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The source in any weight loss plan is to get some exercise. At minimum you will need 30 minute workouts five days a week; every other day. It’s best to pick a few routines that you enjoy and stick with those until you get used to exercising five days a week.

Cardio helps to lose weight

You already know that you lose weight when you burn more calories than you eat. The best way to do that is with a combination of cardio, strength training and a healthy diet. But, the cornerstone of most weight loss programs is cardio, cardio, cardio. Just some of the reasons it’s important are:

It helps you burn more calories in one sitting. Getting your heart rate up means your blood is pumping, you’re breathing hard; you’re sweating and burning calories.

With many cardio exercises, you can burn much calories depending on how hard you work, how long you exercise and how much you weigh.

Burning calories with exercise means you don’t have to cut as many calories from your diet.

You can do cardio exercise most days of the week without worrying about injury or over training.

Here are a few easy Cardio exercises:

Walking – It is the most basic exercise other than rolling out of bed in the morning, you can start off walking around the neighborhood or on a treadmill. Try to time how long you walk for and remember the pace, then next time you go out for a walk try to walk a little further and a little faster.

Jogging/Running – The next step up from walking obviously, jogging is a great way to start building your core muscles and really get a great sweat going. It is a bit more high impact on your bones and joints so you might want to start off with a warm up walk, then get into a light jog and see how it goes. Don’t get discouraged if you can only run for 5 or 10 minutes before you get winded. It will take time to build up endurance, but you will build it up. Don’t forget to stretch your body and warm up for a few minutes before you start to exercise.

Swimming – This is the ultimate full body workout, it is hard I know to find time to go swimming but if you get the chance then I really encourage you to do so. It has no harsh impacts on your body and not only does it provide a great cardio workout it also helps create muscle and power.

Cycling/biking – Riding your bike is another low impact way to work on your cardio, along with building you leg muscles. You will also find that by doing any of these cardio exercises that they all complement each other. So the more your jog the longer you can ride a bike and so forth.

Recreational sports – This can be just playing basketball with the boys, kicking the soccer ball around, going to the park to play tennis or just taking the dog for a walk. Anything to get you outside and active will play a major role in losing fat and building muscle.

The more muscles tissue you have, the more calories you’re going to burn. The reason is because muscle is an active tissue and fat, well, isn’t. This is why your muscles will burn more calories each day for own maintenance.