DO I HAVE TO EXERCISE TO LOSE WEIGHT?

BY: FITZ-GEORGE RATTRAY

No, you do not have to exercise to lose weight.  You can easily lose weight with diet alone, possibly, easily nine or ten times easier.  Humans are very efficient. This has been our ancestors saving grace in the hardest of times, such as wars, droughts, famines, war time or, just plain old hard times.  We can do very much with very little and the longer and harder we work out, the more efficient we become.

Mathematically weight loss is simple. Weight loss = Energy expended – Energy ingested, (calories in VS calories out), however because of your metabolic efficiency, attempting to exercise away excess calories can easily become a 4-6 hour per day job, and is not a long term sustainable proposition.

Proper nutrition is the most import factor in weight management. After all, you can undo a grueling ninety-minute workout with a cup of froyo, a frappuccino or a handful of nuts, whereas simply excluding rice from your lunch will result in the same caloric loss as an intense 90-minute workout.

 But I “burn” so many calories in my workout

You will hear people say, but the machine in the gym or my fit device told me I “burned” 600 calories doing this thing or the other.  I have always generally known that these calorie counters reported exaggerated levels, of 20% or more than tested; possibly to motivate users or as a best fit measurement.

In a published paper, By MB Nelson, LA Kaminsky, DC Dickin, and AH  Montoye, in Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, titled, Validity of Consumer-Based Physical Activity Monitors for Specific Activity Types, it was shown that “While they might be accurate when counting steps, fitness trackers have been found to overestimate the Calories burned in a workout by up to 40%.” So, take the numbers from these machines with a grain of salt.

Nutrition reigns supreme when it comes to weight loss/management.  Weight loss is 75-90% nutrition and 10-25% exercise.  Regardless of how exciting and social media “post-able” your working out is, the fact is, if you really want to represent change, you should be posting your meal planning, preparing, and portioning, and telling people that you just finished packing your meal bag and not that you just finished your cardio.  The reality is, you should be investing many times more effort, consistency and dedication in your nutrition than your workout.

Should you exercise while losing weight?

Yes, you absolutely should.  You should exercise ALL the time. Exercise is second only to nutrition when it comes to disease prevention and wellness, exercise has tremendous benefits, reducing the risk of:

• compromised mental health
• type-2 diabetes
• stroke
• dementia
• joint and back pains
• heart disease
• cardio vascular complications
• …and more

For weight loss, nutrition is significantly more important but understand that for your best possible wellness good nutrition and exercise are BOTH essential, even if they are not equally important.

Does exercise help you lose weight?

Of course exercise helps in several ways.

• Remember, Weight loss = Energy expended – Energy ingested? The greater the energy expended the greater the weight loss.  Yes, exercise may be 20% of the effective change, but with exercise, in the same time period, you can lose 50 pounds instead of 40 pounds
• Muscle development will increase your basal metabolic rate (BMR), your rate of energy expenditure at rest
• Added muscle will improve your chances of maintaining your weight loss
• Exercising helps to entrench your wellness mindset, healthy habits help to entrench a healthy lifestyle
• Exercise assists in mood control, helping to curb emotional eating
• Working out promotes hormone regulation
• Regular exercise assists in normalizing sleep patterns

Do what you can maintain, the most important thing is to be consistent, and maintain this consistency for life.  Over time, gradually, challenge yourself, safe changes in intensity will mean positive changes in you.

What kinds of exercise should I be doing to aid in my weight loss journey?

• Progressive weight resistance training. Contrary to misguided popular belief, building muscle is the most important thing you can do for your weight management.  You certainly don’t have to be a bodybuilder but muscles are essential to help to keep your BMR high and give you the strength and joint stability to be as active as possible
• Walk, we all know how important walking is, hip health, spine health, maintaining mobility, and cardiovascular benefit (briskly is better) as well as being outdoors and getting sunlight to produce Vitamin D and other essential factors.
• Cardio vascular workouts, if you prefer a 40-minute cardio class, CrossFit type workout or an 8-minute High intensity Interval Training (HIIT), get your heart and breathing rates up, this will do wonders for you.
• Embrace other activities which involve:
  • Coordination and balance, Dance, martial arts/combat sport (including tai-chi) racket sport, team sports etc.
  • And flexibility, types of dance or martial arts, yoga, or just your own

Always prioritize on your nutrition, true, you don’t need to exercise to lose weight, but you should always exercise, don’t allow exercise to distract you from proper nutrition as you cannot sustainably use exercise to undo poor eating.  However, exercise is too important to bargain with. Take the time, make the effort, do the workouts you must, and add activities you will enjoy.  Consistency is everything.