Daily Exercise:

The Truth about How Much Exercise You Really Need

By Tom Venuto
www.burnthefat.com

Part 1

What ever happened to, “Get some exercise every day because it’s good for you?” You hardly ever hear that anymore.

Instead, we now hear about “Revolutionary, breakthroughs” that allow you to train once a week and presto! – overnight muscle and instant abs! We also hear advice and instruction such as:

• “Don’t do too much cardio, or you’ll lose your muscle and get weaker.”
• “Watch out for catabolism, and beware of cortisol!”
• “Be careful not to overtrain…
• “Train don’t strain…
• “Long workouts are out… short workouts are in”
• “Train less to gain more…”
• “Your muscles don’t grow while you’re training, they grow while you’re resting”

This is all well and good and there’s some true and sensible advice in there, and don’t get me wrong – any amount of exercise is better than no exercise, however….

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO EXERCISING EVERY DAY BECAUSE IT’S A POSITIVE HABIT THAT’S GOOD FOR YOU?

Do you remember when fitness professionals used to recommend daily exercise? Have you noticed the “Achieve more by doing less” theme being taken to ridiculous extremes?

Have you noticed that a tiny core of fitness professionals still promote daily exercise, but their voices are seldom heard today amidst the marketing cries of 21st century Madison Avenue and slick big city publishers?

People DO judge a book by its cover and publishers know that. Typical magazine articles and books in the health and fitness section today have titles that sound like this:

• Massive Muscles in Minutes
• Instant Abs! How To Sculpt Six Pack Abs In 3 Minutes A Day
  A Few Minutes In The Morning
• The Busy Executive’s Two-Minute Workout
• The Revolutionary Program To Lose Fat And Get In Shape 5 Minutes At A Time
• The “Indulge” Program: Enjoy Delicious Dishes While Losing All The Weight You Want, Without Exercise!
• The Power Of One: How To Transform Your Body And Your Life With One Workout A Week
• The 30 Minute Fitness Revolution: How To Achieve Your Perfect Body In Just 30 Minutes A Week
• The 11 Minute Total Body Workout

All these pitches appeal to your lazy side. Inside, the authors coddle you like a helpless infant, saying, “Poor baby, It’s not your fault, we understand… we know you don’t have any time... no one does… Don’t worry, it’s okay, OF COURSE you don’t have to workout for hours and hours – who ever gave you THAT idea?? Awwwww… there now...Working out too much is bad for you anyways... breaks down muscle, suppresses your immune system, causes oxidative damage and releases cortisol…. Follow our easy 5 minute program and you’ll be just fine…”

Do you think it’s a coincidence that obesity is at an all time high, rising in lockstep with these lackadaisical attitudes?

Even with all these “new” exercise programs, training routines, scientific “breakthroughs,” diets, books, websites, and of course, all the “cutting edge” supplements, AMERICANS ARE FATTER AND UNHEALTHIER THAN EVER BEFORE IN HISTORY!

And if you’re not from the U.S., don’t laugh at us, because your country is probably not far behind!

I’m not implicating laziness as the sole reason for obesity. That would be over-simplifying a complex problem with multiple causes. However, laziness and aversion to exercise are certainly major contributing factors.

Human beings are capable of reaching breathtaking heights, but they also have a lazy side hard-wired into their natures. We need a push to overcome inertia. We need motivation. We need to be inspired to look up and reach for the stars, instead of settling for a little clod of dirt.

And now, the very diet and fitness industries that are supposed to be helping and motivating are actually making it worse by making silly promises in the name of getting the sale and appealing to our inherent slothfulness.

BUT WAIT!

It goes even deeper! Could it be possible that even the world's most respected health, fitness and medical organizations are reducing their recommendations so as not to discourage the public from even trying? Lyle McDonald, Diet guru and Author of the Ketogenic Diet thinks so. In Lyle's forum, he wrote:

"From a public policy standpoint, there's that huge tradeoff: Get a small improvement in health (and presumably decrease health-costs) by getting folks to do something, or risk a much larger dropout rate by telling them to work harder. They keep scaling back their recommendations and they still can't get the majority of people to do it. Something is going to be better than nothing, I suppose."

Just how far has this down-sizing of exercise trend gone? All the way to zero in some cases: Some “experts” tell you that you don’t need ANY exercise at all…

Just take this youth-restoring hormone therapy, a once per week injection, rub on some crème, take a handful of pills, get a nip here and a tuck there, have some fat suctioned, drink a few specially formulated shakes three times a day, eat these special foods, staple the stomach, stick on a patch, and there you have it: A perfect body without almost no expenditure of energy!

Many people who have been struggling with weight loss want to believe these claims so desperately, they take the bait every time, even when it sounds too good to be true and defies common sense.

Remember that classic courtroom scene in the movie “A Few Good Men” when Jack Nicholson says,

“You want the truth? … YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!!!”

Well, if you can’t handle it, then stop reading now because here is the truth that almost no one else wants to tell you:

Your body is BEGGING for DAILY exercise!

Click here to continue to Part 2.