By Elena Voropay

The reason to do cardio does not end with fat loss though. There are a wide variety of health benefits you receive from a regular cardio program. It stresses your cardio-respiratory system (the heart, blood vessels, lungs) and thus lowers the risk of heart disease by improving blood clotting mechanisms and increasing circulation throughout the body. Exercise helps to fight the war on obesity because it burns calories, suppresses appetite, gives your brain a healthy energising boost, provides resistance to lean tissues (such as bones, tendons, ligaments, muscles) and switches on different metabolic pathways which elevate your metabolism and make your body burn more fuel even during rest. Aerobic exercise improves the ability of the hormone Insulin to enter cells, so it lowers the risk of Diabetes.

Aerobic exercise is also a great way to increase your energy level and fight off feelings of fatigue. Just a few minutes a day can really transform how you feel and how much energy you have to put toward getting through your day. Research shows that even people with chronic illness like cancer or heart disease can ward off feelings of fatigue feel more energised when they exercise regularly.

The trick, of course, is exercising when you feel fatigued. It doesn't sound right and you may not feel terrific at the beginning, I know. Tired people generally do not want to put on their sneakers and go for a run. The good news is that you don’t need to run a marathon every day to feel more energy. Just a short 15-minute walk can do wonders.

Researchers believe that exercise, especially in the morning, can improve your sleep quality because it helps to set your body clock each day. If you start your day early with physical activity you will feel awake during the day and get tired by night time. Try some morning exercise for a week and see if your sleep improves.

When you are exercising you are using more than just your body. Participating in sport, such as playing tennis or basketball, is a great way help keep your brain functioning well. It requires a lot of participation from our brain because you must make quick decisions, judgement calls, find the best strategies and learn to stay concentrated. You mind must make hundreds of decisions based on balance, perception and memory. Even a seemingly simple activity like walking can lead to hundreds of stimuli for the brain. Things you see as you walk may trigger memories. You will feel sunshine and wind on your skin. You will see what changes on your route each day.

Regular exercise also has the ability to improve your immune system and help you fight off colds, flu and other infections. It can even help you recover faster from a minor infection and expedite recovery from stress. So don’t stop exercising just because you feel a little bit down under the rainy weather.

Aerobic Training Tools

Now, that said, the next issue is what type of cardio to use. If you walk into the gym you'll probably be swamped with:

Stairmasters
Stationary Cycles
Treadmills
Rowing machines
Nordic tracks
Elliptical runners

From personal experience, I've found the Elliptical Trainer, Rowing Machine and Stairmaster with handles you have to push and pull are the best. They work all muscle groups in the body – upper and lower. These machines will not only burn more calories, but are much more functional than Treadmills or Cycles. Bikes and running can get you burning around 700 calories per hour. Ellipticals and Stairmaster can go up to 1000. Ellipticals, Rowing Machines and Stairmasters with handles can be also extremely useful if you use them in the warm-up initial stage of any physical activity. When you are using all muscle groups at the same time, you will be able to warm up quicker and better prepare your body for the weight training or functional exercise.

The machines are relatively easy to use. Go to the health club and climb on a stair stepper or treadmill. Program the machine by plugging in your weight, select your speed or program and begin your workout. As you plod along on the apparatus you are driven along by the ever-increasing number on the screen that indicates the number of calories that you have burned. Eventually you go long enough to burn 300 calories and you are left with a feeling of accomplishment. Now, as you wipe the sweat from your brow and catch your breath, let me ask you a question. Why did the machine ask you to program in your weight? If you answered to calculate how many calories you burn you are right. What you most likely failed to consider is the main reason it needs your weight is to calculate your basal metabolic rate.

The average male will maintain his weight on about 3200 calories a day. That is about 140 calories an hour at rest. So the 300 calories burned are not calories burned above your basal metabolic rate, they are calories burned including your basal metabolic rate. So for your time on the treadmill, you burned about 160 calories above your baseline. If you eat just 3 cookies, you have completely undone about an hour's worth of work. Think about it...if we were so metabolically inefficient as to burn 300 calories at the rate the exercise equipment says you do, would we ever have survived as a species.

When you try to calculate caloric expenditure, your body composition must also be taken into consideration. If you have plenty of adipose to lose, have emptied your immediate sugars from liver and muscles, the majority of what is burned will indeed be fat, so going for longer periods of time (60 minutes or so) isn't a bad idea. The less body fat you have, the less your body will stand for before it starts digesting muscle for fuel. For leaner individuals, 15-20 minutes is good enough time.

While cardio burns calories, improves heart and lung function, increases metabolism, suppresses appetite for a short while and has many other benefits, it doesn’t build muscle tissue, plus it doesn’t preserve muscle while losing body fat. Weight training, on the other hand, does it all, just a little bit differently. The only way to preserve or build new muscle - which is what you really need to do to get lean - is through weight training.

Endurance training is extremely catabolic and taxes your entire system on all parameters. This is why it should be done on separate days from weight training and for an extended period of time. You don't want your body to cannibalize very much muscle tissue.