Dieting Vs Exercise
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Several people have said this in different ways, but (excluding temporary water retension and medications that can slow down weight loss) weight loss really is about reducing your calorie intake. Every 3500 calories is 1 lb. Most people try to do a lb a week through diet (eat 500 calories less a day each day of the week) and a lb a week thorugh exercise (exercise 3500 calories in a week).
Now here is where people get confused about exercise. They think that all exercise is equal, but it is not. Different exercises burn calories at different rates. There is great value (besides weight loss) in exercise, but I am only going to discuss exercise in terms of loosing weight. In that regard, there are two factors:
1. Burning calories
2. Increasing metablolism
BURNING CALORIES
Different exercises burn calories at different rates. As you burn more calories than you take in, then you begin to break down the fat that is stored in your body. The fat is your body's bank of energy supply.. whenever you need energy that is not consumed in your food, your body gets it by breaking down the stored fat.. unless you eat too unhealhty and low calorie, in which case it "freaks out" and also begins consuming protien.
The goal with exercise is to burn calories in a manner that causes the fat store to be broken down.. Some people refer to this as fat melting off of your body.
But not all exercise is the same. Some people think that running should burn more calories (cuz it is harder) than walking. But the truth is that you burn the same number of calories whether you walk a mile or run a mile.. though it usually takes less time to run the mile than to walk it. A person who weights 150 lbs will burn 100 calories per mile (level ground).
Lets say you spend your 35 minute exercise period jogging at a rate of 4 MPH and you weigh somewhere in the neightborhood of 150-ish calories. YOu will run just over 2 miles in 1/2 hour and you will burn 200 calories. DO that 4 times a week, and that is only 800 calories, which is less than 1/4 of a pound.
Some exercises burn more calories per hour than others. Circuit training (alternating arobics and weight training) burns about 10 calories a minute on a 150 lb person. SO if you do that for 35 minutes, you burn 350 calories. You do that 4 times a week, and you ahve burned 1400 calories, or almost 1/2 lb of fat.
Now certain equipments, like the stair climber or the treadmill on a steep incline, burn a lot more calories per hour. I work out quite strenously on the treadmill (max inclide, speed of about 4 MPH) and I can burn about 750 calories an hour.. I often do this for an hour an hour and 20 minutes and burn about a thousand calories per workout. If I do that 4 times a week, then that is a little over a lb of fat burned a week in cardio exercise. But if I only did it 35 minutes a day, 4 days a week, that would be 440 calories per session times 4 sessions is 1760, or about 1/2 a lb of fat burned per week.
In the past, I used to exercise by walking 1.5 miles a day, 7 days a week. It took me about 30 minutes a day to do that, and I though I was getting great exercise. But I was not loosing nuch weight. When I do the math analysis, that is 150 calories per day times 7 days or 1050 calories -- only 1/3 of a lb a week.
But in Jan I switched to a gym and started workout out for about 2 hours a day, 5 to 6 days a week. My typical workout burns about 1100 calories. That is 5500 or more calories a week, or about 1.5 lbs a week lost by exercise. I also eat carefully.. 1000 to 1300 calories most days. My body needs 1700 calories a day to maintain it's weight (not counting the exercise calories). SO if I eat an average of 1200 calories a day, that means I reduced my calories by 500 a day or 3500 a week, which is 1 lb).
My typical weigth loss is about 2.5 lbs a week.. and of that 1 lb is from controlling calories I eat and 1.5 lbs from exercise.. but we are talking much more streneous exercise than when I used to walk for half an hour a day.
The truth on exercise is that how much you loose will depend on how many calories per hour you burn in your specific exercise and how many hours per week you do that exercise. Some exercise burns a lot of calories but others don't really burn that many calories.
RAISING METABOLISM
Our metabolism is basically how many calories our body burns when we are at rest. This is the calories too keep our heart beating, our digestive system working, for the blood to bring nutrients to our skin/tissue, etc. Now, the coposition of your body has an effect on your metabloism. Muscle burns a lot more calories per day than fat does. Many of us who are overweight have a per cent body fat in the high 30s or even in the low 40s. A trim person may have a per body fat in the high 20s or low 30s.
That means they have a lot more muscle than fat in their body.. and the muscle burns more calories than fat. So they burn more calories at rest than we do. (IT doesn't seem fair, does it? Here someone who is smalller than we are and their bodies burn more calories per day to maintain it self than ours does... but that is the way it works.) That means that sometimes they can eat more than we do and not gain as much weight as we do!
Fortunately, there is something you can do to help raise your metabolism. This takes a long time, it is not a quick fix. But you can strength train to build your muscles as you also do arobics to melt the fat away. That means that you are changing your body composition.. so that you have more muscle and less fat in your body. That raises the metabolism cuz the increased muscle will burn more calories than the fat it replaced.
Again, it takes a long time (months of consistent workout and exercise) before you will notice a difference in your metabolism. But as you do make this change, it will also stay with you for a long period of time, allowing you to eat more calories without gaining weight from them. The more calories is a relatively small number, maybe 100 a day or so. But the principle is that as you raise your metabolism, then your body burns more calories at rest than it used to. That is a good thing.
So yes, exercise does have an effect on your weight loss. But that effect really does depend on the type of exercise you do and how long you do it for. Not all exercises are equal. And exercise must never be thought of as a "carte blanche" to eat as many calories as you want.
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