Best exercise – no time to lose

If like me you thought that the best exercise was about hitting the gym for hours or pounding the streets, then prepare to be amazed. The latest science and extraordinary researches are changing our view about the best exercise.

Best exercise and calorie burning

How long do you think you need to eliminate a cappuccino, a blueberries muffin and a banana: The answer is 55 min of moderate running. Here is the thing: How long do you run from Starbucks to the office?? Let’s face it most of us do not walk this amount of time between our stuffy breakfast and office, let alone run.

Experience proves that very few people are willing to put the necessary hours. Worse studies actually demonstrate that people compensate doing exercise by eating more!! Don’t despair because a lot of benefits from exercise lie hidden inside your body. So if weight loss is not a motivation, one of the remarkable effects of even gentle exercise is what it does to the level of fat in your blood.

Now a bit more: eating a full English breakfast or its equivalent over the day double the amount of fat in your blood – hum … yummy bacon! This fat can end up on your organs so that you can actually be thin on the outside and soft and fatty on the inside. This physical characteristic is eloquently called fat organ or being like a toffee: thin outside and fluffy- gooey maybe – On the inside. Well you get the idea!

High amount of fat in the inside are related to the development of type 2 diabetes, insulin resistance and premature ageing.

Exercise allows for substantial less fat in the blood as the fat is dumped in the muscles where it is burnt off. A 90 min hardwalking exercise will switch on genes that make an enzyme called lipase producing a reduction of a 1/3^rd of the amount of fat in the blood.

Best exercise: where do we stand?

The government guidelines advise for 110 min a week of moderate exercise or 75 min of vigorous activities. Obviously these advice are not personalised and experience demonstrates that one size fits all does not really work when it comes to health.

We all know that the 2/3^rd of the general population does not comply with these guidelines. So the question is to find the best exercise i.e. effective, that can fit in your busy schedule and you can imagine doing on a consistent basis for the next coming decades.

Also there appear to be a huge variation on how people respond to exercise. A scientific study, conducted on 1000 people over 4 weeks, demonstrates that individuals responded very differently when submitted to the same amount of exercise.

The study distinguished between:

– The super responders 15%

– The no responders 20%

– The average responders i.e. all the rest standing between those two limits. The reasons for such variation can be traced to 11 genes and can be measured thanks to a genetic test.

Even the non-respondent will always get some benefits from exercise. The question is to find a more appropriate way of exercising.

Best exercise: when less is more

Scientists have come up with a radical time saving routine which increases the benefit people get from exercise even for the “non responding” population.

3 min a week: in the gym or from the comfort of your home:

cycling at maximum speed for 20 seconds (like your life is depending on it) followed by a short rest and two more times: that is 3 bursts of high intensive cycle. Do this best exercise 3 times a week and improve massively your metabolism.

Although you could actually perform your best exercise in your suit and without sweating, these 3 min will prove very effective. After my first times, I could barely stand on my legs, I was drained and went to bed very early the very day. Do not forget to have some raw proteins within 30 min following of your best exercise.

Let’s remind us that sedentariness is a killer: Never be complacent. Keep active in the day, cycle, stand in the tube, take the stairs, walk faster, get off one bus stop earlier and move every hour: burn 500 extra calories in your day and keep the fuel moving.