Aerobic exercise is the centerpiece of any exercise program. It is any form of activity which increases your heart rate. Your heart beats between 90,000 to 100,000 times per day. Like any other muscle in your body, if you don’t give your heart the exercise it needs, it may not perform for you as you need it to. The benefits of aerobic training are numerous. Here are some: • reduction of blood pressure • increased HDL (good) cholesterol • decreased total cholesterol • weight reduction • increased heart and lung function • decreased anxiety and depression • decreased incidence of some cancers. To be considered aerobic, the exercise must raise your pulse to 60 to 90 percent of your maximum heart rate. The easiest way is to determine your maximum heart rate is to subtract your age from the number 220. There are many modes of aerobic exercise. It is important to pick one that you like and which will help you achieve your goals. For example, if weight reduction is your primary goal, choose jogging over swimming. Types of aerobic exercise are brisk walking, jogging, running, stationary and outdoor biking, skipping rope, rowing, stair climbing, hiking, swimming and aerobic dancing. The recommended frequency of aerobic exercise, according to the American College of Sports Medicine, is three to five times per week. Especially at the beginning, it is important not to exercise two days in a row so your muscles can recover adequately from the previous day’s workout. Beginners should start with ten- to twenty-minute sessions. Eventually you should work up to aerobic workouts of thirty to sixty minutes a session. It is essential that you warm up gradually before the exercise and cool down afterward. To be continued…. Alan Freishtat is an ACE-CERTIFIED PERSONAL TRAINER, LIFESTYLE FITNESS COACH and WEIGHT LOSS COUNSELOR with over 10 years of professional experience, whose success rate in weight loss exceeds the industry standard.  He is the director of the Jerusalem-based weight reduction clinic “Lose It!”.  Alan is available for private consultations, assessments and personalized workout programs.  He also conducts group lectures, seminars and workshops. Office: 972-2-651-8502 / Cellular: 972-50-555-7175 / email: [email protected]

There was a time when even a secretary could burn off a couple pounds of fat each year on her job. She walked from office to office, went out to eat lunch, and used a manual typewriter. Those days are long gone ― activities that gave most people a minimal amount of necessary exercise are no longer a part of our routine.  At the beginning of the twentieth century, there weren’t cars or elevators, so people needed to get where they were going by foot. Manual labor made up 87 percent of the gross domestic product of the United States. In recent times, the workplace has become a totally sedentary environment where one sits by a computer all day, has interoffice phone and e-mail systems, orders lunch out, and has it delivered to the desk. The immediate results of these lifestyle changes are a lack of cardiovascular fitness and deterioration in muscle mass and strength. The ramifications of this are a higher risk of heart disease, cancer, osteoporosis, diabetes, obesity, and many other health difficulties. Take Chaim’s story, an example of an all too familiar scenario: At age 42, Chaim enrolled in my personal training program. Over the years, he had put on some weight and was feeling a little sluggish. At his wife’s behest he had just been to the doctor for a physical. The doctor found that his cholesterol was unacceptably high, and he was also in danger of developing type 2 diabetes. His blood pressure had also crept up to a point where medication would soon be needed. Chaim’s physician instructed him to begin making lifestyle changes immediately, emphasizing a change in diet and the introduction of regular exercise. A follow-up visit was scheduled for six weeks later. Having gotten a good scare, Chaim decided to heed the doctor’s advice and was determined to begin an exercise program immediately. But when he got home and spoke about it with his wife, he realized that he had no idea what the phrase “get some exercise” actually meant. Where to begin? How much exercise? How often? What type? What about all this talk of kickboxing, pilates, yoga, aerobic dancing, toning classes, and martial arts? Whilst all those types of exercise that he had heard about certainly have their benefits, what Chaim needed to do was follow a well-rounded, comprehensive program that included all aspects of exercise. A comprehensive exercise program includes a combination of the three basic types of exercise: aerobic (cardiopulmonary), resistance training (weights), and flexibility training (stretching). In the next installments we will take a closer look at each one of these categories and examine what they are and how they improve our health and fitness. To be continued… Alan Freishtat is an ACE-CERTIFIED PERSONAL TRAINER, LIFESTYLE FITNESS COACH and WEIGHT LOSS COUNSELOR with over 10 years of professional experience, whose success rate in weight loss exceeds the industry standard.  He is the director of the Jerusalem-based weight reduction clinic “Lose It!”.  Alan is available for private consultations, assessments and personalized workout programs.  He also conducts group lectures, seminars and workshops. Office: 972-2-651-8502 / Cellular: 972-50-555-7175 / email: [email protected]

As YWN is constantly searching for new features to add to the website, we have decided to start posting weekly columns, editorials, and ‘op-eds’. The first in column will be a weekly health column written by Alan Freishtat [his info is posted below], and will be posted in the YWN Health Section which can be found on the left side & listed under the “News Feature”. Additional columns will be implemented in the next few weeks. This weeks column is titled “The Weight Loss Equation” High protein; low protein. High carb; low carb. Good carbs; bad carbs. The glycemic index is valid; the glycemic index is unproven, misused, and misunderstood. The information on weight loss and nutrition is confusing and sorting it all out is almost impossible. With well over 65% of us overweight, and over 25% obese, the goal of weight-loss has become first and foremost in the minds of most people and in the minds of medical professionals as well. To add to the confusion, many dieters brag about how successful they were on their various diets, and then in 98% of cases, within five years, they gained it all back, and possibly more. So, just how does one lose weight and keep it off? Here in Israel, we are consuming a daily average of 3,765 calories. That’s far more than we need in a day. For most people, weight gain happens over a long period of time.  It’s not difficult to consume 50 calories per day more than you need or than you use. That will give you a 5-pound gain per year.  Keep that up for a number of years and you will be obese. Let’s understand some basics of how many calories we need to consume per day in order to maintain our weight and then see what we need to do to lose. The first step is to determine what our basal metabolic rate is. That is, how many calories does our body use as energy to sustain itself throughout one day, without doing extra activity or exercise.  At rest (for example, while sitting at the computer or reading), the human body burns only about 12 calories per pound of body weight per day (26 calories per kilogram). This formula is approximate and you can find metabolic calculators on the Internet. That means that if you weigh 150 pounds (68 kg), your body uses only about 150 X 12 = 1,800 calories per day. This means that in order to lose weight, you need to cut down on the number of calories you consume per day. One pound is 3,500 calories, so in order to lose a pound per week; you would need to consume 500 fewer calories per day. But a word of caution: consuming too few calories can slow your metabolic rate and can cause nutrition deficiencies. 1,000 calorie a day diets DO NOT WORK in the long term and will leave you lacking nutrients. Since cutting calories can be a difficult task, we need to think not only about calorie consumption, but also about caloric expenditure. By being active, walking instead of driving and not using elevators, you could very easily burn 200 calories a day, in which case, you would need to cut 300 calories per day to lose one pound per week. If you begin to exercise, you will see the greatest results. You