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To keep ourselves in good shape we indulge in sporadic exercise regimens and fancy diets. And when it doesn't work, we become depressed, and binge ourselves to a more round shape. The question is, can we control obesity effectively through diet and exercise?

Our body requires a minimum number of calories each day, called the basal metabolic rate, to maintain its vital functions such as breathing, maintaining the heartbeat, and keeping the brain working properly. It's all common sense -- to lose weight we must burn more calories than we consume. The goal in any weight loss program is to keep our metabolism elevated as people with a high metabolic rate burn more calories throughout the day compared to those with a low metabolic rate.

The successful strategy in the battle of the bulge is to make a winning combination of dieting and exercise. Dieting, whatever fancy label it carries - low-carb-high-fat or high-carb-low-fat - can only bring short-term results, but to retain the weight loss, exercise just cannot be done away with. The commercial dieting programs slash the calories drastically and slow down the metabolism (the body is put in a 'starvation mode') and cause muscle loss. Eventually, the weight loss stops and any increase in calories that follows rebounds vengefully with an immediate fat gain.

Unlike restricting diets, exercise aerobic and weight training - raises your metabolic rate and creates a caloric deficit without triggering the starvation response. Aerobic exercises raise your heart rate and increase the amount of oxygen that is delivered to your muscles. As your fitness level soars, you will notice that you can do more physical activity without becoming out of breath. To get the most out of aerobic exercise, start by doing a short warm-up, such as walking or riding a stationary bike, and stretch briefly. Then, do vigorous exercise for 20 minutes a day, 3 times a week or more. Vigorous-intensity activity is any exercise that provides 70% or more of your maximum heart rate.

You may have noticed that some bikes and treadmills at the gym have a setting that says fat burning zone, where the setting for intensity or speed is moderate. The reason for this is that the body burns a greater percentage of fat at a slow pace (or after about 90 minutes of exercise). How much fat is burned during exercise depends on the ability of the cardiovascular system to deliver enough oxygen to the cells in sufficient time. Aerobic activity does not involve short spurts of energy. If you gasp for air, chances are you are probably working anaerobically, or without a sufficient oxygen supply to the muscles. Types of aerobic activity include walking, jogging, swimming, bicycling etc. The key factor to keep in mind is the more muscle groups you use, the more fat you'll burn.You can maintain a continued increase in metabolism even several hours after you stop People who exercise on a regular basis develop more fat burning enzymes than people who don't exercise at all. By doing just twenty minutes of fat burning exercises you get those fat burning enzymes working.

In contrast, anaerobic activity involves short spurts of energy. Anaerobic exercise uses muscles at high intensity for a short period of time. They help us to develop stronger muscles and improve the cardio respiratory system by increasing the maximum amount of oxygen one can consume during exercise. They also build up the endurance to withstand the buildup of waste substances such as lactic acid and increase the ability to remove them from the body.

When one is strength training it's possible to get smaller and heavier at the same time. Muscle is a much denser tissue than fat. Following this type of routine, its possible to gain about two kilos of muscle per week and lose about two kilos of fat per week. The end result is that the number on the scale might not move much at all, it may even go up. It's at this point that a lot of people will chuck the weight training because they don't understand the physiology of what's happening. The scale can be misleading at such times. Just keep going; you're actually doing great.

Uma Shankari is a Bangalore-based freelance journalist. She is passionate about writing. She writes regularly on development issues, health and fitness, yoga/meditation, life and relationships. Read some her articles on Here