Its easy to want to skip lower body work, its hard, it hurts, and everyone hates rubbery legs for a few days after a good session of squats. But heres the truth:

You have more muscle in your legs than anywhere else! If you want to lose weight, hit the lower body hard. Lower body exercises will help you build muscle faster and burn weight faster than anything else.

Lower Body Focus

Let me make it up to you! Here’s a recipe for low fat meat loaf that actually tastes good.

1/4 teaspoon canola oil
1/4 teaspoon chopped garlic
1/4 cup each finely diced carrots, red pepper, celery, and onion
Salt and black pepper
1 pound 90 percent lean ground beef
1/4 cup shredded Parmesan cheese
1/4 cup low-sodium chicken broth
1 large egg
1 cup cooked brown lentils
2 cups packed spinach leaves, steamed, drained, and chopped
Cooking Spray

Preheat oven to 350°F. Heat oil in a pan over medium heat. Add garlic and all vegetables except spinach and saute for 4 minutes. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
In a large bowl, break up beef well with your hands. Stir in cooked vegetables, Parmesan, broth, and egg. Add lentils and mix. Add spinach and mix again. Season with salt and pepper.
Coat a 3- by 8-inch loaf pan with cooking spray. Place meat mixture in pan and push down. Bake 35 minutes or until internal temperature reaches 140°F.
Let meat loaf rest in the pan for 15 minutes before slicing.

5 servings
345 calories/serving

Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a way to combine those work hours with your fitness goals? Now let’s be honest what would your boss say or your coworkers think if the wandered into your cube during a set of pushups or in the middle of using your chair for dips? Not to mention who wants to walk into a client meeting sweaty and smelly?

There are some alternates to dragging a Bow flex into your cube:

Lunch: Most places have at least a 30 minute lunch break, some lucky ones even get an hour. This is a great time to get out of the office and into your running shoes! A quick change in the bathroom into your workout clothes and you’re ready for a 20-30 minute run/walk. You still get in a little cardio with out getting soaked with sweat and still have chance to have a bite to eat! (It beats cruising the web for an hour)

Ride in: My place of work is approximately 30 miles from any town, and yet there is still some guy who rides his bicycle out to there every day! Most people live a bit closer to their workplace and for them biking makes even more sense! Not only do you skip traffic jams, save on gas, don’t have to worry about parking, but you get in some good exercise before and after staring at a computer for 8 hours. This can also be a good way to mentally transition from home to work and back.

Lend a hand: Do you know how much paper your office uses? I bet the secretary does, and its more than you think. Become your office administrator’s new best friend by offering to lift and move around all those paper boxes. You’ll find it a decent workout and make a friend for life.

If none of this is appealing, at least consider doing some stretches at your desk daily. They won’t make you sweat, but can help keep you limber and improve your posture, preventing a lot of ergonomic problems.

1. Neurological: The first few times you do something you will be a bit shaky until your body adapts and “figures out” how it should go. Once your body has learned the new exercise you will do it better without any new muscle growth.

2. Physiological: Any new type of stress you put on your muscles is going to cause muscle growth in muscles that weren’t used very much before. This means that there will be a quick adapting period in the first few weeks of doing an exercise with large amounts of strength gain.

But what about after those first few weeks? You probably noticed you weren’t very sore anymore, and the shakiness had disappeared. Whatever the exercise was, you most likely stuck with it for several weeks to several months. But even if you worked hard you found that the gains were nothing like in the beginning and over time the resulting strength gains slowed down and may have even stopped.

This is called plateauing. It’s a pretty common term in weight lifting circles, and refers to a point when a certain exercise fails to deliver any benefit no matter how hard the person tries. It can also refer to a specific level of fitness that a person is having trouble moving past.

There are several ways you may plateau, and depending on the way, there will be a different solution to overcome this.

Stopped losing weight: Your body has reached an energy balance. As I’ve described before, you have as much energy coming into your body as is going out. Either cut the calories, or increase your level of exercise. Or, you can increase the amount of protein you are eating (Protein powders are great for this)and increase your exercise. This will allow your muscles to grow and burn more calories at a resting rate allowing you to lose more weight.

Stopped gaining strength: Again you have 2 options. The first is to increase your eating and let your muscles grow bigger and stronger. Or, change the exercises you are doing. Frequently changing your exercise routine enables continual “fast growth” like what I described in the beginning of this post. People often call this “muscle confusion” and many multi-week exercise plans use this method.

In summary, the 2 best things you can do for yourself when exercising and/or losing weight is to make sure you are getting enough food to fuel your muscles, and to continually change your exercise routine every few weeks. This will ensure that muscles are always growing at a peak rate and that they have the supplies they need to do all that growing.