Monique Rana - The Truth On Fitness

Truth: slow and steady doesn’t win the weight management race.
We’ve been led to believe that steady state exercise (like walking or jogging) for 30 to 60 minutes at a moderate intensity 3 to 5 days a week is the way to go when it comes to burning calories and achieving our ideal weight. So why are we experiencing disappointing results? After all, it’s scientifically proven to burn calories, so the more exercise we do the more fat we should lose, right? Wrong!  The truth is that, although you’ll burn some fat, it won’t add up to any significant amount that will make a difference to how you feel about yourself. In fact, according to Peter Rana, founder of BodyTech Gym “it will make you too exercise dependent in order to get your daily quota of calorie burn. And being too dependent on anything is a path we don’t want to go down”.

Here’s an interesting fact; science has proven that a pound of fat contains more energy than a pound of dynamite! This means you have to do a lot of exercise to burn even a small amount of fat. On average, in order to shed approximately half a kilo of fat, you need to run a least an hour a day for six days. That’s a lot of running, not to mention what it’s doing to your joints, especially as you age. Also, cautions Rana, after a session of exercise there’s a tendency to indulge in “compensatory eating”. Keep in mind, a 200 to 300 calorie burn after a bout of exercise can easily be neutralised by a tall latte or 250 ml smoothie. ”So if you feel that you’re entitled to eat as a reward after exercise, it must fit within your total daily intake of calories to achieve deficit at the end of the day” say Rana.


There is a better way.
For those that do dedicate themselves to marathon workouts, they can expect their bodies to tap deep into their fat reserves and their bodies to look reasonable fit. However, for most of us, this kind of dedication simply doesn’t work. “There is in fact a better way, a more productive way to get fit and be a better consumer of fat” says Rana.

The question that’s now at the forefront of exercise science is not how we can get people to do more exercise, but rather how we can get them to do less? And the answer is in the intensity of exercise. Says Rana, “High Intensity Training (HIT) has caused a bit of a stir. In response to the problematic issues that confront most adults with steady state exercise, high intensity strength training techniques were revisited and researched to determine their suitability for satisfying more time-efficient training methodologies that were high on results and low on injuries”. HIT has repeatedly shown that a few minutes of intense exercise a few days per week can make a big difference.