So many retailers out there are constantly trying to sell you products that will help you gain muscles, reduce fat, and lose weight in no time. The truth is that there is not a healthy way of developing strong muscles or getting a flat stomach for 1 or even for 6 months when at the same time you have high percentage of fat. All these ads and commercials you see around are created by people who want to sell you a product so that they can benefit from it, no matter that what they sell could be extremely unhealthy or ineffective.
It is very important that you understand that nobody can help you but YOU. There is no chance that you can achieve a well-built body if you have a high percentage of subcutaneous fat. That is why you need to do cardio workouts all the time. Neglecting cardio training at the expense of the power exercises will not get you far. You need to combine them in order to achieve successful results. If you have already decided that you would go to the gym but what you would do is just lift weights, then you are completely on the wrong track.
You need to separate a big amount of your time doing cardio workouts. This does not only include running on the treadmill for 45 min, but it also means to get on that bike, elliptical and stepper and do a pretty effective job. Not only that cardio workouts reduce the percentage of subcutaneous fat in your body, but they also improve your blood circulation, normalize your heart activity and reduce stress.
If you know that you are in a bad shape physically but despite this you want to lose fat, you need to start with long cardio exercises on a low-intensity level, such as very slow walking on the treadmill, or less intense biking. If you are fit, you can go ahead and increase the speed and incline on the treadmill or do more rapid rotations on the elliptical without worrying this can damage you.
These cardio workouts should be 4 to 6 times a week from 30 to 50 minutes (for beginners). You should not only run for 45 minutes, but you need to mix cardio with power exercises. For example, you can go for 15 minutes on the treadmill, then for another 15 on the bike, and finish up with some power exercises. If you do less cardio workouts than what is recommended, you will not see any effect. However, if you do much more than you should then you are in danger of losing any muscle mass you already have.
Some people think that if they run for an hour and a half every day, and that is all they do, they will lose weight in no time. From one side they could be right, but from the other side they would not only lose weight but muscles as well. If you lose a big percentage of muscles, what happens is that your body gets more vulnerable to gain fat. That is why it is very important that you always combine cardio and weight lifting workouts.