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This is a very common question that many people ask. A general rule of thumb is 3-5 days per week depending on your goal. The routine that is best for fat loss will vary tremendously from a routine designed for someone who wants to run a marathon. If you are trying to maintain your current level of fitness 3 days is enough. To lose fat and build muscle, 4-5 days is optimal. The biggest key is consistency. If you say you are going to hit the gym 3 times per week, do it. The worst thing you can do is be inconsistent. Each time you start and stop an exercise program it will be harder to begin again from a physical and mental standpoint.

Every year millions of people begin an exercise program at one point or another. The most popular by far is New Years. It is cold outside, people have put on their extra holiday pounds, and they are determined to change their bodies. They start off strong the first week of January and continue doing well until the end of the month. February comes around and the gym crowd starts to die down slightly. Within a few weeks everything is back to normal. So why do 90% of them fail? It all boils down to their mindset. As I’ve said many times before, discipline of the body begins with discipline of the mind. Your reality will shift when your mind changes.

I covered the thermic effect of food very briefly in an earlier post about raising your metabolism. This post will be a little more in depth about one of the factors that can help raise your metabolism. The thermic effect of food is the amount of calories it takes to process (digest, transport, and store) the nutrients you intake. It is typically responsible for 10% of the calories your expend on a daily basis. So even though it can contribute to weight loss over time, your main focus should be on exercise and a clean diet.

Interval training has become one of the latest training methods to gain popularity in the fitness world. If your not familiar with interval training, it is a form of cardiovascular exercise that alternates periods of high intensity with periods of lower intensity. The most common method of interval training is sprinting. After a five minute warm-up you would sprint for a minute then jog lightly for a minute and repeat that cycle 5-8 times (don’t forget a five minute cool down). The sprint would be considered the high intensity and the light jog would be the low intensity.

One of the best ways to lose weight and keep it off is to raise your metabolism. Your metabolism consists of all the chemical reactions/ processes that happen in your body to produce energy and sustain life. Of special interest to most people trying to lose weight is the Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR) which should not be confused with the Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). They are often used interchangeably but they are slightly different. The Basal Metabolic Rate is tested under stricter conditions. The Resting Metabolic Rate is the amount of energy/calories it costs for you to maintain all your internal physiological functions at rest. That means it is the amount of energy to keep your lungs, heart, liver, kidneys, brain, and the rest of the nervous system functioning properly at complete rest. Your RMR typically accounts for 65-75% of all your daily caloric needs.