Ladies Only Fitness

Thursday, April 5, 2012

Following a Cardio Plan for Weight Loss

If your goal is permanent fat loss, you need to burn enough calories to make a significant impact. Here's why: In order to lose a pound in one week, you need to create a 3,500-calorie deficit; in other words, you need to burn off 3,500 more calories than you eat. A 30-minute power walk on flat ground burns about 120 calories. So, to burn off 1 pound of fat by walking, you'd have to hoof it for more than 2 hours a day.

Don't worry — no one should suggest that you exercise two hours every day! The best way to lose fat is to create a calorie deficit by burning calories through exercise and cutting calories you eat.

For example, over the course of a week, you may cut 250 calories per day by switching from mayo to mustard on your sandwich at lunch and snacking on light yogurt instead of Fruit-on-the-Bottom. Meanwhile, you could burn an extra 250 calories a day by taking a one-hour walk or a half-hour jog.

exercise is only one part of a weight-loss plan. You also need to revamp your eating habits and embark on a weight-training program. Also, keep in mind that losing weight is not as easy as it sounds on TV diet commercials. It takes a lot more commitment than just drinking that delicious shake for breakfast. And it takes time.

Don't try to lose more than 1/2 pound to 1 pound each week, and don't eat fewer than 1,200 calories per day (preferably more). On a super-low-calorie diet, you deprive your body of essential nutrients, and you have a tougher time keeping the weight off because your metabolism slows down. Realize, too, that genetics plays a large role in weight loss. It's easier for some people to lose weight than it is for others.

Here are some general cardio guidelines for weight loss. Consult a registered dietitian and certified fitness trainer to come up with a plan best suited to your specific goals and schedule.

How often you need to do cardio for weight loss

Here's the cold, hard truth: You probably need to do five or six workouts a week.

How long your workouts should last for weight loss

Here's another dose of reality: You should aim for at least 45 minutes of exercise, a mix of cardio and , six days per week. Again, you don't need to do all this sweating at once, but for the pounds to come off, the calories you burn need to add up.

How hard you need to push for weight loss

To make a serious dent in your fat-loss program, work out in your target zone most of the time. But keep in mind: If you're pretty darned "deconditioned," as the politically correct like to say, even exercising at 50 percent of your can help build up your fitness level.
You may have heard that exercising at a slow pace is more effective for weight loss than working out more intensely. In fact, many cardio machines have "fat burning" programs that keep you at a slow pace. But this is misleading. As it turns out, the concept of a fat-burning zone is no more real than the Twilight Zone.
During low-intensity aerobic exercise, your body does use fat as its primary fuel source. As you get closer to your breaking point, your body starts using a smaller percentage of fat and a larger percentage of carbohydrates, another fuel source. However, picking up the pace allows you to burn more total calories, as well as more fat calories.
Here's how: If you go - for 30 minutes at a leisurely roll, you might burn about 100 calories — about 80 percent of them from fat (so that's 80 fat calories). But if you spend the same amount of time skating with a vengeance over a hilly course, you might burn 300 calories — 30 percent of them from fat (that's 90 fat calories).
So at the fast pace, you burn more than double the calories and 10 more fat calories.
Of course, going faster and harder is not always better. If you're just starting out, you probably can't sustain a faster pace long enough to make it worth your while. If you go slower, you may be able to exercise a lot longer, so you'll end up burning more calories and fat that way.

Which activities burn the most calories

"Maximize your workout and burn over 1,000 calories per hour!" That's a claim you may see in advertisements for , -, and other cardio machines. And it's true. You can burn 1,000 calories per hour doing those activities — if you crank up the machine to the highest level and if you happen to have bionic legs.

If you're a beginner, you'll last about 30 seconds at that pace, at which point you will have burned 8.3 calories, and the paramedics will be scooping you off the floor and hauling your wilted body away on a stretcher.

There's a better approach to calorie burning: Choose an activity that you can sustain for a good while — say, at least 10 or 15 minutes. Sure, running burns more calories than walking, but if running wipes you out after a half mile or bothers your knees, you're better off walking.
The following table gives calorie estimates for a number of popular aerobic activities. The number of calories you actually burn depends on the intensity of your workout, your weight, your muscle mass, and your metabolism.
In general, a beginner is capable of burning 4 or 5 calories per minute of exercise, while a very fit person can burn 10 to 12 calories per minute.
The table includes a few stop-and-go sports such as tennis and basketball. Activities like these are not aerobic in the truest sense, but they can still give you a great workout and contribute to good health and weight loss. The numbers in this chart apply to a 150-pound person. (If you weigh less, you'll burn a little less; if you weigh more, you'll burn a little more.)

Calories Burned during Popular Activities
Activity	15 min.	30 min.	45 min.	60 min.
Aerobic dance	171	342	513	684
Basketball	141	282	432	564
Bicycling at 12 mph	142	283	425	566
Bicycling at 15 mph	177	354	531	708
Bicycling at 18 mph	213	425	638	850
Boxing	165	330	495	660
Circuit weight training	189	378	576	756
Cross-country skiing	146	291	437	583
Downhill skiing	105	210	315	420
Golf (carrying clubs)	87	174	261	348
In-line skating	150	300	450	600
Jumping rope, 60-80 skips/min.	143	286	429	572
Karate, tae kwon do	192	834	576	768
Kayaking	75	150	225	300
Racquetball	114	228	342	456
Rowing machine	104	208	310	415
Running 10-minute miles	183	365	548	731
Running 8-minute miles	223	446	670	893
Ski machine	141	282	423	564
Slide	152	304	456	608
Swimming freestyle, 35 yds/min.	124	248	371	497
Swimming freestyle, 50 yds/min.	131	261	392	523
Tennis, singles	116	232	348	464
Tennis, doubles	43	85	128	170
VersaClimber, 100 ft./min.	188	375	563	750
Walking, 20-minute miles, flat	60	120	180	240
Walking, 20-minute miles, hills	81	162	243	324
Walking, 15-minute miles, flat	73	146	219	292
Walking, 15-minute miles, hills	102	206	279	412
Water aerobics	70	140	210	280

The Best Strength Training for Women

By Lauren Aaronson, Photography By Nicolai Grossell

Tired of sweating all over every piece of cardio equipment at the gym and still getting zero love from the scale? You need more iron. Not in your diet—in your hands. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, a mere 21 percent of women strength train two or more times a week. What you don't know: When you skip the weight room, you lose out on the ultimate flab melter. Those two sessions a week can reduce overall body fat by about 3 percentage points in just 10 weeks, even if you don't cut a single calorie. That translates to as much as three inches total off your waist and hips. Even better, all that new muscle pays off in a long-term boost to your metabolism, which helps keep your body lean and sculpted. Suddenly, dumbbells sound like a smart idea. Need more convincing? Read on for more solid reasons why you should build flex time into your day.

Torch Calories 24/7
Though cardio burns more calories than strength training during those 30 sweaty minutes, pumping iron slashes more overall. A study in The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research found that women who completed an hour-long strength-training workout burned an average of 100 more calories in the 24 hours afterward than they did when they hadn't lifted weights. At three sessions a week, that's 15,600 calories a year, or about four and a half pounds of fat—without having to move a muscle.

What's more, increasing that afterburn is as easy as upping the weight on your bar. In a study in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, women burned nearly twice as many calories in the two hours after their workout when they lifted 85 percent of their max load for eight reps than when they did more reps (15) at a lower weight (45 percent of their max).

There's a longer-term benefit to all that lifting, too: Muscle accounts for about a third of the average woman's weight, so it has a profound effect on her metabolism, says Kenneth Walsh, director of Boston University School of Medicine's Whitaker Cardiovascular Institute. Specifically, that effect is to burn extra calories, because muscle, unlike fat, is metabolically active. In English: Muscle chews up calories even when you're not in the gym. Replace 10 pounds of fat with 10 pounds of lean muscle and you'll burn an additional 25 to 50 calories a day without even trying.

Target Your Trouble Spots
If you've ever tried to ditch the saddlebags and ended up a bra size smaller instead, you know that where you lose is as important as how much. As great as it might be to see the numbers on the scale go down, when you're on a strict cardio-only program your victory is likely to be empty. A recent study at the University of Alabama at Birmingham compared dieters who lifted three times a week with those who did aerobic exercise for the same amount of time. Both groups ate the same number of calories, and both lost the same amount—26 pounds—but the lifters lost pure chub, while about 8 percent of the aerobicizers' drop came from valuable muscle. Researchers have also found that lifting weights is better than cardio at whittling intra-abdominal fat—the Buddha-belly kind that's associated with diseases from diabetes to cancer.

Just don't rely exclusively on the scale to track your progress in the battle of the bulge. Because muscle is denser than fat, it squeezes the same amount of weight into less space. "Often, our clients' scales won't drop as fast, but they'll fit into smaller jeans," says Rachel Cosgrove, owner of Results Fitness in Santa Clarita, California. And it's the number on the tag inside your bootcuts you want to get lower, right?

Start Pumping
Begin with three weight-training sessions each week, recommends Joe Dowdell, founder and co-owner of the New York City gym Peak Performance. For the greatest calorie burn, aim for total-body workouts that target your arms, abs, legs, and back, and go for moves that will zap several different muscle groups at a time—for example, squats, which call on muscles in both the front and back of your legs, as opposed to leg extensions, which isolate the quads.

For each exercise you do, try to perform three sets of 10 to 12 reps with a weight heavy enough that by your last rep you can't eke out another one without compromising your form. To spark further muscle building, William Kraemer, Ph.D., a professor of kinesiology at the University of Connecticut, suggests alternating moderate-intensity workouts of 8 to 10 reps with lighter-weight 12- to 15-rep sets and super-hard 3- to 5-rep sets. (For a more detailed fat-blasting workout, check out "Do This at Home," below.)

And remember to fuel your workout properly. Too many dieters make the fatal error of cutting back on crucial muscle-maintaining protein when they want to slash their overall calorie intake. The counterproductive result: They lose muscle along with any fat that might have melted away. Sports nutritionist Cassandra Forsythe, Ph.D., co-author of The New Rules of Lifting for Women, recommends that you eat one gram of protein for every pound of your body weight that does not come from fat. For instance, a 140-pound woman whose body fat is 25 percent would need 105 grams of high-quality protein. That's roughly four servings a day; the best sources are chicken or other lean meats, soy products, and eggs.

Ready to turn yourself into a lean, mean, calorie-torching machine? Then go get pumped!

Do This At Home
Get ripped with this WH exclusive
Personal trainer Rachel Cosgrove, owner of Results Fitness in Santa Clarita, California, created a built-to-burn strength-training routine exclusively for Women's Health readers that you can tap into online. Each move works multiple muscle groups, so you'll burn a ton of calories and rev your metabolism into high gear for 24 to 48 hours afterward. For best results, do 10 to 12 reps of each move, breaking just long enough to catch your breath in between; repeat for two to three sets. Get the workout.

http://zumbawithnefertiti.blogspot.com/p/tighten-tone-firm-any-area-of-your-body.html

For ultimate results, couple this great workout with the perfect body diet.

Read more at Women's Health: http://www.womenshealthmag.com/weight-loss/weight-training-tips#ixzz1rBPRmW9o

Monday, April 2, 2012

Pre Mother's Day Girls Night Out!

Guest Instructors

60 minutes of Zumba dance fun with great instructors, followed by

non- alcoholic drinks , hors d'oeuvres,games and prizes,

Give yourself the gift of fitness!

Come and enjoy a real girls night out with us!

May 11,2012 7:30 pm-9:30pm

$15.00 per person

RSVP and Get your ticket here

http://mothersdayzumba.eventbrite.com/

* Prayer space always available

I'm not discriminating..and I'm not a man hater. Really I am not.I just love to dance too much! I want to move and be sensual and free. Dance without holding back or modifing my movements. Let go without restrictions and the men get in the ...way of my modesty. I can't let that go! Part of why I started these classes because I want both. My modesty and my movement .Sure I can just stay home and dance in my room, but when you are a dancer you want to experience the enjoyment with others. Do you get me?

See you beautiful Zumba Ladies tonight

See you beautiful Zumba Ladies tonight at 7:30pm One For All Dance Academy (9691-L Gerwig Lane Columbia MD 21046). For newbies remember your first class is on me so ladies , this is a great opportunity to share your experience with your friends. See you tonight ISA (God Willing)!

Sunday, April 1, 2012

FOR REAL!

Try a class on me .Your first class is free! Spread the word. I hate to take part in your addicition but your first taste of my Zumba class is on me. Come check the ladies only zumba class Monday nights at 7:30 and Saturday morning at 10am *. More classes are forming now. Come check it out but be prepared to sweat!!! See you on the dancefloor!

*Offer not valid for Weds Morning classes.

**EXPIRES JUNE 2012

Thursday, April 5, 2012

Following a Cardio Plan for Weight Loss

How often you need to do cardio for weight loss

How long your workouts should last for weight loss

How hard you need to push for weight loss

Which activities burn the most calories

Dummies Recommends

The Best Strength Training for Women

The Best Strength Training for Women

Monday, April 2, 2012

Pre Mother's Day Girls Night Out!

See you beautiful Zumba Ladies tonight

Sunday, April 1, 2012

FOR REAL!