My Diet Experiences

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly in My Quest To Lose Weight

Exercise Plans

My exercise plan recommendations:


My Cardio Plan

Historically, the experts have said that the only way to actually lose fat was to perform at least 30 minutes of aerobic exercise 3-4 times per week. Now, this usually took at least 45 minutes, because the "aerobic" effect only started when your heart rate reached a key point. There are all sorts of age/heart rate charts out there that people still use. So, basically, the idea was to get your hear rate to a certain point and let it stay there for thirty minutes. This does work, but if you're looking to figure out how to lose fat, it's not the best...and it takes too long.

The new way that experts are suggesting is interval training. The general idea is that you run a cycle of slow, fast, faster, fastest and all the way back to slow again for a period of about 20 minutes. With warm up and cool down, my interval workout lasts 24 minutes exactly. When you're trying to fit workouts into a busy schedule, 24 beats 45 evey time.

My interval workout looks like this (on the treadmill)

  • Minute 1 - warm up at 4 mph
  • Minute 2 - warm up at 5 mph
  • Minute 3 through 7 - go from 6 mph to 8 mph in .5 mph increments
  • Repeat Minute 3 through 7 three more times (getting us to the 22nd minute)
  • Minute 23 - cool down at 4 mph
  • Minute 24 - cool down at 3 mph

You can do exactly this same thing, just adjust the speed so that you can do the whole thing, and by the end...you're exhausted!  It takes a couple times to experiment, but it really works.


My Weight Training Plan

The benefits of weight training are incredible.

Build muscle - Muscle burns more fat than other tissue. You can actually change your metabolism over time to burn fat even when you're not doing cardio. The more muscle you have, the more fat you're burning ALL the time.

Flexibility and strength - I don't know about you, but as I get older I want to have great quality of life. If I'm eating well, keeping my weight in check, and generally living healthy...I want to be in good enough shape to enjoy my long life

Look better - Nice to want to take your shirt off or where that bikini at the beach.

When I first starting weight training, I thought that more was better. I was in the gym for about 1.5 hours each time...most of the time 4 days a week. I also started doing split workouts which meant that you worked only a portion of your body each day. This meant even MORE time in the gym. Quickly, between long runs for cardio and more intense weight training, I was living to work out instead of the other way around.

I started to look for a better way. The more research I did, the more I saw that most studies claimed that 1 set of an exercise was just as beneficial as 3 sets (if done properly). This was good news! I experimented a bit with this, and I have found it to be true. I've gone from 4 workouts at 1.5 hours each (every week) to 3 workouts at 25 minutes each (every week).

Here are the highlights of my weight training program:

  • Full body workout 3 times per week
  • One exercise for each major muscle group
  • One set of each exercise - performed to failure (this is the trickiest part...in order to get the benefit, you need to PUSH yourself on this one set)
  • When performing to failure gets me to 12 reps or more, I increase the weight.
  • Every 6 weeks, I change up the exercises.

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