One of the most often asked questions, and one I asked myself a lot when first starting out, was how do I know when I’m doing cardio exercises right? There are a plethora of charts out there that show you your target heart rate given your age and what “zone” you want to be in. There is also the age old advice of “If you can hold a conversation with the person next to you, you aren’t working out too hard”. I find that is good advice, but I’ve also discovered when you are trying to lose weight (and not just maintain fitness) there is one sure fire way to know you are burning off the calories and fat and working in your “zone”…
You have to sweat.
Yes folks, you may not want to hear it – but if you want to get those pounds off you have to get sweaty. Which is why the second most commonly heard statement in any gym is, “please be sure to wear deodorant!”
If you find yourself on the treadmill going along at a good pace but are relatively dry then you aren’t in your zone. What’s more, as you get fit you will find that your zone changes. The stronger your heart gets thanks to all that exercise you will find that it will beat slower at the same intensity over time. So that 4mph @ 6% incline that caused you to get drenched a few months ago now may be a piece of cake – time to turn it up a notch!
I had firsthand experience with why it’s important to sweat when doing cardio last summer. I was walking almost everyday a good 3 miles around town. For the first month or two the weight came off, but then I hit a plateau. My body had build up muscle and now when I was doing the same walk around town I wasn’t exerting myself as much and I stopped sweating. The end result was that I wasn’t burning as many calories and so I began maintaining my weight instead of losing.
One of the curious things I find out about people (and I hear this a lot as an excuse as to why people don’t want to exercise) is that people for some reason hate sweating. Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to be stuck on a plane next to some sweaty person anymore than the next guy, but in a gym everybody is sweating so there is no need to be embarrassed or self-conscious about it. In fact, you should think of it as your personal badge of honor to finish up your workout sweaty.
There is a saying I heard that I think is quite appropriate here – you can eat ANYTHING you want, just as long as you are prepared to sweat every last calorie of it out later!
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