Short Articles on Weight Loss

How Should You really Use Exercise?

Exercise can speed up weight loss by a lot!

Exercise can speed up weight loss -- maybe by a lot. But, by itself, exercise very rarely causes much weight loss.

Why is this?

The short answer is "because it’s so easy to eat far more Calories than you can ever exercise off again." (Just one big meal can easily wipe out the Calorie effects of several days of exercising.)

In other words, exercise uses up stored fat only after you’ve already learned to control hunger and Calories by using high nutrition, low-Calorie techniques like the ones we recommend on this site. Until you do that, exercise will have a nearly negligible weight loss effect because you probably won't do enough exercise to get rid of the excess Calories you eat on many days.

After you get hunger & eating under control, exercise becomes very useful.

But then there is another problem you need to avoid.

You need to do the right kind of exercise.

What kind is that?

A moderate amount of easy, low-intensity exercise done regularly is the absolute best kind of exercise for losing weight.

Low-intensity exercise allows your muscles to burn mostly fat Calories. By contrast, high-intensity exercise makes your muscles use up lots of your small store of glucose—which tires you out so you stop too soon. And, of course, glucose is not what you are trying to get rid of -- fat is what you are trying to get rid of.

This also tends to leave your body with too little glucose afterward for it's normal needs -- mostly for the brain and nervous system. And like other nutritional shortages, lack of enough glucose triggers hunger, which is the worst possible enemy of a successful diet.

The best low-intensity exercise for most people is simply to walk—at a comfortable speed—for one-half to one hour every day. You can do this anywhere: inside, outside, downtown, in a mall—whatever fits your situation best.

Walk at the speed that you feel like walking (sometimes it will be faster, sometimes slower). Stop and window-shop or talk to people if that’s what you enjoy. But make sure you actually walk for at least one-half hour. (If a whole half-hour is hard for you at first, start with less time and build up to it.)  More than an hour will probably be impractical for most people on most days; however, go for as long as you actually feel like you want to.

“Power walking” or other forms of artificially increasing the intensity are not recommended because they tend to tire you out and convert a pleasant activity into a chore—which means you tend to stop doing it after a few days.

Low-intensity walking for this amount of time will directly burn about 200-300 extra Calories (and more if you’re heavy).  More importantly, these will be mostly fat Calories rather than glucose Calories  (meaning they will come directly out of your fat cells.)

Low intensity exercise can be anything up to a slow jog,  (this depends on your conditioning level).  It is known to allow the muscles to use mostly fat for fuel. When you start to exercise at higher intensities, your muscles simply start to burn an increasing percentage of glucose for energy—and that doesn’t help you lose any fat weight or stay on your diet.