The Secret to Weight Management

There really is no secret. We all know that but we need to be reminded from time to time.  I am a Personal Trainer and personal training is generally considered to be about moving and exercising.  That is important to weight management and optimal health.  In fact, only about 20% of those who lose weight keep will it off unless they include a regular exercise in their weight management program.  That said, however, exercise alone, for most people, simply will not get the weight off.

I know, a lot of Personal Trainers are screaming heresy, but truth is truth and misinformation does nothing to help people.  Technically, yes, you could exercise your weight off and keep it off.  But we don't live in the "technical" world.  We live in the real world, and in the real world, the truth is that you have to create a 3500 calorie deficit to lose one pound. That is roughly the equivalent to walking 5 miles per day 7 days per week to lose 1 pound a week - assuming all that walking doesn't make you hungrier than usual. At an average walking speed of 2-21/2 miles an hour, that means spending at least 2 hour every day walking.  Given the reason most people offer for not exercising regularly, i.e. "I just don't have time.", walking two hours per day isn't going to happen for most of us. 

So, we have that bit of a problem with attempting to manage weight by exercise alone.  The other bit of the problem, for those few who actually do manage to exercise enough to keep their weight well managed without any other consideration, is the question of good health.  Being slim, trim and looking great is not the same as being healthy.  Being at a "healthy body weight" is not the same thing as being at a healthy weight.  You can neither conclude from BMI alone, as health screenings tend to do, that someone within in a "healthy BMI range" is really following a healthy lifestyle nor, as a matter of fact, that they are healthy.  All else being equal, a person who is no more than 20% overweight, exercises regularly and follows a healthy eating plan, is far more healthy than a person at the magical "healthy chart weight" who eats junk - and that is true whether the junk eaters exercise regularly or not.

And that brings us to the "secret" of weight management.  Your weight, and far more importantly, your health, depends on what you eat as well as how much you eat.  Ultimately, weight is about calories in and calories out.  I know, you see a lot of headlines and blurbs in the media now proclaiming that it isn't all about calories in and calories out.  There is a modicum of truth in that box of donuts but I wish they would find a better way to market their articles.  "It isn't all about calories in and calories out"  is just what overweight people who love their food want to hear. What did they just hear? Yep! They missed everything except "It isn't about calories in and calories out."  I beg to differ.  Folks, it doesn't matter if you eat nothing but donuts and candy bars, if keep it down to 1000 calories a day, you will lose weight. You won't be healthy, but you will lose weight.  Point No. 1 - Calories Count.

However, what you eat, the kind of calories you get, is just as important for weight management as the number of calories you eat and far more important for health.  In our next post we will talk about healthy eating.  Meantime I leave you to digest (I know, shameless.) what we have covered today.