-down period, or you can stretch after your warm-up.

Now that you've got an exercise plan, put it in writing. You can write up your weekly schedule in the grid included in your Weight Loss Plan. Another alternative is our handy Fitness Contract, designed for people who want to get in shape but not necessarily lose weight. Then, go a step further and figure out how many calories you'll burn each session. Over the course of a week that number should help you stay motivated to stick to your schedule! Last but not least, if you record your progress in your Fitness Diary, you'll feel a real sense of accomplishment.

For more information on different types of exercise and equipment, check out our sections on Working Out and Active Sports.

•Plan how you'll fit exercise into your schedule

•Decide what activities you'll do, whether it's a beginning walking program or a fitness program following the principles above.

•Pick a target date (the sooner, the better!) and get started.

•Write down your plan and track your progress in your Fitness Diary, Weight Loss Plan, or Fitness Contract.

Future classes:

•Weight Loss 101, Part 4: Everyday Strategies

•Weight Loss 101, Part 5: Sticking With It

Every class will contain links to all the tools used in the classes, so you can access them at any time.

•BMI Calculator

•Calorie Burn Calculator

•Calorie Needs Calculator

•Fitness Contract

•Fitness Diary

•Fitness Finder

•Food Diary

•Healthy Eating Guide

•Healthy Shopping Guide

•Nutrition Toolbox

•Target Heart Rate Calculator

•Weight Loss Plan

-- Deepi Brar, Dana Sullivan, Ingfei Chen, and Nancy Montgomery helped with this report.

References

First published April 13, 2005
Last updated January 29, 2008

Or Find More On:

Back to top of page