Standards Of An Effective Health Club

We've all heard the drill: "Aerobic activity is best for weight loss, because you burn more calories than with other types of exercise." However, what if I told you that that advice was absolutely WRONG?

It is. Take a look sometime. Check out those trainers who say that aero is a good fat-busting workout. How many of THOSE people look healthy, fit and strong? And how many of them look obese, out of shape, and miserable? Chances are, most of them do.

Here's the thing. Those so-called experts are overweight themselves and keep on pushing aerobics to poor clients who entrust their time, money and emotions on them. The so-called facts on aerobics as a fat buster are more likely to be myths. As a health club expert, here's what REALLY counts if you want to be healthy, fit, strong, and the right weight -- not too fat, not too skinny.

A recent study in Australia showed that two groups of people were set up with exercise programs to "lose weight"; group 1 focused on 20 minutes of high intensity interval training, three days a week, for 15 weeks, and lost about 5 1/2 pounds of fat in that time. The second group gained a pound of fat by doing 40 minutes of steady state aero 3 times a week for 15 weeks. What does that break down to? You guessed it!

1. Aerobics is good for the heart and NOT for fat loss!

Yep. Not only is aerobic exercise useless, but it actually MAKES you fat. One "expert" has said, "Successful dieters performed 60 to 90 minutes of aerobic exercise a day." But actually, no, that's not the path to success, according to a health club expert. First, it can be unrealistic for aero to demand so much time from busy people. Second, it does NOT work for fat loss and sadly, it has even contributed to weight gain. Studies have shown, in fact, that men can only lose about 6 pounds of fat through aerobic exercise done for an hour daily, six days a week, for 12 months, while women lose even less over the same period of time, just four pounds. That's a whole lot of effort for very little result.

2. Your body DOESN'T have a natural "setpoint" weight that you have to starve to stay at or below -- as long as you build yourself some muscle

While most "experts" say that it's difficult to lose and keep off more than 5 to 10% of your body weight in that weight gain is almost inevitable unless you strictly follow a low-calorie diet, that's really not true. What you DO have to do to maintain a healthy weight below that "too fat" setpoint is to boost your metabolism by about 20% -- which is easy if, again, you do regular interval training and build yourself some muscle.

3. A low-calorie diet plan combined with aerobic exercise makes it very easy for you to GAIN weight

That's because when you follow a low-calorie diet and combine with aerobic exercise, you lose a lot of muscle. And when you lose muscle, you bust your metabolism's chops. This type of fat loss plan is doomed to fail since it just results to increasing your hunger pangs; you're going to eat again, because you have to, and when you do, you will likely binge on "forbidden" foods. Why not stock up on prepared meals so that when you get hungry, you don't bask in junk foods and instead, munch on a prepared, healthy food.

4.Dump the aerobic activity and focus on high intensity training if you want to lose weight and get in shape

You know what? A health club expert is right when he says that you don't need separate "aerobic activity" for cardiovascular fitness. If you are doing high intensity interval exercise, you will lose more fat than you could imagine.