Misperceptions on Exercise and the Paleo Diet

Before you get started with the newest wellness or exercise program in the marketplace, think about the weight loss business as a high profit enterprise out to get your money. Today, more dollars are thrown at individual fat burning initiatives than ever before while at the same time the incidence of obesity goes up in modern society.

Consider health club sign ups in particular. The traditional business model for a large fitness club is to sell more memberships than they can actually accommodate. They rely on a large number of their members getting lazy or discouraged and not fully using their membership while still paying their dues. Fitness clubs have human nature down pat.

Can we really accuse the health club of taking advantage of us though? We make the decision to join so why do so many of us fail to put forth the effort? Could it be that the idea of having access to a health club makes us feel like we might be doing something right but when we get there we either don’t know what to do or that after a while we discover that whatever exercise routine we pursue is not producing the desired result?

Let’s use this as a segue into the Paleo Diet and Lifestyle perspective toward exercise. Losing sleep just to get up before the sun rises to run or work out and then dashing off to work isn’t a great program for overall health. Spending hours upon hours at the fitness club every week isn’t great for social or family time either. This type of approach toward exercise is what ultimately disheartens many of us from following a healthy exercise regimen.

Now let’s take a look at some common misperceptions about exercise.

1. The Cardio Misperception

Cardio workouts are great….for strengthening the lungs and heart. Cardio workouts are not very effective at burning fat though. Only resistance training –that is lifting weights or using your body or other heavy object for resistance – is effective at burning off those rolls of fat. Don’t take this the wrong way, you should still incorporate cardio into your exercise habits, just don’t use it as a catchall exercise.

2. The Ab Crunch Misperception

Doing sit ups and similar abdominal exercises do strengthen the muscles of the belly and are the pathway to those elusive six pack abdominal muscles. However, in order to see those abs, you’ve got to burn off that layer of fat that hides them and once again, this is done through resistance training.

3. The Excessive Exercise Misperception

So, many of use fall into the trap of doing lots of cardio and abdominal exercises. What this does in most cases is help us lose just a little bit of weight or just allows us to maintain where we are on the bathroom scale. If you will only make effective resistance training the core of your exercise routine, you can actually spend less time exercising while burning more fat.

The best exercises that go along with the Paleo Diet are demanding of physical effort but less time consuming than endless cardio or abdominal sessions. The concept behind Paleo exercise is to exert our bodies in similar fashion to our Stone Age ancestors. Do some intense movements for a short while then get plenty of rest. Again, you don’t have to cut out cardio and ab exercises, they are good in their own way, just stop relying on them.

If you are interested in getting the most out of your exercise routine while getting some time back and seeing better results at the same time, then investigate the Paleo Diet and Lifestyle a little further.