Health and fitness with Mikey Moon: Workouts aren't all about weight loss

You work hard in the gym day after day but the reality is that these workouts only take up a very small part of your day.

Let’s say you train for one hour every day – that still leaves 23 hours in each day when you are not working out.

Because your body is burning calories all day, this is where you need to concentrate the bulk of your time in order to lose weight.

Yes, you burn calories when you work out, but that takes up such a small part of your day that it hardly contributes to your overall weight loss.

Your weight loss is really a product of what you do with the rest of your day in terms of calorie consumption and NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis).

NEAT is the energy we expend on everything we do when we are not eating, sleeping or exercising, and includes everything we do in our work and leisure time.

So rather than focusing your workouts around burning off as many calories as you can, try to devote workouts to getting stronger and performing better.

Put the emphasis on building muscle rather than burning calories.

The rest of your day will look after your weight loss, but building muscle when you work out will help your body to do this more efficiently.

Fortitude Fitness is on the Poulton Industrial Estate, Beacon Road.

Visit www.fortitudefit.co.uk for more details.