That's aerobic exercise, but what about anaerobic exercise like lifting weights? Muscle is a highly active tissue that's always ready and always burning calories. The more muscle one has, the higher the resting metabolic rate. An exercise program that includes both aerobic and muscle building anaerobic exercise will get the output end of your caloric spreadsheet where it needs to be.

Add it up. If you burned just 20 calories more per hour for a week, that adds up to an additional 3360 calories, which is almost one pound of fat. And that's in addition to the calories burned during the actual exercise.

LESSON SIX: What's Good Aerobic Activity? Doctors use a simple formula to calculate what range your heart rate should beat per minute while exercising. It's 220 minus your age, multiplied by (0.7) to (0.8). For example, for a 50-year-old person the formula would be 220 – 50 = 170 x 0.7 to 0.8, which equals a range of 119 to 136 beats per minute.

Any activity that consistently keeps your heart rate in that range for 20 minutes gets the job done. This means anything from digging a hole with a shovel and then filling it back in, to running, to backpacking with a heavy load or any other activity you can think of. The idea that exercise is fun is another Madison Avenue story line. It's not fun if what you're doing meets the above recommendations unless you like being hot, sweaty and short of breath, but that's what it takes.

LESSON SEVEN: Know Your Diet Type Let’s understand that 2500 calories made up of five Twinkies and 2500 calories made up of eight pounds of lettuce is still 2500 calories. So if you're allowing yourself 1500 calories per day, when you get to 1500 calories, you're done eating. Due to certain genetic traits, some people will do better with either a low fat or low carb diet. These traits can be identified with an Apo E genotype test, which is a simple blood test that's run through the Berkley Heart Lab in California.

About half of the population will do better on a specific diet, but all will do well on a reduced calorie diet as defined above.

LESSON EIGHT: The most important thing to remember is that before undertaking any new rigorous exercise program, everyone should be cleared for the activity by their primary care doctor. Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States. Half of all people that die of heart disease do so with their first event without ever having registered any symptoms.

So let’s put this all together.

1. Find out how much you are eating per day and reduce it by 500 calories.
2. Check out your exercise program with your doctor.
3. Calculate what range your heart rate should be in.
4. Set up an exercise program that will maintain your heart rate in that range for at least 20 minutes and plan to do it every other day.
5. Incorporate a muscle building component to your exercise program.
6. Expect to adjust your calorie intake and your exercise program to keep weight loss program maximally effective.
7. Don't try to lose more then 10 pounds per month so you not only maintain all your muscle mass but actually increase it.

The bottom line to weight loss and physical fitness is that there's no secret to it. If you follow the above advice, you will lose weight. It's simple math and physics, so don't let anyone tell you any different. You might as well start now since it will only make you healthier and hopefully live longer so--you guessed it--you can hunt more.

As always be safe, enjoy the outdoors.

Got a medical question for the Hunt Doctors? Ask away by clicking here.