Fire Up Your Metabolism

Since I am in my 50s and each year my strategy to maintain or lose weight changes. My focus is on losing fat while building muscle, which will ultimately be the way to reverse my slowing metabolism. So, this week I am going to make some easy changes to my eating habits (increase water consumption, increase non-meat protein) and supercharge my cardio. I am still keeping my cardio goal for 2009 but will go about it differently -- my first change will be to move my running to 3x per week with a 5 minute warm-up, keep my heart rate in the aerobic zone for 12 minutes (each week increasing my speed) and then slow for a 3 minute cool down (total = 20 minutes). I will shorten my strength workout and move those back to 3x a week using a circuit routine. The first round will be an easy warm-up and the second and third rounds will be heavier weights. Keeping the number of exercises down to about 6 will allow me to get through the three rounds and hopefully recover. This will take some time to get right but I can keep varying the exercises or alternate exercises to keep my muscles guessing and maybe I won't need to lift as heavy. Either way this will be the start of another change cycle for my workout. My next post will cover my intervals and endurance sessions.