The best long term way to gain control over your weight is through a combination of healthy eating and exercise, which for the best benefit, should be embed as a life-long habit. Once regular exercising is part of your life style, it will not only assist with weight loss, but will also have a substantial general health benefit.

Lack of exercise is a major contributing factor to chronic heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, obesity, osteoporosis, elevated cholesterol, back pain and other postural disorders. So having a program of exercises to lose weight is not only good for your weight management, but also for your general health. Do not only see exercising only as a weight loss technique, but also as a health promotion initiative.

So what exercises to lose weight should you consider as part of your weight management regime? The following, singularly or in combination, are ideal and can be mixed-and-matched according to your fitness level and desire:

Walking - Is a useful aerobic exercise and is a good starting point as a natural extension of your daily routine. Initially, try to do more of what you are already doing by increasing your general level of activity. To get the best out of this exercise you need to walk quickly and not dawdle. Set a target of 10 000 steps per day to get yourself going and add a little “power walking” to it (quick walking at an elevated heart rate which will make you very fit), once or twice a week to pep up your walking.

Jogging - Is running at a slower pace. It is a natural advance to walking which you can integrate with your walking activities (i.e. 8 minutes walking, 2 minutes jogging; repeated three times will give you a total of 30 minutes of mixed exercises to lose weight). Keep on adding more running to your walking-running combination, depending upon how you are feeling that day and within 8 weeks you will see a visible weight and health benefit.

Cycling - Uses the major legs muscle groups. Add a little resistance to your cycling by using bigger gears or hills to your cycling will raise your heart rate. This will have beneficial muscle growth and positive impact on your metabolic rate, which will have a health impact and simultaneously you will shed weight.

Skipping, mini trampoline - Is good for the soul and will have a weight loss impact. More importantly, incorporating some impact and weight bearing exercises into your program will have a positive spin off on bone strengthening. So be a child again every so often and skip and jump a bit more often.

These four simple activities are very good exercises to lose weight and are easy to do. Overtime, besides contributing to a weight loss program they will also have a substantial positive health impact as well.