Exercise
The human body adapts itself to changes in nutritional intake. If the calorie intake is reduced, the body responds by slowing down its metabolism, and by burning muscle in preference to fat. This reduces the metabolism long-term. When the diet comes to an end and normal calorie intake is restored, the individual starts to gain weight even faster than before. This is known as yo-yo dieting. Diets that focus exclusively on calorie reduction often fail in this way.
With these concerns in mind, Body for Life addresses energy expenditure (i.e. exercise) in addition to energy input. For best results, Body for Life holds that this exercise should include weight training to build skeletal muscle and increase the metabolism over the long term. This also helps to maximise the energy expenditure and fat loss from aerobic exercise.
Body for Life's exercise program is more complicated than its diet program. It suggests exercising six days a week, normally Monday to Saturday, and alternating between weight training and aerobic exercise. The seventh day, usually Sunday, is a rest day (referred to as the "free day", during which no exercise is done and unhealthy, normally fatty foods may be eaten). Weight training sessions alternate between exercises for the upper body and exercises for the lower body. This allows the exercised muscles enough time to recover fully before the next training session.
Each fortnight follows the same pattern:
| Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday | Sunday | |
| Week 1 | Upper-body Weight Training |
Aerobic Exercise |
Lower-body Weight Training |
Aerobic Exercise |
Upper-body Weight Training |
Aerobic Exercise |
Free Day |
| Week 2 | Lower-body Weight Training |
Aerobic Exercise |
Upper-body Weight Training |
Aerobic Exercise |
Lower-body Weight Training |
Aerobic Exercise |
Free Day |
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Famous quotes containing the word exercise:
“In order to cultivate yourself and to drop no lower than the level of the milieu in which you have landed, it is not enough to read Pickwick and memorize a monologue from Faust.... You need to work continually day and night, to read ceaselessly, to study, to exercise your will.... Each hour is precious.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“The exercise of power is determined by thousands of interactions between the world of the powerful and that of the powerless, all the more so because these worlds are never divided by a sharp line: everyone has a small part of himself in both.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)
“The exercise of letters is sometimes linked to the ambition to contruct an absolute book, a book of books that includes the others like a Platonic archetype, an object whose virtues are not diminished by the passage of time.”
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)