Exercising To Lose Weight
Losing Body Fat
It's probably safe to say that about half of all Americans need to, or want to, lose weight and body fat. Maybe you want to drop just 10 pounds, mainly so your current wardrobe still fits you well. Other people have significant weight
problems and need to lose as much as 50 pounds or more. Besides your physical appearance, your motivation should include health concerns. Once you form a pattern of overeating every day, with a diet made up of sweets, fatty foods and other junk foods, this can be a hard habit to break. Some people think that, exclusively using exercising to lose weight, they can keep right on with their bad eating habits. The rationale is that when you employ the exercising to lose weight program, you're burning calories, so you'll reach your goal without changing your diet, or at least not by much. It won't work. Let's see why.
What does exercise accomplish in a weight loss program? Whether you need to shed 10, 50 or 100 or more pounds, this means that your body has excess fat hanging around. An exercise program burns off excess body fat, while toning flabby muscles and providing benefits to your cardiovascular health. On the other hand, if you only change your diet and don't exercise, when weight comes off, you'll be left with sagging skin all over your body, which isn't an attractive result.
Exercising alone won't get you to your goal. Why? If you watch the 'Biggest Losers' TV show, you might know that after couples partners had spent time at the program's official weight loss center, one of the couples from each team were sent home for one month to see how they did on their own. Some, who adhered to both the diet and exercise regimens on their own, lost significant weight. Others, who abandoned the diet, but worked out every day, lost no more than 2 pounds! That's proof that when you're exercising to lose weight, a healthy diet is a must for success.
How does a healthy diet program affect weight loss? The bottom line to losing weight is reducing your daily caloric intake. If you reduce your daily intake by 500 calories, you'll lose about one pound a week. If you don't drop the sugar laden foods, those calories turn right back into fat. When you add plenty of fiber-rich, complex carbohydrates, you get a reversal of this effect. The calories these foods contain often require that your body burns more calories than the food actually contains. So you realize a net reduction in calories consumed. Add in the exercising to lose weight factor and you've effectively reduced your calorie consumption on all sides, resulting in safe and maximum weight loss.
You can see that, if you're serious about losing weight and fat, diet and exercise work hand in hand. Don't fool yourself into thinking that you can simply keep just exercising to lose that weight!
