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Exercise

Why Only Exercising to Lose Weight is a Mistake

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Why Relying Solely on Exercise to Lose Weight is a Mistake

There are plenty of benefits to exercising. But when it comes to strictly losing weight, relying solely on exercise is a mistake. Here’s why.

Exercise makes better television

Eating is fun. Watching people eat sensibly, however, is boring. So shows about weight loss tend to focus on the exercise. And making that exercise seem as extreme as possible. Making the exercise into a competition is even more entertaining to watch. This can lead to the thinking that burning all your calories through vigorous exercise is the only way to lose weight. But that’s far from the case. You don’t need to be extreme, just consistent. And you’ll make far faster progress by focusing on your eating habits than focusing on exercise.

“Dieting” is a scary word

Some people want to focus on exercise only because they do not want to “diet”. They enjoy exercise, which is great! And they would much rather do lots and lots of exercise than diet. They are afraid that “dieting” will require giving up their favorite foods. It doesn’t have to be that way. There are plenty of eating plans out there that allow you to indulge in your favorites and still lose weight. If you need help finding a diet plan that works for you, check out my free Ultimate Diet Comparison Guide.

Exercising is harder

Which is easier? Going for a two-mile run or doing nothing? It is far easier to do nothing (i.e. not eat something) than it is to try and burn those calories off later. If I have that candy bar, I’m going to have to run two miles to burn it off. Or, I could just sit here and do nothing (including not having the candy bar), and save myself the time and effort. If you plan your meals properly, you can also have that candy bar without having to worry about running it off later!

Exercise makes you hungrier

Exercise is great for revving up your metabolism. An unfortunate side effect of this is that it makes you hungry. So you spend an hour on the treadmill, only to be starving afterward, and then you go home and eat the entire kitchen. If you’re trying to lose weight, it can be hard enough to stick to your meal plan. But being hungry on top of that is no fun. If you can, plan your workouts so that you’ll have a meal right after, and be sure to prep out that meal ahead of time so you don’t accidentally overeat.

Exercise isn’t all that effective

Exercise is awesome, don’t get me wrong. It will help you get stronger. Improve your cardiovascular functions. Sweating it out can improve the look of your skin. It can boost your mood and your confidence. It will tone your muscles and make you look great in a swimsuit (or naked!). But strictly for weight loss? It isn’t all that great. Studies have repeatedly shown that cardio machines overestimate how many calories you burn while using them. And humans are just as bad at estimating as well. Exercise just doesn’t burn as many calories as we hope it will. This can be a problem when we complete a really hard workout (great!), feel really good about ourselves (aweseome!), and then think that it’s okay to eat back some of those calories because we worked so hard (uh-oh). The elliptical said you burned 200 calories, but it could have been overestimating by 42%!

Diet is the key

If your goal is to lose weight, then your best bet is managing your diet. Eating the right foods/right amounts will get you to your destination so much quicker. You just can’t out-exercise a bad diet. It doesn’t matter how hard you work in they gym if you don’t control what you put on your plate. Nutrition is key. You do not have to give up your favorite foods. You just might have to learn to enjoy them in smaller quantities. Learn just how much energy your body needs, and try not to eat more than that.

Challenge: Track your calories eaten vs calories burned during exercise for one week. See what a huge difference there is in those numbers. (Most of the calories we burn during the day is stuff our bodies do to keep us alive, like keeping our core temperature up and pumping blood and so forth. You’re not expected to burn off all your calories eaten via exercise (you wouldn’t have time to do anything else otherwise!))

Side Effects of Exercise

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Side effects of exercise

Exercise is fantastic. It makes you feel great, and can help you turn around a bad day. While getting your diet on track is the express lane to reaching your weight loss goals, exercise is what is going to make you look good naked. Whether it’s going for a walk around the block with your family, hitting the weights at the gym, playing a sport, or training for a competition, getting your body moving has so many benefits. Our bodies were made to move, and they feel better when they do! So get up out of that chair! Take a minute to stretch. Maybe do some jumping jacks or a few push-ups to just get the blood flowing.

WARNING! Side effects of exercise include: Increase in energy¹, a good mood², weight-loss³, reduced stress4, boost in immune system5, boost in productivity6, improved quality of life7.

 

  1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18277063
  2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26929085
  3. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24438736
  4. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28185925
  5. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19001887
  6. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21785369
  7. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24602398

 

Reaching Your Goal Weight is 100% Possible

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The thing about reaching your goal weight is that it's 100% possible. It's completely in your control. The only thing stopping you from getting there is you. So get out of your own way.

You CAN reach your goal. Even if you have a big, huge, hairy, audacious goal. You can get there! It won’t necessarily be easy though. You’re going to have to want it. Bad. You’re going to have to make your goal a top priority. You may have to give something up. But more than likely, you will gain so much more! Health, confidence, even a new zeal for life. Set aside the excuses and you will succeed.

The thing about reaching your goal weight (whether that’s on the scale or on the bar!) is that it’s 100% possible. It’s completely in your control. The only thing stopping you from getting there is you. So get out of your own way.

Fitness Tracker Wearables

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FitnessTrackers

As a self-proclaimed geek, I am a big fan of modern technology, and using it to make my life easier. And it’s no different in the realm of weight loss and fitness. I’ve already covered apps you can use to track nutrition and to help you get in some exercise, but let’s talk about tracking that exercise now. Many nutrition apps will also have a way for you to log your fitness, but they tend to be woefully inaccurate. Your current height, weight, metabolism and intensity will all determine how many calories you burn for a given activity, and these vary greatly from person to person. A fitness tracker that incorporates a heart rate monitor can much more accurately determine how much work you did, rather than just give you an average.

I personally have had a FitBit Blaze for about a year now. It has an integrated heart rate monitor. Food that I tracked via the SparkPeople app was synced with my food log on FitBit. The FitBit dashboard would then let me know my calorie surplus or deficit for each day, as well as a running total for the week. When I took this number, divided it by 3500 (the number of calories in a pound) I found that between the watch and my tracking, it was a fairly accurate determination of how much weight I would lose each week.

Now, a recent study shows that people using a fitness tracker lose less weight than those without. These findings may turn you off to a tracker, but I want to address what’s really going on in the human psyche that led to these results. The study compared two groups. Both were told to exercise a certain amount, but one group had the fitness tracker, and the other group did not. The reason those with the tracker lost less weight is due to the feedback of the device. If your goal is to hit 2,000 steps, as soon as the device tells you you’ve hit that number, you’ll quit. If you don’t have that, and you know you have to walk about a mile to get to that number, you might walk a bit extra to be certain you get all those steps in since you have no way of knowing for sure. The thing is, this can also work in reverse. You may look at your tracker and realize you need so many steps to hit a goal and get up and move around some to hit that number.

Personally, both of the above have happened to me. My tracker reminds me to move every hour, and has me try and get 250 steps each hour. It reminds me of this goal 10 minutes before the hour is up if I haven’t met it yet. In the mornings, I will pace while my coffee is brewing to hit that number. But as soon as I do hit that number, I’ll stop. So the tracker does get me to move! I probably wouldn’t pace at all if it wasn’t prodding me to do so. But I also only do the minimum to get that number and then stop. And there’s also the psychology of how close I am. If I only need a few more steps, then I am far more motivated to hit that goal. It’s so close! But if I have a long way to go, if I’ve been sitting all hour doing work and I have to get all 250 steps in during those 10 minutes, I am far more likely to just ignore it. (While writing this, my watch told me I have 201 steps left this hour. That’s probably not going to happen.) (Conversely, this past weekend we spent a day in New York City and did a LOT of walking. When we came home, I realized I was only 1000 steps from getting a new milestone badge for 25K steps walked in a single day, so I had my fiance drop me off a block from home and I walked the rest of the way to hit that goal!)

Another reason that those with a fitness tracker possibly lost less weight is due to the feedback of calories burned. Since the tracker does the logging for you, you know how many calories you burned doing an activity. Seeing this number can make it very tempting to eat back some of those calories.

If you aren’t currently regularly exercising, and getting a wearable motivates you to move more, then getting one is definitely better than not getting one, especially if you tend to get into a zone with your work and forgetting to get up from your  chair all day. (I have been guilty of this at times!)

Also, another very important thing to keep in mind is that fitness wearables are designed to track activity, but diet is the bigger battle in the weight loss war. If your goal is to lose weight, then tracking your nutrition and hitting your calorie/macro/points numbers is way more critical to achieving success.

Workout Apps

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Workout Apps

Just like there are tons of apps out there for tracking and logging your nutrition and your fitness, there are also a flood of workout apps out there. The apps I’m going to talk about aren’t about tracking, but about actually giving you a workout to do.

When you don’t know what to do

Workout apps are just that. An app that takes you through a workout. I generally recommend you watch the workout through at least once beforehand so you know what to expect, but other than that, you generally just follow along doing the exercise shown on screen. Some of the apps will have a countdown timer showing how long until the next exercise if they have a video of the workout. Others simply list exercises and tell you how many of each to do, and you go from one exercise to the next in a circuit until you are finished (or you can complete the circuit multiple times if it’s too easy for you!) It’s like having your own personal trainer in your pocket.

When you’re short on time

Workout apps are great when you are short on time. Many of the workouts are five to ten minutes in length, letting you squeeze in a workout quickly. Some of the apps are focused on a particular body part, so you can quickly work your arms, and if you find another few minutes later in the day, you can  work your legs next. Others focus on giving you a full body workout each time.

When you are short on space

Workout apps are designed to be viewed on a cell phone, and perhaps because of the small screen size, most of the workouts don’t require a lot of physical space. At most, you generally need the amount of floor space needed for a yoga mat. This means you can generally do these workouts right in your living room.

When you have little to no equipment

Another bonus to workout apps is the workouts they put together are often body weight based, so they require little to no equipment. Lunges, squats, push-ups, crunches, etc. can all be done without a gym membership.

When you are traveling

Because workout apps tend to be designed to be short, space saving, and light on the requirements, they are fantastic for when you are traveling. I travel often for work and know that it can really throw my gym routine way off. Having these little workouts to do can give you something to work on while you’re traveling so that a vacation doesn’t set you way back.

When you need one

There are so many apps out there, it can be hard to make a list. Do a search for “fitness trainers” to see just how many there are! A very popular one is 7 Minute Workout. You can also search for a type of workout you are looking for such as “yoga” or “booty workout” to narrow it down. There is a company that makes a series of apps called “Daily Workout Apps” which has free workouts for butt, abs, yoga, cardio and arms. And if you have more time, YouTube has millions of fitness videos for every level, and of every type imaginable.

Do you have a go-to app for working out? Let me know below!

Working Out Is Not a Free Pass for a Poor Diet

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Working Out Is Not a Free Pass for a Poor Diet

No matter how much you work out, if you don’t eat right, you’re not going to achieve the body you want. There was a time in my life that I was doing CrossFit five times a week, marathon training three times a week, and taking a horseback riding lesson once a week (getting a one-ton animal to do what you want with just your legs is a HUGE workout). That’s NINE workouts of an hour or more each week. I didn’t lose any weight during this time, although I certainly had some excess fat to lose. And that’s because I didn’t really watch what I ate. I ate mostly “healthy” foods, but I didn’t really regulate how much I ate. I didn’t even know how much I should have been eating. Working out is not a free pass for a poor diet. Working out is also not a punishment or some trial that you get rewarded for after with snacks. Don’t undo all your hard work!