By: Hindy Cortright for The BioFit Center and Sports and Health magazine.
Exercise is good for your health, depending on what activity you perform; your body will see different benefits. Resistance training helps to maintain your muscle mass and it helps keep your metabolism high, since 90% of your calories are burnt in the muscle tissue. Cardiovascular exercise such as jogging helps maintaining your heart muscle strong and it helps increase your aerobic capacity. Exercise has a positive effect in your body and health if practice in moderation.
Although exercising regularly is important for your health, what you eat and when, is even more important. If you exercise regularly but still maintain a high fat, high sugar diet, it will be consistently difficult to become healthier or to lose weight.
Sugar is perhaps the most damaging of all food groups for various reasons. Even though carbohydrates such as bread and pasta also become sugar in the body, eating processed white sugar is more damaging.
White processed sugar and brown sugar have the same negative effects in the body. Because in order for the body to digest sugar it has to produce what is called «an insulin spike» making the body to work overtime to process it. When the body overproduces insulin, also known as the storing hormone, it stores more fat. Honey has been found to have the same effect in the body and therefore it is not a good alternative for replacing sugar to sweeten foods.
The Bottom line is that all foods that contain sugar such as cookies, cakes, ice cream and sodas, once ingested mainly become stored fat in the body. This is why it is recommended to consume less sugary foods on a regular basis. Having one or two per week can help enjoy some cravings, but it is absolutely necessary to avoid consuming sugar on a regular basis.
The best way to burn more body fat (likely stored from an excessive consumption of sugary food), is to perform any physical activity within what is called «your fat burning zone». When you workout within your fat burning zone for at least 30 minutes a day, you will burn more fat. The key is to allow the body to build more oxygen because body fat can only be converted into physical energy if the presence of oxygen in the body is optimal.
The most effective formula to improve your health quickly is to eliminate sugar from your diet as much as possible and to start doing «fat burning cardio» in «your fat burning zone» at least 5 days a week.
