One of the biggest deterrents that will keep you from losing weight is the amount of time it takes to exercise. If you've listened to popular advice, you may think that running on a treadmill for an hour a day will help you shed pounds fast. But who has that sort of time? These 2 reasons will help you understand why you shouldn't workout that long everyday to make it easier to stick to your plan.

When you jog for an hour or so on a treadmill at a relatively slow pace, your body will actually go into an catabolic state (no, not catatonic) which means your body will break down cells to provide energy to keep you going.

This means that you'll effectively be burning fat and muscle tissue since your body is out of available carbs. While burning fat sounds like a good thing, when you burn your muscles tissue away you are actually lowering your metabolism. And as you do, the amount of calories your body burns every day on it's own decreases, which means you'll have to work harder and harder every day to burn the same amount of calories...no thanks!

To get real results you need to keep the muscle tissue you have and build even more to make your body burn more calories on auto-pilot. To keep from burning off your muscle, start running on the treadmill for much less time.

Instead of running at a steady pace the whole time, mix it up a bit. Jog slow for awhile, then crank up the speed and run fast for a couple minutes. Then slow it back down for a bit to help your body recover. You'll find that you're plenty tired after only 20-30 minutes of this if you used to jog for an hour.

Plus you'll be building muscle and not burning it, so it will help lose weight and keep it off for good, instead of having it come back the moment you stop working out!