3 Exercises you should NEVER do to lose weight

1) crunches
2) long slow cardio (whether it be elliptical or treadmill, etc)
3) toning exercises (such as tricep kickbacks) There isn't enough resistance to produce results.

You would have to do 22,000 crunches to lose 1lb of body fat. And hurt your back and neck in the process.

You would have to run 50 hours to lose 1lb of weight. And not necessarily fat. In other words, you would have to run from 8am - 6pm Monday - Friday. OMFG!

And why? Article in Obesity Review explained that cardio doesn't work for 4 reasons.
1) Some people eat more. I know I do! It's because your body NEEDS the carbs to fuel that long ass workout.
2) Calorie burning at rest decreases with cardio. This explains a lot.
3) Lean tissue is often lost. You know, the stuff that actually helps you BURN fat at rest.
4) Cardio causes you to do less activity over the course of the day.

When you spend hours doing cardio, you wreck your metabolism. Mayo Clinic Proceedings Journal concluded that there are potential harmful effects from excessive endurance exercise. Apparently those long cardio workouts can cause dangerous changes in your heart and large arteries. It creates *patch myocardial fibrosis and could lead to arrhythmias. One of the lead researchers & a cardiologist at the heart institute of Saint Luke's hospital says if you want to run a marathon, do one, and cross it off your bucket list, then move onto exercise that's more ideal to producing long-term health benefits and improving your longevity. So basically, long bouts of cardio is not only horrible for fat loss, but it can cause irreversible damage to your heart. I'm sure the run happy community will just scoff at this anyway. Do what you love.

I have a dear true friend who uses an elliptical and will do it at 2 hours a crack and I literally cringe when she tells me this. I've tried to mention these things I am telling you now, but she insists that this is how she has lost weight in the past. The one problem with it is that she rarely can motivate to get on that machine for 2 hours every day like she wants to. Because she dreads it, I imagine. Seriously, who wants to be on a cardio machine for 2 hours? And how much weight has she lost in the past month that she has had the machine? I'll let you guess. It breaks my heart because I love her so.

I just went through training to become a XaBeat instructor. XaBeat is an hour long cardio class so you might think me a hypocrite. But if you haven't been to a class, you probably don't know anything about it. We use intervals and there are tons of full body, muscle defining movements like squats involved. Just yesterday, a Body Attack instructor came to class and afterwards, congratulated us on making her sweat. She said, "I don't normally sweat" and she was drenched! For me personally, I love it because I like to dance and it is so fun and high energy. Also, I love meeting all the lovely ladies that come to class. It's women motivating and inspiring other women. It's about bringing out our sensuality and confidence. (sorry, just had to do a little promoting there!)

Today, I started my second round of KBBC (Keith's Brutal Boot Camp). It was an hour spent doing intervals. A then B then A....and on and on for an hour. No breaks.

A) 2 minute run
B) 2 minute exercise (jumping jacks, push ups, squats, plank crawl, etc)

This type of training is what works for fat loss. It's called metabolic density training and it sends your metabolism sky high for days after the workout! When you start exercising correctly, you create biochemical changes in your body, that increase the number of specific enzymes which burn more fat for energy, and increase post exercise burn. Which is why I had a body composition test done today. I am going to be interested to see what the change is after 1, 2 and 3 months!

So this guy, Craig Ballantyne, is the Turbulence Training guru. He has 15 years experience and done extensive scientific tests on this stuff. His research is proven. And the reason his type of training works so well is because it's easy to do a short workout every day. You don't dread a short workout. Even if you know it will be intense. It's easy to stick to. So if you want to check it out, Bing Craig Ballantyne. Or like Turbulence Training on FB. Incidentally, I got my information today from one of his vids.

Or you can stick with what you're doing since it's working so well for you ;)

* Patch Myocardial Fibrosis - a condition that involves the impairment of the heart's muscle cells and belongs to a class of diseases collectively known as fibrosis, which denotes hardening or scarring of tissue