The Mistake: You’re a slave to cardio!
While aerobic exercise is good for your body and soul, if you don’t balance those workouts with some strength exercises, you’re not only compromising your results but missing a key component of health and fitness. Resistance training—weight lifting, or strength training,is the only way I will repeat the only way to increase lean muscle mass and lose stubborn body fat. That’s important on many levels, especially as we start to get older.
Starting in their 30s, women lose about 1/2 pound of muscle a year. (Men usually hold on to muscle longer, but the rate of muscle loss speeds up dramatically after age 60.) Because muscle burns calories even when at rest, losing it will noticeably slow metabolism. This is one big reason many of us see that “middle-age spread” beginning in our 40s.
A study from Skidmore College found that exercisers who combined cardio with a high-intensity, total-body resistance routine lost more than twice as much body fat—including twice as much belly fat—over 12 weeks as those who followed a moderate-intensity cardio plan.
So how do you correct it: Substitute a couple of strength sessions for cardio days. Lift weights at least three times a week, hitting all your body’s major muscle groups.