EVERYDAY FITNESS

Every day fitness is important to me, and I'm sure others like minded who read the triathlon and running blogs. To me, that means doing something every day. And by doing something, I don't mean running a marathon or doing a triathlon. I just mean something every day, for 10 minutes if that's all you want, walking around the block, walking up the steps instead of taking the elevator. Something.

Today we had another in a series of wellness seminars put on by my employer. I've attended all of them, not only out of interest but also because there is always an incentive for us to attend these functions. The majority of the people who go, do so only for the incentive. Today's topic was "Move it to Lose it." Some of the information learned (and which you may already know):

The Art of Weight Loss--Goal: Achieve a negative energy balance. To do so, you have to eat less and exercise more.

• You must exercise in order to lose body fat.
• Exercising all the time at a really high intensity does not guarantee you will lose weight.
• Its a myth that the more you exercise the more fat you will lose. Why? Because it does not factor in what you eat to make up for the calories and energy burned.
• Every year after age 25 you lose muscle mass due to a decrease in resting metabolism, up to 15* pounds by age 55. Loss of muscle equals gain in fat.

These are just a few of the topics discussed. The bottom line of course is that exercise is the key to long term weight management. So then I did the math (and correct me if I'm wrong) on that 15* pounds of muscle loss, multiplying 3500 x 15 = 52,500 calories. At this rate, I figure it would take 53 weeks to lose 15 pounds by eliminating 500 extra calories a week, by both diet and exercise. I might just want to take up that challenge!