Lose Baby Fat
7 Fat Loss Strategies For Busy Moms
By Holly Rigsby, CPT
www.FitYummyMummy.com
Would you like to "jump start" your metabolism
and lose your ‘mommy belly' once and for all?
If so, the following seven tips are exactly what
you need to improve your workouts and ignite your
metabolism. Try some or all of these tips, but beware,
the result may be a number of admiring second glances
and the need to pull your ‘skinny jeans' out
of the closet.
1. The majority of your workouts should
be composed of free-weight, bodyweight or cable
exercises.
Compared to machines, free-weight, bodyweight and
cable movements often require more skill, create
muscular balance, and have a greater metabolic cost.
For example, it is more difficult to balance the
weights, and to coordinate muscles when performing
free-weight exercises. Although this may sound like
a disadvantage, it is actually a benefit. By balancing
and stabilizing free-weights or cables you are working
more muscles through a greater range of motion resulting
in more muscles developed and more calories burned.
2. Use exercises that work more than one muscle
at a time.
When focusing on fat loss, you can't worry about
"shaping" exercises, instead you should use exercises
that'll get you the biggest bang for your buck and
work as many muscles as possible. Isolation exercises
can be used at the end of a workout to work on a
specific target area, but they just serve to supplement
your core movements.
Virtually every savvy fitness professional is privy
to the fact that compound exercises recruit the
most muscle groups for any given body part.
If you seek lean, toned muscles and the increase
in metabolism that comes with them, you must choose
exercises that work as many different muscles as
possible. One of the main reasons why squats are
superior to leg extensions for improving your body
is that they also work your butt, hamstrings and
inner thighs in addition to toning your quadriceps
while leg extensions focus on just the front of
your thigh and don't really offer any other benefit.
That same rationale hold true for arm exercises
too. That's why dumbell presses and dips will are
more valuable for your arms than triceps kickbacks
and pushdowns.
A good rule of thumb is to use movements that will
allow you to use the most weight. These will have
a systemic effect on your body that'll help maintain
or increase your lean muscle, and in turn ignite
your metabolism.
3. Pair exercises.
Pair your exercises together so that you alternate
between upper-body exercises and lower-body exercises
or between exercises that target opposing muscle
groups (e.g. chest and back).
This type of approach will keep your workouts short
and efficient by eliminating much of the downtime
that comes between sets of a single exercise since
you are working on one movement while resting from
another. This approach can also yield huge benefits
in your mission to burn fat. Since you'll constantly
be moving and keeping your heart rate elevated,
you'll be burning far more calories than you would
during a typical workout.
4. Keep your reps between 8 and 12.
Through research, it has been determined that the
best range for building lean muscle is roughly between
8-12 reps. Since the main focus of your resistance
training efforts is to gain lean body mass and stimulate
your metabolism, this rep range fills the bill perfectly.
"High reps for tone and fat loss" is one of the
biggest (and most unproductive) training myths!
Somehow the aerobics, yoga and Pilates' community
have convinced us that when we perform bodyweight
exercises or light resistance training for high
reps, our muscles magically take on a beautiful
shape without growing or bulging. On the other hand,
if you challenge yourself with moderately heavy
weights, your body will take on a bulky, unflattering
appearance. If you believe this, you probably still
believe in the Tooth Fairy!
5. Rest only 30 to 60 seconds between sets.
When you keep the rest periods under one minute,
it's easier to stay focused on the task at hand
and keeps your heart rate elevated. In addition,
it forces your muscles to recover more quickly between
sets, along with keeping your nervous system revved
up.
If your first movement in an upper/lower body pair
is squats, you might want to rest 60 seconds before
attempting your second movement. However, if your
first exercise is a fairly "easy" exercise, like
lat pull downs, you might only wish to wait 30 seconds
before doing the second part of the pair.
6. Perform total body workouts.
You must drop the notion that muscle groups work
independently of one another. Muscles work together
and should be trained that way. Besides, not only
does this approach mean less time in the gym, but
by working the whole body three times per week,
you'll be maximizing the fat burning effect of your
program.
7. Cardio is not the cure-all for fat loss.
Cardiovascular exercise aids in the creation of
a caloric deficit, but the caloric expenditure during
cardio is temporary. Strength training addresses
the core of the problem by permanently increasing
the rate at which the body burns calories by adding
muscle. The best programs will include both strength
training and cardiovascular training, but the core
or the programs effectiveness is resistance training.
Take these strategies and incorporate them into
your workout routine. Not only will you save a lot
of time, but you'll also soon see a leaner and more
toned body. Not to mention a few more turned heads
and the re-emergence of your skinny jeans.
About the Author
Holly Rigsby is a nationally recognized
women’s fitness coach, certified personal
trainer (CPT) and the author of the internationally
popular e-book – Fit Yummy Mummy - Burn Your
Baby Fat & Get Your Body Back. Go to http://www.fityummymummy.com
to get your FREE copy of her special report: "The
Five Ways To Boost Your Metabolism."
