Jump roping, dancing, taking walks, riding stationary bikes, doing aerobics or lifting weights at the gym are just a couple of ways to work out.
It's been proven that reducing calories together with a balanced diet and exercise plan produce a greater loss of body fat than just reducing calories. Remember that decreasing the percentage of body fat is just as or even more important than losing weight.
Exercise not only reduces fat but also increases muscle mass by gradually toning your body and improving your body figure. This will make your body firmer and define lines. You will then look and feel much better about yourself.
An additional advantage for many obese people is that exercise helps control your appetite which facilitates weight loss.
Exercising also prevents the loss of calcium in the bones, especially important for women, and protects against the ever feared osteoporosis. It's also proven that strictly following an exercise routine is highly beneficial to the functioning of the heart, cholesterol levels and blood pressure which all help decrease the risks of suffering from cardiovascular disease or strokes.
In addition, exercising also helps prevent and control diabetes, not only by losing weight but also by improving the ability of cells to properly use blood sugar.
In general, exercising significantly improves the quality of life. This can be seen in even the simplest of things such as moving from one place to another without tiring, sleeping well, being stress free, carrying your children without straining yourself and bringing in the groceries without any problems.
Finally, it's worth noting that many recent studies confirm that people who continue to exercise once they've already lost the weight keep the extra pounds off for more time than those who stop exercising after losing weight.
