Article 32: Sports will give you a great figure and the most reasonable way to lose weight, along with a detailed explanation of aerobic exercise.

Sports will give you a great physique

It's true, exercise can help you lose weight and give you a great figure.

Losing weight through exercise requires perseverance.

Therefore, once you've made up your mind to lose weight through exercise, choosing a sport you enjoy is very important.

In our daily lives, playing ball, hiking, running, swimming, and exercising are all sports that are relatively easy to do.

You can choose to alternate between various exercises, or you can stick to one or two exercises that are most "targeted" to your body shape.

Fitness is both "trendy" and can help control unwanted "development" in certain areas of the body, making it perfect for those who want a great figure.

Gyms are the best place to exercise.

Many people buy fitness equipment for their homes to save time and keep up with the trend, but they often don't use it much.

Why? The reason is the lack of the atmosphere unique to gyms! Gyms have energetic music, people sweating profusely while trying to lose weight, and a mix of "perfect figures" and "fat grandmas" for you to compare, making you both envious and fearful.

To become a "devil" and not a "fat woman," you'll find yourself working out like crazy-slimming down! Losing weight! One, two! One, two!... The weight loss exercises at the gym are never monotonous.

Aerobics is a great way to lose weight. As long as you take some time each day to follow the aerobics instructors on stage and dance to a brisk and energetic rhythm (don't worry about anyone laughing at you, the person laughing at you is also "flailing their arms and legs" to lose weight), after a month, you will really find that your waist becomes thinner, your muscles become stronger, and you become more energetic.

You can lose weight by singing and dancing lightly.

Many gyms now offer body shaping dance classes.

So-called "body shaping dance" is a dance performed by students under the instruction of professionals, where they dance gracefully to beautiful music-achieving weight loss while gradually perfecting their physique.

Many women are now going to gyms because they are fascinated by body dancing.

Weight loss using fitness equipment.

The fitness equipment in the gym is much more convenient than the "multi-purpose fitness equipment" at home.

Different muscle groups, such as the gluteus maximus, deltoids, and pectoralis major, can be trained separately using different fitness equipment.

However, it's best to ask a coach for a "prescription" before using the equipment, because if used improperly, it could cause "little mice" to grow on your arms or turn into "thigh monsters," which would be a real disaster.

"Water aerobics" is a boon for overweight people to lose weight.

This is a new type of weight loss exercise.

Most gyms have swimming pools where people use the properties of water to do aerobic exercise while holding dumbbells and keeping time with music.

Because water has buoyancy, it reduces the risk of injury during exercise and consumes a lot of energy, making water aerobic exercise very suitable for obese people.

The ultimate goal of exercising is to become fit and lose weight, but what to wear during exercise is also an art.

In gyms, we often see girls exercising in loose-fitting clothes, thinking that it's more comfortable and relaxing. Some even wrap themselves in fashionable clothes to do aerobics.

Actually, when it's time to "show your skills," tight-fitting fitness clothes are the most suitable.

Fitness apparel is fashion itself; it comes in both one-piece and two-piece designs.

Don't worry about it exposing your body's flaws.

Fitness apparel not only makes exercise convenient, but it also makes it easiest for you to spot which parts of your body have lost fat!

What is the most reasonable way to lose weight?

Since weight loss drugs have many drawbacks, the only options left are exercise and dietary changes.

When it comes to exercise for weight loss, especially to get rid of excess fat around the waist and abdomen, people first think of doing sit-ups.

You can see all kinds of abdominal exercise equipment advertisements on TV and in newspapers, and the models demonstrating them all have very beautiful figures and enviable abs.

So everyone bought equipment to train their abs and did sit-ups on the floor morning and night.

After a period of time, what are the results? Most people, apart from making the muscles under the fat firmer, will not notice any significant change in their measurements.

To verify this phenomenon, four professors from the Department of Exercise Science and the Department of Physical Education at the University of Massachusetts and the University of Kansas conducted an experiment in 1981.

Thirteen men with no exercise habits, an average weight of 76.9 kg, and an average height of 1.75 m underwent 27 days of sit-up exercises, with each phase lasting five or six days. They started with 10 sets of 7 repetitions each on the first day and increased to 14 sets of 24 repetitions each on the last day.

Each person did a total of 5,000 sit-ups over 27 days.

Measurements before and after the experiment showed disappointing results.

Their average weight decreased from 76.9 kg to 76.1 kg; their body fat percentage decreased from 11.6% to 11%, while their waist circumference increased from 83 cm to 84 cm.

From a statistical point of view, these changes are negligible.

Why can't sit-ups eliminate abdominal fat? The reason is that the human body's energy supply is a very integrated whole system.

Muscles in any part of the body cannot "find energy locally" from the nearest fat deposit; instead, they must be transported by blood to glycogen stored in the blood, liver, and even body fat.

To utilize fat for energy, you must exercise continuously for at least 20 minutes and maintain a heart rate above 55% of your maximum heart rate (maximum heart rate is 220 minus your age).

Only when the glycogen in the blood and liver is depleted can fat be utilized.

Once we understand this principle, we know what the most effective exercise for weight loss is: low-intensity, long-duration aerobic endurance activities, such as brisk walking, jogging, swimming, climbing stairs, cycling, aerobics, and any exercise that can be sustained for more than 20 minutes while maintaining a certain heart rate.

What is the ideal rate of weight loss? Generally, a person burns about 15 kilocalories per minute while jogging (the more you weigh, the more you burn), while one kilogram of fat burns 3,500 kilocalories.

If you jog for 30 minutes every day, you can lose one kilogram a week without changing your diet.

Of course, this is just a theoretical calculation; in reality, people tend to eat a little more after exercising.

Experts recommend a weight loss rate of 1.5 kilograms per week, as this helps prevent weight regain.

So, should we still do sit-ups? Yes, but twice a week, two sets each time is enough.

Strengthening abdominal muscles can prevent lower back injuries and is very beneficial.

Aerobic exercise helps with weight loss

The pre-stored ATP energy can only last for 15 seconds. After running 100 meters, it is all used up. When running 200 meters, the energy for the last 100 meters must be provided by the rapid synthesis of new heat energy substance ATP from blood glucose in an anaerobic state. The byproduct is lactic acid.

Sports such as running 200 or 400 meters, swimming 100 meters, tennis, and soccer utilize the energy provided by the anaerobic breakdown of blood sugar. As a result, a large amount of lactic acid accumulates in the muscles after exercise, and lactic acid is the substance that causes muscle soreness after exercise.

The blood sugar required for this type of exercise is provided by starch, so it does not burn fat and is not helpful for weight loss.

The energy provided by the anaerobic breakdown of blood sugar (starch) can only sustain the body for 40 seconds, and is completely used up after running 400 meters.

When running 800 meters, the energy for the last 400 meters must be provided by the synthesis of new energy substance ATP from blood glucose, blood fatty acids, and blood amino acids under aerobic conditions. Blood glucose is supplied by the breakdown of starch, blood fatty acids are supplied by the breakdown of fat, and blood amino acids are supplied by the breakdown of protein. This whole process requires oxygen. In other words, oxygen is used to burn starch, fat, and protein to produce the energy substance ATP, which supplies the heat required for the latter part of the exercise. This latter part of the exercise is called "aerobic exercise".

Running 800 or 1500 meters, swimming 200 or 400 meters, boxing, and other sports all require the initial use of oxygen to burn starch, fat, and protein. Therefore, the latter part of these sports is aerobic exercise.

The first five minutes of exercise burn starch, and the longer you exercise, the more fat you burn. If you exercise for half an hour to an hour, half of the calories you burn will be supplied by burning fat.

Without dieting, even an hour of aerobic exercise can only burn off the starch and fat in food, not the fat stored in the body, so it is still not helpful for weight loss; only after dieting can an hour of aerobic exercise have a chance to burn off the fat in the body.

Aerobic exercise refers to continuous and repeated activities, within a certain time period, at a certain training intensity, to complete certain activity requirements, so that the heart rate gradually increases to the prescribed maximum heart rate range.

Simply put, aerobic exercise is actually repeated low-to-moderate intensity exercise, such as running, walking, mountain climbing, rope skipping, etc. Trainees can choose according to their own situation and interests.

Coach Li Qiang, a national first-level fitness instructor, provided us with a method for calculating heart rate during training:

Optimal exercise heart rate = (maximum exercise heart rate - heart rate) × 70% + resting heart rate.

You can use this formula to control the intensity of your exercise.

At the beginning of exercise, energy mainly comes from the breakdown of blood sugar, and it is only in the later stages of exercise that the body begins to use the oxidation of fat.

Therefore, the optimal amount of activity to achieve fitness and disease prevention effects should be 30 to 60 minutes of moderate-intensity activity per day, with an energy expenditure of approximately 150 to 400 kcal.

If you divide this amount of exercise into 3 sessions, each lasting about ten minutes, that's also fine.