The Skinny on Weight Loss

How many time have you heard it repeated - "If you want to lose weight, you have to exercise." That simply is not true. You do not have to exercise to lose weight. Wait! Don't take your gym shorts to Goodwill and cancel your fitness club membership. If you want to lose weight and keep it off, that is about 90% true. If you want to lose weight and stay healthy, that is 100% true. 

1. Exercise your right not to eat.

Excess weight comes from eating. I promise you, you can sit on your couch, watch TV,
do absolutely no exercise and if you do not eat you will lose weight - and if you continue not eating for a long enough period of time, the weight loss will become permanent. Food is fuel for your body. Whether or not you gain, lose or maintain weight is a simple matter of how much fuel you put into your body in relation to how much fuel you use. 

Some vehicles have reserve tanks where you can store extra fuel for long trips - or prevent long walks on short trips. Your body has at least a few billion of these little reserve fuel tanks. We call them fat cells. When you put more fuel in your body than you are burning, it is stored in these cells. Most experts seem to be in agreement that the number of fat cells in your body is fixed and determined genetically. As you put in more fuel than you are using, the fat cells grow larger and larger. Others think you can increase the number of fat cells in your body. Either way, when you eat more than you burn, it gets stored as fat and you get fatter.

And that gets us to the basic of weight loss. In spite of all the research out there about genetics, thyroid problems, body types, food compatibility etc. no one has ever gained a pound by eating less than they were using. That is not to say the above have no impact on weight loss, it is just to say that, bottom line, it comes down to calories in and calories out. Whether it is junk food or health food, if you eat more than you burn you will gain weight.  No matter how much you exercise, you will not lose weight until you are burning more calories than you take in. A brisk thirty minute morning walk in the morning followed by a stop at the coffee shop for a latte and muffin will, at best, only keep your weight the same.

2. Exercise is crucial for keeping the weight off.

Although you are going to have to eat differently if you want to lose weight, exercise is a crucial part of attaining and maintaining a healthy weight. On this point, experts are in agreement. Dr. Timothy Church in an interview with Perishable Pundit Investigator and Special Projects Editor Mira Slott noted, "Weight maintenance is where it’s at right now, not weight loss. And we know that people who lose weight and keep it off, 100 percent of them are very physically active. Physical activity is critical to keeping weight off." In short, if you want to lose weight and keep it off - and isn't that the whole point? - you must exercise regularly.  "I come back to this over and over and over -- you can't find very many people maintaining a healthy weight who aren't regular exercisers." (James O. Hill, PhD - Director of the Center for Human Nutrition, University of Colorado at Denver.)

Now matter how you go about losing weight, if you want to get fit, stay healthy and keep the weight off, you are going to have to make regular exercise a part of your lifestyle. 

3. Exercise shouldn't be painful.

Boot camps and screaming Personal Trainers, who drive you to the point that you can no longer move and make you wish the next day or two that you had died of cardiac arrest during your workout, have their place in the world of exercise. Some people enjoy punishing themselves, pushing themselves to the limits, discovering how much they can endure. Others, for various reasons (usually procrastination) find themselves in a spot where they think they must lose a ton of weight quickly and are willing to walk through hell to do it. If you are one of those, find a trainer who will drive you to the breaking point.

Unfortunately, like those who follow every fad diet, those who follow exercise programs of this sort tend to the same results. i.e., the weight drops rather quickly and then the weight returns and they find themselves repeating the same punishment next year. Like the fad diets, these fad exercise programs just cannot be sustained. End of fad diet, end of boot camp and, almost like magic, your body balloons again. The long and the short of the story is that these weight loss strategies, though successful for the short term, do not provide an adoptable, healthy lifestyle and without that you are not going to be successful at long term weight maintenance.

If you are in an exercise program that is painful and leaves you exhausted workout after workout, you need to make a change. You are not going to sustain that level. If you successfully reach the "Thank God that is over." end of the program without injury, you will have sufficiently learned to hate exercise and the weight is coming back with a vengeance. Boot camps and hard-driving Personal Trainers are wonderful choices for the fit and seasoned exercisers who want to drive themselves to the next level. But the rest of us, those who just want to lose some weight, to keep it off and to stay fit, need to take a different approach. Before you choose a trainer, check his/her credentials, get a list of references and contact them. They may be one of those who love to drive themselves to the brink so ask questions about them as well as the exercise program. "What was the exercise program like? How hard did you have to work? Are you a masochist?" You get the idea.