Exercise is one of the key ways in which you can actively reduce your BMI (Body Mass Index).
Note that to ensure you do lose weight as a result of exercise, you will need to ensure that your diet does not contain excess calories which could prevent your exercise from bringing your body weight down.
Aerobic exercise
It is recommended by the World Health Organisation that adults get at least 30 minutes of moderate aerobic exercise five days a week.
Alternatively, this can be 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity activity through the week.
Children should aim to take part in an hour of physical activity each day.
Swimming, running and cycling are all good examples of aerobic exercise, which serves to increase your heart and breathing rate.
Aerobic exercise does not lead to putting on muscle mass to the extent that anaerobic exercise does. For this reason, when you perform aerobic exercise, you burn off fat without putting much weight back on as muscle mass.
Note that there is nothing unhealthy on putting on muscle mass, it is just that those who need to see their weight dropping for motivation purposes may prefer to concentrate more on aerobic exercises, at least initially.
Anaerobic exercise
Anaerobic exercise includes lifting weights and other resistance exercises such as push ups or stomach crunches.
Anaerobic exercise is effective in lowering your BMI, but you may find that you don’t experience a drop in your weight in the short-term as an increase in muscle mass may see the scales showing the same weight even though you are actually burning body fat.
In the longer-term, however, as your muscles increase, you should start to notice that your weight, and therefore your BMI, begins to drop.
When working a muscle group, make sure you have a day’s rest before exercising those muscles again as this will allow your muscles time to recover and grow.
Research shows that combining both aerobic and anaerobic exercise to be successful towards weight loss as well as in improving insulin sensitivity in people with diabetes.
