Working Girl Cooks!

My friend decided a few months ago that she was going to actively try to maintain a healthy weight. She is not fat, mind you, far from it. She looks great, but she wanted to look better.

She tried a diet, one of those meal delivery services, but she loves food, going out, being social way too much and it didn't last long. So she decided to try an exercise routine. She started by doing cardio for 30 minutes on the elliptical machine a few times a week. Eventually, she was up to 45 minutes on the elliptical machine five times a week, but the scale didn't budge! She wasn't losing any weight! "I'm working out almost every day", she complained to me. "Why am I not losing any weight?"

First of all, to lose weight you have to maintain a healthy, well balanced diet AND a regular exercise routine. You CANNOT choose one, you must do both. Although, when you are starting out I do recommend picking one and focusing on that before implementing the other. If dieting is easier for you start with that or if exercising is easier start with that. Then gradually introduce the other into your life once you are comfortable you have gotten a handle on the first one.

Second of all, the key to burning fat and losing weight through exercise is HIGH INTENSITY INTERVAL TRAINING, also known as HIIT. Now I know most of you have heard this term or a similar one before. But for some reason, most of you are scared of it.

Oh no I couldn't do that that's too hard!

Only athletes do HIIT!

Only really physically fit people can incorporate HIIT into their exercise routine!

Well I am here to dispel all those myths and to let you know that EVERYONE CAN AND SHOULD incorporate HIIT into their exercise routine....Yes! Even beginners!

So what exactly is HIIT? Let me first begin by telling you what it is not. HIIT is not sprinting 100 yards in 5.5 seconds 30 times when you have never so much as jogged in your life. HIIT is not bench pressing 200lbs when you have never lifted a single weight in your life. HIIT does not mean you have to train the way athletes do!

You simply have to get your heart rate up. HIIT  is doing something, whether it is jogging, running, sprinting, jumping, lifting weights, climbing stairs, or any type of physical exertion until your heart is beating so fast it wants to burst out of your chest. Until you are breathing so hard you can't speak. Until your body is screaming for you to stop. I know it doesn't sound that pleasant....It's not! But luckily, it doesn't last very long! HIIT is incorporating these bursts of very high intense physical exertions into your regular routine. You want to push yourself to the max, get your heart beating as fast as it possibly can go, get your muscles working as hard as they possibly can, and then you let yourself recover for a period of time WITHOUT cooling down, and do it all over again. This is the key to burning fat, this is the key to losing weight.

For some people, simply jogging for five minutes or bench pressing the bar can get them to this point, others have to work harder. It doesn't matter, all that matters is how your workout makes you feel. And the best part about HIIT is that it makes your workout go by so much faster, you don't have to work out as long to get the same results, and it adds a lot of variety to your workout routine because there are so many ways to increase the intensity of your workouts.