How Exercise Burns Fat and Benefits Health

Although most people would agree that exercise is important, the latest government report says that seven in ten adults don’t exercise regularly and nearly four in ten aren’t physically active at all. What’s more, the fig­ures haven’t changed over the last five years, despite the warnings that a couch potato lifestyle can lead to health problems. Unfortunately, most people probably wouldn’t be able to list more than a few benefits of exer­cise. They might say, “It makes you look good,” “It helps you to lose weight,” or “Exercise makes your heart stronger.”

The benefits of physical activity are more far-reaching than people realize. Exercising is one of the easiest and most cost-effective ways of improving all kinds of medical conditions such as hypertension, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, thyroid problems, and depression. While it is best to follow a specific program, such as the one described on this website, studies have shown that even ten minutes a day of aerobic activities like walking or rid­ing a bicycle can have a positive effect on health. That’s how sensitive the body is to exercising.

To help you understand what you might receive from the Fat-Burning tips described on this website, here are ten signif­icant benefits of exercise.

As we have seen, scale weight can be deceiving. The goal of any good weight-loss program should be to lose fat, not lean muscle tissue. While most people connect weight loss with going on a calorically restrictive diet, few realize that exercise is a powerful tool for taking off the weight. A recent article in the Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry reported that while dieting did take off the pounds, exercising was more effective at reducing pounds of body fat: “Although total fat decreased in both weight loss groups (exercise vs. diet), the average reduction was greater in the exercise-induced weight loss group than in the diet-induced weight loss group.” Exercise also preserved and even increased lean muscle tissue, whereas dieting alone tended to reduce lean muscle to a certain degree.

The ideal presented in this article, which I also recommend on this website, is to exercise appropriately and restrict your daily caloric intake. This is the winning combination for increasing metabolism, resulting in the greatest amount of fat loss in the shortest period of time.

According to a recent survey of studies conducted by the Human Nutrition Program, regular exercise also improves blood chemistry on many levels, from the lipid profile, to levels of hormones, to amounts of glucose and insulin.

Exercise lowers total cholesterol and increases levels of HDL (good cholesterol).Exercise decreases the amount of leptin, a hormone that plays a role in regulating body fat and energy, in your bloodstream. The more leptin present, the higher your body fat.Exercise stimulates the production of epinephrine, a potent hormone that stimulates LPL lipase, an enzyme that catalyzes the release of free fatty acids from adipose tissues. The more epinephrine and lipase, the lower your body fat.Exercise decreases levels of insulin in the blood, which in turn decrease the amount of glucose present.

While dieting alone can cause some of these changes in blood chem­istry, regular exercise along with dieting increases all of these benefits. It is important to remember that a woman’s blood chemistry responds best to lower- to moderate-intensity exercise and a man’s blood chemistry to moderate to higher levels of intensity. An article in the Journal of Nutri­tional Biochemistry that studied the cholesterol levels of male cyclists showed the effectiveness of prolonged high-intensity cardiovascular exer­cise in decreasing levels of LDL (bad cholesterol) and increasing levels of HDL (good cholesterol).

Hypertension is so prevalent in the United States that the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institute of Health has come up with a whole new set of guidelines for those who may be at risk for devel­oping high blood pressure. There are now three categories:

Normal—the systolic pressure is less than 120 and the diastolic is less than 80.Prehypertension—the systolic range is 120–139 and the diastolic range is 80–89.Hypertension—the systolic number is greater than 139 and the diastolic is greater than 89.

Since blood pressure increases steadily with age, getting it under con­trol and keeping it under control is crucial. A number of studies have shown that the mortality from heart attacks, strokes, and other vascular diseases increases progressively as blood pressure levels rise. The Framingham Heart Study suggests that even people who have normal blood pressure at age fifty-five still have a 90 percent chance of developing high blood pressure if lifestyle choices that prevent these increases are ignored. When coupled with fat loss from an appropriate food program, such as the one described on this website, regular and appropriate exercise is one of the lifestyle changes that has been shown to decrease hypertension significantly.

Aging in adults is associated with a marked decline in the flexibility of the large elastic arteries that promote circulation in the chest region—in other words, those huge arteries that help your heart to circulate blood. The more sedentary the individual, the greater the stiffness of these arteries and the less efficient cardiac circulation becomes. Even healthy adults can suf­fer from this condition. Studies have shown, however, that regular exercise appears to minimize age-related changes in the elastin and collagen that make up the artery walls, enabling them to retain their flexibility.

A recent study published by the Journal of the American Medical Associa­tion reported that even modest levels of physical activity, coupled with a reduced caloric intake to help lose body fat, decreased a woman’s chances of having breast cancer. This was one of the largest studies of its kind involving 74,000 women between fifty and seventy-nine years old. An important point was that this exercise did not have to be intense: “While longer duration of physical activity provides the greatest protective bene­fit, such activity need not be strenuous.” This is in keeping with what I have written about women benefiting most from low- to moderate-intensity exercise.

Most people believe that a significant loss of muscle mass (sarcopenia) is inevitable with age, leading to decreased strength, mobility, and flexibility. This is not so. According to a recent article published by the Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, most age-related changes in muscle can be reversed through an appropriate exercise program incorpo­rating both aerobic and resistance/strength training (working with weights or objects that you have to push against).

Individuals suffering from sarcopenia experience a significant decrease in energy levels and strength. I have discussed this topic with a seventy­year-old mentor of mine who is a retired doctor. Since my friend was involved in sports medicine, we used to discuss whether the nutrient crea­tine could be beneficial in the treatment of sarcopenia and in the preser­vation of muscle mass when you exercise. One day he said to me, “You know, I really need to start exercising.”

So, at age seventy this very learned doctor made the decision that he was going to deal with his increasing waistline. He joined the Mackie Shil­stone Pro Spa and began to do the Fat-Burning tips just three days a week (days 1, 3, and 5). He did one ten-minute circuit and fifty minutes on a recumbent bike.

Over the last five years he has experienced a dramatic increase in his lean muscle mass, a drop in his waist measurement, a significant increase

in his metabolism, and he has become more active in his daily life. For me, he is a testimony to the fact that it’s never too late to start exercise, and it’s never too late to preserve lean muscle mass. To this day he is still doing this workout three days a week.

A recent study of over 31,000 men between the ages of fifty-three and ninety showed that exercise delayed the onset of erectile dysfunction with age and improved sexual performance in those who already suffered from this problem. This research project, conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health, found that an average of one-third of test subjects reported problems getting and keeping an erection. Most of the men studied said that they had few problems before age fifty, but 26 percent had difficulty between ages fifty and fifty-nine; 40 percent between ages sixty and sixty-nine; and 61 percent over age seventy. Men who watched more than twenty hours of television per week, consumed too much alcohol, smoked, were overweight, had diabetes, had a previous stroke, or took antidepres­sants or beta-blockers had the most problems with ED.

One of the most interesting conclusions of this study was the connec­tion between overall cardiovascular health and the ability to sustain an erection. ED could even be viewed as an early warning system that some­thing was seriously wrong with the body’s vascular system and heart health.

Men who did the equivalent of three hours per week of high-intensity cardiovascular exercise such as running or playing tennis had a 30 percent lower risk of erectile dysfunction. It is important to note that researchers stress high-intensity exercise in combating ED. In my program, I too have found that men get greater cardiovascular benefits and lose fat more effec­tively when their IIT (instinctive intensity training) levels are on the higher side of the scale.

Lately, there has been a great deal of controversy over the safety of hor­mone replacement therapy. The major study designed by the Women’s Health Initiative was stopped midway because some participants taking HRT developed higher incidences of breast cancer and heart disease.

The main argument in favor of HRT has been that it has the ability to help postmenopausal women conserve lean muscle and avoid gaining body fat. The American College of Sports Medicine published an article in which researchers were seeking an alternative solution to taking HRT to maintain a healthy body composition. Four groups of women participated in a resistance exercise program:

No exercise, no HRTNo exercise, HRTExercise, HRTExercise, no HRT

At the end of one year, researchers discovered that the group of women who exercised and did not take HRT did better than the nonexer­cise HRT group and did as well or a little better than the group that exer­cised and took HRT. They concluded that resistance exercise was just as effective for menopausal women in keeping off body fat as taking HRT.

Most people have heard that exercise helps protect against bone loss, espe­cially as men and women reach menopause or andropause. But many do not know that the type of exercise determines the level of bone health.

In order to not only maintain bone density but to build it, you need to do exercises that “overload” the bone, giving it something to lift or push against that forces it to work at a higher level than it experiences in your day-to-day activities. That is why I incorporate resistance exercises, both on gym equipment and with hand weights, into the program I present on this website.

Worries, depression, and mood swings undermine your health, relation­ships, and work performance and reduce your sense of being in control. Research has shown that people who make exercise a regular part of their lifestyle experience stress reduction, improvement in moods, and a greater ability to handle the worries of daily life. Studies that compare the body chemistry of joggers and those who do resistance exercise with the body chemistry of sedentary individuals show a greater percentage of mood-elevating substances such as endorphins in the bloodstream of those who are regularly involved in some form of exercise.

One study on the psychological effects of exercise on people suffering from osteoarthritis showed that exercise

Helped release pent-up feelings and improve moodGave people a coping strategy for control of painIncreased levels of independence and feelings of self-sufficiencyIncreased self-esteemImproved social interaction

Recently, I saw a remarkable example of how exercise works to combat stress. A former client named Kelly who’d had great success in my pro­gram told me a dramatic story of how exercise had literally saved her san­ity during the most difficult six weeks of her life. “Mackie,” she said, “you’re not going to believe what’s been happening with me. I think I’m going to have to change my name to Calamity Jane.”

Kelly had been diagnosed with cancer a year earlier. She had a suc­cessful round of surgery and chemotherapy, but she was facing a final treatment consisting of six weeks of radiation therapy. Radiation is some­what hard on the body because it lowers immune function, creates pain and swelling in the radiated area, and generally makes a person feel exhausted in the last three weeks of treatment. On top of this, she had to get up on Monday through Friday and drive to the treatment center, taking a big bite out of her workday.

Two weeks into her treatment, Kelly’s grandmother died. Then during the last month of Kelly’s treatment, her seventy-two-year-old mother was admitted to the hospital with dangerously high blood pressure and mental confusion. Her mom spent thirty days in the hospital. Because her mother lived 3,000 miles away and Kelly could not be with her, this was an ago­nizing experience. Since her sister had to bear the brunt of the hospital vis­its and medical decisions, Kelly felt completely stressed and helpless to do anything concrete for her family.

On top of everything else, Kelly was writing a book against a deadline. “Mackie,” she told me, “if I hadn’t been able to keep on exercising, I think I would have gone off the deep end. Luckily, I knew how to keep myself sane by keeping my body moving and by consciously managing my stress and eating right. What you taught me was a big factor in keeping myself together and moving forward with everything that I had to do without suc­cumbing to overwhelming stress. I can’t tell you how much better it made me feel to go to the gym or take a long, fast walk. No matter what, even if it meant walking back and forth on the pier by the ocean at eight o’clock at night in the dark, I always made time for exercise because I knew it was my lifeline.”

Far too many North Americans don’t exercise. And many of those who do often exercise without a real understanding of how to get the most out of their workout. They might go to the gym a few times a week, walk, bicycle, shoot some hoops, take an aerobics class now and again. While any kind of exercise benefits you and raises your overall level of health and well-being, the real issue is: How can you get the most out of each workout session?

Most people exercise with specific goals in mind: losing fat and inches, improving cardiovascular health, gaining more energy and peace of mind. But if you don’t really know how to exercise effectively, you may never reach your goals. My Fat-Burning tips, a carefully structured combination of resistive training, cardio, a core body workout, and interval training, is designed to give you the best of all pos­sible exercise worlds—and it only requires 300 minutes spread over six days a week, and even less as you progress beyond the basic four-week fat-loss program. No matter how out of shape and overweight you are, no mat­ter how sluggish your metabolism, this program will transform your body into a fat-burning machine in as little as twenty-eight days.

This program represents what I have learned over my thirty-year career as a top performance enhancement expert. It is based on the following:

The very latest health- and sports-related researchMy years of experience helping world-class athletes and others to achieve their highest levels of performance while teaching them how to expend their energy in the most efficient way possibleMy years of experience designing programs to help overweight, obese, and morbidly obese men and women lose fat and regain their health

To help you to get the most out of this exercise program, let’s take a look at how it is designed and why. There are detailed instructions on this website on how to perform all of the exercises, along with photographs and guidelines.

One of the most significant factors in achieving maximum fat loss is learn­ing how to exercise at the right intensity level. Most of us who belong to a gym are familiar with those who sweat and strenuously exercise until their veins look like they are about to pop. This intensity level may be danger­ous. One client told me a story of a terribly overweight man who seemed to live at the gym. “No matter which morning I went in for my workout, there he was, straining to lift massive amounts of weight on every machine he used, apparently for a couple of hours each day. One day he just disap­peared and I never saw him again. When I asked one of the trainers what had happened to him, he told me that the man had given himself a hernia. I felt sorry for him because he was trying so hard. But I could have predicted what happened because he didn’t know how to work at a level of intensity that he could handle.”

With any type of exercise, it is the quality of effort that counts rather than the quantity. Everyone has heard the expression “give it 100 percent.” But the truth is that you can only give 100 percent for a very short period of time without becoming totally exhausted and compromising the effec­tiveness of your workout. The strongest effort that you can maintain con­sistently is closer to 80 percent of your maximum.

Our goal in this exercise program is not maximum effort but doing each type of exercise at a level of intensity, based on your gender, which will guarantee the greatest amount of fat loss and increased metabolic effi­ciency in the shortest amount of time. Because somewhat different hor­monal responses occur during fat storage and fat metabolism in each gender, men and women tend to respond best to different exercise intensi­ties. According to a study published by the IDEA Health and Fitness Source, women lose more fat by exercising at low to moderate levels of intensity while men seem to lose more fat by exercising at moderate to high levels of intensity. The reason is that women sustain a lower respira­tory exchange rate (RER) than men during exercise at lower intensities. RER is the numeric index that indicates the amount of carbohydrates and fat used during exercise based on the ratio between the amount of carbon dioxide you produce in relationship to the amount of oxygen you con­sume. The lower the RER, the more fat being burned as fuel.

A recent article in the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise supports this finding further by reporting that women have a lower RER than men during prolonged exercise in a fasted state—in other words, before meals. While both genders will get the most out of their exercise if they do it on an empty stomach, this is especially so for women. If a woman eats some kind of carbohydrate, such as a power bar or a pro­tein drink, before exercising, she will tend to use that as fuel. On an empty stomach, she will use greater amounts of internal fat and stored carbohy­drates as a metabolic fuel source. This study also showed that women who are still menstruating are at their fat-burning height in the week following their cycle.

The simplest and most effective way to monitor your intensity level so that you get the most out of your workout is by using my Instinctive Intensity Training (IIT) Scale based on the rate of perceived exertion. Once you have checked with your doctor to make sure that there are no restrictions on your ability to exercise, go to your gym, warm up carefully, then see what you would consider to be your maximum effort. If you are overfat and are at risk, you may choose to perform this maximum effort test as part of a pulmonary stress test in the presence of your physician or a cardiologist. Your insurance may pay for this test with the appropriate diagnosis and CPT code.

Once you’ve identified what your maximum effort feels like, use the following scale to find the appropriate IIT zone for your workout:

INSTINCTIVE INTENSITY TRAINING SCALE

IIT Level          Percentage of Maximum Effort           Perception

4                                                          40                                             Warm-up effort

6                                                          60                                             Mild effort

7                                                          70                                             Moderate effort

8                                                          80                                             Strong effort

9                                                          90                                             Very strong effort

10                                                        100                                           Maximum effort

The concept behind the IIT scale is that no one can tell you exactly how many pounds you need to use or how vigorously you need to exercise. How you perceive whether an exercise is low, moderate, or high intensity is a subjective experience based on your general level of fitness. A level of effort that seems easy for one person might present a challenge to another person, especially if he or she is deconditioned, is overweight, or hasn’t exercised for a while.

To find your appropriate IIT level, you must learn to listen to your body. That means paying attention to a broad spectrum of physical sensa­tions, including fatigue levels, muscle or leg pain, physical stress, and shortness of breath. For each type of exercise I am asking you to do, you need to estimate how hard you need to work to achieve the desired level of intensity.

Research has shown that your perception of the amount of effort you feel you are putting into an activity is likely to agree with the actual physi­cal measurements of that effort—that is, if you feel you are exercising moderately, measurements of things such as how fast your heart is beating would probably confirm that you are exercising at a moderate level. For example, during moderate activity you can sense that you are challenging yourself but are not yet near your limit.

The cardiovascular and interval training exercises in my program are designed to be performed at a gender-specific intensity level that will enable you to achieve your metabolic and fat-burning goals.