Is It Necessary To Exercise To Lose Weight?
It may be one of the oldest cliché’s around, but if I was given £1 for every time I’ve been asked that question, I would be obscenely wealthy.
Losing weight is a highly emotive subject and anyone who has struggled with their weight will be all too familiar with the desire to do something about it – quickly. Naturally, the next step after deciding that something has got to be done, the next question is how and what is the best way to do it.
Sadly, the power of marketing and the promise of “rapid” weight loss with minimal effort is a mantra that many overweight people get sucked into, causing them to haemorrhage money and achieve short term results. This phenomenon will be all too familiar with anyone who has battled with their waistline but hopefully all of the information here at fitFAQS will get you on the right track.
When it comes to losing weight there is one irrefutable fact that you must come to terms with:
In order to lose weight you have to expend more calories than you consume.
There are so many sensationalist magazine articles and books written that try to convince you that this is not the case, but they are only saying it to get your attention so that you buy their book or magazine.
Think about it. If you move very little and eat a lot of calorie dense food, the energy in that food has to go somewhere. Unless you have the metabolism of a race horse, the excess calories that you are consuming, whether they are from carbohydrate, protein or fat, will store themselves in your fat cells. The only way to stop, or reverse, this process is to expend the extra energy that you have stored away as fat.
The anti-carbohydrate sect that worship good old Dr Atkins, would argue that in fact the reason for us storing fat is because of the carbs we eat, stimulating the production of insulin which is responsible for storing away fat in our fat cells. Yes, to a degree this is true but it is not the reason why people are fat. There are of course a number of medical reasons why some people are overweight, usually as a result of hormone deficiency or over secretion but this is rarley the reason for people piling on the pounds.
People put on weight because they eat more energy than they burn off!
This is perfectly illustrated by a fairly new client of mine. At 18 stone, he was adverse to any form of physical exercise and loved fatty, calorie dense food – and of course beer.
Since I started training him, I have simply put him on a more sensible eating plan but not banishing him from any foods or food groups. He has simply cut back on ridiculously large portions, stopped snacking between meals and being careful at the amount of fat he eats.
Exercise wise, I see him twice a week and basically make him sweat. We do exercise that makes his heart rate rise significantly and making him out of breath. He does a bit of heart raising exercise everyday. It really is as simple as that
How is he doing? Not bad – 3 stone lost in 3 months is pretty good going I’d say!
So is it really necessary to exercise in order to lose weight. Physiologically no, you can lose weight by not exercising, you just have to be incredibly strict on your diet and let your body’s natural metabolism burn off your fat stores. However, exercise makes weight loss far easier, far more healthy and I guarantee you’ll keep the weight off for longer.
To prove this, in one study of 72 men with mild obesity, they were asked to follow a programme that included either exercise or no exercise in combination with different dietary treatments. Although both groups lost very similar amounts of weight, the group that combined their revised dietary programme with exercise lost significantly more fat and no fat-free mass (muscle). The non-exercising group lost significant amounts of fat-free mass.
For most people desperate to lose weight, the fact that they have lost fat-free mass is insignificant. Provided the scales say the weight is coming off, surely that’s good enough? Well no, sadly it isn’t. Muscle is an active metabolic tissue and it needs energy to exist. If you start to lose muscle mass, your resting metabolic rate drops and you begin to burn off less energy at rest. Your initial weight loss may seem impressive but over time, with less muscle mass and the likely return to your original eating habits, the fat gradually reappears. By combining exercise with a sensible eating plan, you will not only lose more fat but at least if you fall off the dieting wagon once in a while, you will have more muscle mass to help burn off the calories.
Oh, if you would like to know the "weapon of mass reduction" that i have used on my then 18 stone client (now just 15) click on the icon below.
