The Importance of Exercise

Excerpted from
Turn Up the Heat : Unlock the Fat-Burning Power of Your Metabolism
By Philip L. Goglia

While it is true that you can lose weight and gain lean muscle just by following a food plan for your metabolic type, combining proper nutrition with a metabolically appropriate exercise program provides important and substantial benefits. It imparts vigor and efficiency to all organs and secures and maintains the healthful integrity of all their functions. Exercise aids in the correction of postural alignment and recovery from injuries, improves the tone and quality of muscle tissue, and stimulates the processes of digestion, absorption, metabolism, and elimination. It also strengthens blood vessels, the lungs, and the heart, resulting in the improved transfer of oxygen to the cells and increased circulation of the vascular and lymph systems. Added benefits are a sharper mind, and a body that radiates energy and balance.

The key to succeeding at any type of exercise is a strong will and a sincere desire to improve one's physical condition. It is important to have an exercise program that fits individual metabolic needs and capacities. A beginning fitness program should be challenging but not overly strenuous. But since the body will adapt to a particular level of exercise, just as it does to a static eating program, your workout should gradually increase in difficulty as your endurance improves, taking on a dynamic pattern. Your fitness program may contain many different forms of physical activity: sports, workouts in the gym or at home, cardiovascular exercises, classes in yoga or kickboxing. As long as you stay within the parameters of exercising for your metabolic type, described in this chapter, you can pick the ones you enjoy. Most important, work out regularly and maintain a metabolically appropriate food regimen.

Remember: Exercise does not create changes in your physique, it only creates the potential for physique changes. Workouts (exercise) systematically break down muscle tissue. The food you eat afterward is what repairs those muscles and completes your physique change. In the long run, exercise without proper nutritional support often does more harm than good. For example, if you don't ingest sufficient protein, your body will cannibalize its own muscle tissue in an effort to nourish itself. If you create a balance between exercise and nutrition, you will not only build a leaner, more muscular, and attractive physique, you will also optimize your health, stamina, and performance levels.

If You Are a Stranger to Exercise ...

Some readers of this book may have never consciously exercised before, or may be severely deconditioned. Ultimately, for overall conditioning, if you haven't exercised in years, can't get to a gym, or have physical restrictions that make it difficult for you to work out with weights, then I suggest that you do some form of cardiovascular work. This type of exercise strengthens your heart and lungs; reduces stress; elevates I-IDLs and reduces LDLs, if your foods are correct; and helps to keep you young. A cardio workout routine can fit into the busiest of schedules. You can walk during your lunch hour, bike with your kids after work or run while they bike, go hiking with the whole family, among many other activities. Once you get started, your cardiovascular routine can be expanded into many popular classes, including Tae-Bo, kickboxing, spinning, martial arts, or any of the varieties of aerobics classes.

If you do only one form of cardiovascular exercise, however, I suggest that you choose walking. This is by far the most effective conditioning exercise for anyone, at any age. Ideally, you should walk a minimum of 40 minutes, 5 times a week. But if you have become so deconditioned that you can walk only 10 minutes in the beginning, then do that. In the weeks to come, increase-your walking time by five minutes per week as you gain strength and aerobic conditioning. In just a few short weeks, you will be walking an hour at each cardiovascular session.

You can take yoga classes. This form of isometric exercise will stretch and condition your body, improve the function of all your internal organs, increase the efficiency of your circulatory and endocrine systems, and reduce stress. There are a variety of yoga classes for almost any need: yoga for pregnancy, yoga for back problems, heat yoga for added stretching, ashtanga yoga (a powerful type of yoga for building strength).

The Benefits of Progressive Weight Training

Regardless of your metabolic type, a certain portion of your workout will consist of progressive weight training in order to strengthen the musculoskeletal system. The benefits of weight training include increased muscle fiber size and density; increased muscle contractile strength; and increased tendon, bone, and ligament tensile strength. Exercising with weights will give the body a greater physical capacity, a more efficient metabolic function, and a decreased risk of general injury.

Physical Capacity

The most obvious benefits of a well-balanced strength-training program can be seen clearly in the changes that occur in your physique. The result will be a leaner, firmer, and fitter appearance due to the decreased amount of body fat and the addition of healthy muscle. Since lean muscle mass will slowly decrease if strength training does not continue, it is important to find a comfortable training regimen and to upgrade whenever you feel your body has adapted and needs greater intensity to create additional physique changes.

If you perform resistance exercises (weight training) regularly, you can expect to see dramatic changes in your strength. The American Council on Exercise states that previously untrained men and women gain about 2 to 4 pounds of muscle and 20 to 40 percent more strength after only two months of regular exercise. It does not matter at what age you begin exercising. You can start reaping great benefits from exercise at any age, even if you have never exercised before in your life.

If you decide to exercise with your children, however, do not permit them to begin training with weights or performing resistance exercises until the age of twelve. At that time the body's epithelial plates (growth plates at the ends of the bones that grow outward as the bones lengthen) have matured enough for the body to support weighted movements as long as the young person maintains proper posture and full range of motion. Before the age of twelve, children should concentrate on developing balance and stamina in a diverse array of sports and athletic activities of their choice.

Metabolic Function

Exercise increases the ratio of lean muscle to fat and improves metabolic efficiency. Simply put, there are basically two types of biological tissue: functional and nonfunctional. Muscle tissue is an active tissue, meaning that it can efficiently utilize caloric energy from stored fat to create movement. Fat tissue is nonfunctional-it bums no calories because it is, in and of itself, a fuel for the activation of the body's functional tissue.

The activation of muscle tissue releases metabolic heat as energy. The more muscle tissue you have, the more caloric heat required to create muscular movement and, therefore, the higher your metabolic temperature. Conversely, if you stop exercising, muscle tissue will atrophy, causing a decrease in metabolic function and temperature.