Dr. George Best: Hi, I am Dr. George Best of the Best Health and Wellness in San Antonio, Texas. This is part 3 of my answer to the question, why can't I loose weight. In this part, we are going to be discussing exercise and how the wrong kind of exercise or the wrong amount of exercise can hinder your ability to loose weight.
Now the first part of this equation is that for a lot of people, they don't exercise at all. I know people coming here, Doctor, why can't I loose weight? I am dieting and I am practically serving myself but I can't loose weight. Well, as we talked about it in the second part of this video of why I can't loose weight, why calorie restriction is counter productive in weight loss, that's one of things I discussed with them, but the second thing I'll ask them is, what are you doing for exercise? Well, I don't really like the answer exercise.
Well, if you want to loose weight, you have to. That's the answer to my question. Can I skip it if I really, really watch my diet? Yeah, you can but you're not going to loose weight doing fast, probably not going to last. And yeah you really got to find some type of exercise that you think you'll do. It doesn't necessarily have to be something horrible. You don't necessarily have to go buy a workout outfit and go down to the gym and participate in some exercise class with a bunch of people that you don't like, whatever. There's different things that you can do but you got to need to find sometime for exercise.
Now, what type of exercise do you need? Well, the vast majority people will do best with what's called Interval Training. Interval training can apply to both strength training as well as the cardiovascular training. Basically what interval training is, is that you go for a brief period of time in a very high intensity and then you take a rest period. You alternate back and forth between high intensity and a rest period, several cycles until you reach a point where basically you're -- if you're doing strength training, your muscles are fatigue or if you're doing cardiovascular training, where your heart rate and breathing are not recovering during the rest period, during the normal time period of your rest period.
So let me explain that a little bit further. For interval training, for say, strength training, what you would do is you would want to lift fairly heavy weights, you want to be on high end of what your capabilities are. Now by high end, I mean high end for what you can comfortably lift, not for what you can cheat. I see people on gyms all the time where they are doing these really high velocity types of lift, they try to use dumbbells and may, you know this type of thing, that is not we're talking about. We are talking about is what you can lift with a lot of effort but with a nice controlled lift. Controlled lift is what we want and basically you don't hurt yourself.
So that's what interval training is for strength training. You want to do high level of either weight or high level of repetitions there within your capability orient. For somebody who is trying to build muscle, you want to do the high level of weight and low repetition so they might need to do just two or three repetitions. Generally somewhere in the 6-10 repetition range, just one set, that's what you want to be, that's where you want your weight level to be, what you can do, one set comfortably for 6-10 repetitions.
If you're doing for toning purposes, what you want to do is you want to do a number of repetitions, that again you can do comfortably for your level of conditioning. What I usually recommend is doing 20-25 repetitions single set where you're going to get pretty good burn at the end of that set. So that would be good for toning and kind of getting a nice hard sleek look when you are using weight training.
As far as cardiovascular training, interval training is done where you're going to either walk quickly, run, bicycle, swim, whatever it may be, kickboxing type training, aerobics type dance moves, those types of things, anything where you are basically moving your body without resistance. You are going to go for a period of 30 seconds to 1 minute in a very high intensity, you want to go basically full out. If you're running, you want stretch, you want to run fast. You are swimming, you want to swim fast and hard. If you are doing say, kickboxing, you want to go quickly from one move into the next, very, very rapid, just keep moving, get your heart rate up pretty high, get yourself breathing hard.
After 30 seconds to 1 minute of that high intensity activity and depending on your level of conditioning, you may want to start a little bit lower than that. If you are really on shape, it may be like ten seconds that you can do high intensity. Anything that for you is high intensity counts.
So if you're really, really, really on a shape, if 400 pounds and you get out breath walking across the room, that's high intensity for you, walk across the room. For most people, it should be more than that, but if for your particular situation, if you are getting winded just walking across room, that's high intensity. Then after you do that burst of high intensity, whether it's, you know, if you're on the low end of the scale or if you're doing 30-60 seconds, then you are going to take about 60 seconds to let yourself recover.
So you're going to do and you might just walk around a little bit, you might stand. I don't recommend you sit or lie down, but actually stay up right but don't do anything excertive during that timeframe. You want to let your heart rate slow down, you want to breathe into recover. If you are not recovering in that standard time, stick with that just that one, breath first, you're going to build up to multiple burst.
Once you gone through that one recovery period, again you do 30 seconds to a minute high intensity. Start, take your rest period, go for about a minute, let everything recover, and do another 30-60 seconds of high intensity. Keep alternating back and forth between high intensity and rest until you reach a point wherein at that one minute mark on your rest period, if you still really haven't recovered, if you are still puffing and puffing, your heart rate is still pretty high, that's where you stop from that workout period. A lot of people, you know, they get real motivated and they want to loose weight fast, so they go out, push through and I can do it more. You don't do it, that is counterproductive.
When you reach that point where you're not recovering after one minute, you need just stop from that exercise period. The reason why is that if you keep going, you will overtax the adrenals, you will cause cortisone release, and they will interfere with your weight loss. It is supposed to be done, don't overdo it, okay. Now how often should you do this? What I recommend is probably optimally to do a four day a week workout program. At some point, you want to have probably two days in between to just have everything recover. You can't do five days if you want to. I think a lot of people try to do that too quickly. If you are already used to exercising on 5 days a week, it's okay. What I recommend you to do is you alternate between strength training and the cardiovascular training.
If you are doing it properly, you will build muscle. For those of you who want to build a lot of muscle, then you really want to do probably at least three of the strength training workouts per week and what I recommend you do is, you do a strength training program one day, cardiovascular the next day, strength training, cardiovascular, strength training. Do the whole body on the strength training. For those who want to be, you know, who are actually trying to be bodybuilders, if you're trying to loose weight, you are trying to be a bodybuilder, hey, you need to walk. Loose the weight first, then you can start doing tedious bodybuilding, which is a different type of exercise workout.
So that's exercise and again you got to look at what's high intensity for you. For those people who are extremely on a shape, you need to be careful, only do what's right for you, what's high intensity for you. I also recommend that if you are particularly at shape and also if you had a history of cardiovascular problems or heart blood pressure, then you get a physical exam before you try to do this. And yeah, just make sure you get check out by your doctor and make sure that everything is okay, so you can actually get through on it, you know high intensity thing, whatever that is for you.
So that covers exercise, thank you for watching. Look for the next installment in this and we will discuss a little bit more about the different problems that are involved in weight loss and weight gain, and explain a little bit further about, why can't I loose weight? This is Dr. Best singing off. Thanks for watching.
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