Combining exercise with eating well is a must if you want to lose weight and keep it off. Regular exercise not only helps with weight loss, it tones your body and increases fat-burning lean muscle. It also gives you more energy, making it easier to keep up the program and maintain your weight loss.

The two best forms of weight loss exercise are aerobics and strength building. Aerobic or cardiovascular is, as the name suggests, about raising your heart rate by making it work a little harder. Strength building is about increasing the amount of muscle in your body, replacing fat along the way. While many think weight loss exercise needs to be aerobic, in fact you need both types for the maximum benefit.

Aerobics works as a weight loss exercise because it burns calories, changing the balance if you take in too many calories through your diet. Aerobic exercise can range from a simple brisk walk to a game of squash. You can do it at home with a workout dvd or Wii fit. Obviously, the more vigorous the workout, the more calories you will burn.

Strength building, or resistance training as it’s sometimes known, can be done with things like weights or resistance bands. Climbing stairs is another good strengthening exercise. The reason this helps weight loss is that lean muscle helps to burn fat by increasing your metabolism. The fat burning happens even when you’re inactive. It needs to be maintained though; if you go back to a sedentary lifestyle the muscle will in time turn back to fat.

To get the most benefit from your weight loss exercise it needs to be done regularly or frequently. Studies have shown that small but regular amounts of exercise do as much good as long ones. So you don’t have to push yourself into marathon gym sessions; breaking your exercise regime down to 10 or 15 minute sections within a day will be just as beneficial. Be careful not to overdo it; half an hour to an hour three to five times a week is plenty. Any more and you run the risk of injury.

So you can see that using the right combination of weight loss exercise can help you get to your desired weight and keep you there. Definitely worth doing!