Hello and welcome to the Body by Patrick podcast. In today’s episode, I want to share with you guys, how many times a week should you work out in order for you to be able to get rid of belly fat, to lose weight and to get in shape?
The first thing that affects how often you should be working out is your age. If you’re somebody who’s 18 years old compared someone who is 70, 75 years old, your life situation will be totally different, right?
The other thing that affects how often you should be working out is what is your goal, what are you really trying to achieve? If you’re trying to lose five pounds of fat compared to you want to lose 30, 40, 50 pounds of fat, of course, the approach is going to be different.
Now, the other thing you want to consider when it comes to how often you need to work out is, where you are currently in your fitness level. Again, somebody that just started working now will not be able to do as much as somebody who’d been working out for two, three months that wants to take their training to another level.
The other thing you got to consider is that you have to factor in your lifestyle situation, your life situation. What does your home environment look like? Are you somebody that’s married? Do you have kids? What does your job situation look like, are you someone that works twelve plus hours a day? Those kinds of things, basically your current life responsibilities, would determine how much “free time” you have to invest in working out.
Those are just some things that you’ve got to consider.
Now, here’s the thing you’ve got to remember, no matter how often you determine to work out, you got to make sure that you are on a plan that is sustainable over time. Remember, you want to make exercising, being active and working out in general a lifestyle thing. it’s not just a one-time thing whereby you achieve your weight loss goal or your fat loss goal and you stop.
You want to make sure you stick with a plan, a workout regimen, workout frequency that is sustainable over time. If for example right now, all you can do all, you know, you can do is two times a week well stick with that until your situation changes and then maybe you can up the frequency of your workout. Because, you don’t want to set yourself up for failure.
Now, I want to share with you as promised the scientific principle that kind of help you determine how often you should be working out. It’s called the F.I.T principle.
The “F” in the F.I.T principle stands for frequency.
Three times a week I’ve discovered is just enough time for people to get a challenge, to create a habit, and to be able to see sustainable result.
So if I have, from a result achieving in point of view, Mr. Jon or Mrs. Jones, and I designed the same workout program for either of them, same workout program, and I said to Mrs. Jones, you work out one time a week and Mr. Jon you work out three times a week, the same program. Okay, who’s going to achieve the goal faster? Of course, Mr. Jon because he’s going to be working out three times a week.
The other component of the F.I.T principle is the “I”, the intensity of your workout. And the I relative based on where you are in your fitness journey.
And then, the “T” in the F.I.T principle is the time, the duration of your workout. Again, depending on what your goal is and depending on where you are in terms of your fitness level would influence how long your workout should be. One thing you’ve got to keep in mind though is that, there’s an inverse relationship between the intensity of your workout and the duration of your workout.
So what does that mean?
The higher the intensity of your workout, the lower the duration should be. For example, even if you wanted to, you’re not going to sprint 26 miles. However, you can sprint 100 meters. So, the shorter the distance, the higher the speed.
Similarly, when it comes to lifting weights, getting in shape, losing belly fat, the shorter the duration of the workout, the higher intensity. But again, that all hinges on your fitness level.
I hope that answered that question for you, how many times a week should you exercise, should you work out in order for you to lose weight, get rid of belly fat or simply get in shape.
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