Exercise and Weight Loss...the Perfect Combination

This is a monthly e-zine that will cut through the hype, fads and gimmicks to give you the low down on the really important information you need to successfully lose weight and keep it off.

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And so to this month's e-zine...

It had reviewed 16 randomised control trials - the gold standard of research methodology.

The research conclusions were interesting...

It concluded that the two least effective ways to lose weight were healthy eating closely followed by exercise alone.

Dieting alone was more effective than exercise alone but -- surprise, surprise! -- diet and exercise combined was the most effective way to lose weight.

Well fancy that!

Ok, let's explore those findings a bit further.

How many times do you hear people say that they're not going to diet, just cut back? To eat more healthily?

Now for some people it works, for most it doesn't.

Why? Unless you consistently eat fewer calories than you burn off, you won't lose weight.

Healthy foods have calories, too and sometimes you're lulled into thinking that as a result you can eat more of them - eat a product that has half the calories and chances are you'll eat twice as much!

Exercise alone isn't particularly effective for most people to lose weight.

It can be, but generally people don't exercise at a high enough intensity, for long enough or frequently enough.

Besides, a three mile run burns around 300 calories - less than a Snickers bar!

Just cutting out the Snickers bar is far less effort!

As far as dieting alone is concerned...well, if you read last month's newsletter - #002 Dieting Makes You Fat - you'll be wise to the perils of dieting.

Dieting works for a while, but often as your body slows down your metabolism to conserve energy, the weight loss slows down and may even stop - the dreaded plateau!

It's your body's starvation response that makes dieting less and less effective over time.

Which is why exercise is so important to long term weight loss...

So Why Exercise...?

First off, there are two main types of exercise when it comes to weight loss - aerobic exercise, or cardio.

Walking, cycling, swimming, running...

Then there's resistance training, weight training, for instance.

The benefits of aerobic exercise are two fold - you burn calories, most of which come from body fat, and you get fitter.

The more aerobically fit you get, the more calories and fat you burn in a workout and the more weight you lose.

Brisk walking or running a mile burns around 100 calories on average, which doesn't sound a lot but soon adds up.

Walk or run three miles a day and that adds up to one pound of weight loss a week, or 52lbs a year. Impressive, huh?

So what about resistance training?

Well, training with weights builds muscle tone, density and size.

You burn no fat weight training unless you're training with very light weights and high repetitions.

But as muscle is responsible for most of the calories you burn each day, the more muscle you have, the more calories you burn just sitting around doing nothing!

One pound of muscle burns around 14 calories a day at rest. Be active during the day and that can increase up to four or five-fold whilst you're active.

Another point to note is that you don't just burn extra calories when you exercise, as your metabolic rate remains raised for several hours afterwards.

Not only will you burn hundreds of calories in a workout, you'll burn hundreds afterwards too as your body winds down and recovers and repairs itself.

Now, ladies, don't worry about getting big muscles by weight training.

As you don't have much of the testerone that builds muscle, you'll get toned without the added bulk.

A woman would have to train 10 times as hard as a guy to build the same amount of muscle, which just ain't gonna happen!

Girls with big muscles are either genetically pre-disposed to be that way, train incredibly hard or are using anabolic steroids.

Another benefit to women that weight training confers is that it's much more effective for getting rid of pregnancy related fat - the fat on your hips, bum and thighs.

It's difficult to shift this fat through cardio alone, but build some muscle and the increase in your metabolic rate will help to get rid of the fat, whilst the exercise will help to tone your lower body.

Find the time to do three or four 30 minute cardio sessions a week.

Add in two or three 20-30 minute weight training sessions and you'll have a highly effective exercise program that will help to reshape your body in just a few short months!

If that's not possible, then just do what you can as every little helps.

The Benefits of Diet and Exercise...

Combine it with an exercise program that burns 500 calories a day, and you can expect to lose around two pounds a week as there's 3,500 calories in a pound of fat.

Whatsmore, exercise is the most effective way to beat weight loss plateaus and keep the body fat dropping off!

A sensible diet and regular exercise is the most effective way to maintain your new weight in the long term.

Convinced? You should be! Study after study confirms that the secret to successful weight loss and weight maintenance are a combination of diet and exercise.

They're also the two most common characterstics of slim people!

Make time for exercise and you'll not only lose weight and get in great shape, but you'll have discovered the secret to keeping that great new shape forever!

Wishing you all the best in your weight loss endeavours and we'll chat again next month!

Best wishes,

Marcus and Lisa