Exercise for Weight Management
Exercise More for weight loss?
I have a dear friend who insists that her Keto/Paleo diet and Cross Fit has made her lose weight. Yes, she lost weight and gained a lot of muscle. She felt so proud of herself. She went out and replaced her wardrobe.
Well, that was two years ago. Guess what’s happened since? Her weight has been creeping on, despite maintaining her diet and even upping the level of her exercise. She’s been on maranthons and mud runs. But the weight is coming back. She is humiliated, depressed and desperate. And that is stressful.
Exercise Stresses the Body
If you have dieted to lose weight your mind and body has gone through stress. I know, everyone tells you that you need to exercise (sweat) to burn calories. But it’s just another one of those pesky diet industry lies that make you feel like a total failure when all those payments to the gym have not changed your weight.
working out too hard
Dieting Makes You A Victim
Do you feeling like you are being punished for something that you did wrong that made you gain weight? Or are you not yet in a larger body and afraid of gaining weight? After all, why is it that so many movie stars show how they’ve lost a ton of weight on Jenny Craig or other diet plans? Noom is the latest entry claiming it’s not a diet- but guess what? It teaches you to eat less! That’s a diet to me!
Take a look at the biggest losers now! The vast majority of them, despite continuing their exercise have regained the weight they struggled to lose! And even worse, a few have such damaged metabolisms that their doctors don’t know if they will EVER be able to eat a normal amount of food just to stay where they are!
Thin Framed Bodies Stay that Way
If you are dieting, you already feel like a failure because you gained weight in the first place! My best friend Yolanda could eat more than a sumo wrestler while I ate rabbit food. She NEVER gained weight – and she’s still thin. That’s her body type, which she was lucky enough to inherit! And unfortunately, it’s women with the other kind of body type- where you have a rounded shape, who want to lose weight the most, and will have the most impossible time, because you are fighting nature, and damaging your metabolism while trying!
Can’t Change Your Body
I’m a BIG tennis fan. I’ll be that most people will know about the famous Williams sisters: Venus and Serena. I am telling you that Serena (the shorter, muscular sister) could diet for the rest of her life, but she will NEVER have Venus’ ectomorphic tall, slender more boy-like body!
Are YOU trying to change something that you cannot change? And are you doing it because society has a preference for a certain body type for women? Well, it’s time you face reality. You cannot please everyone in the world – nor should you try! I’m still hoping that one day, Feminism will be back in style and women will throw out their high heels, low cut tops that sexualize their body for attention. Men don’t do that stuff. And you still find them sexy, correct?
Body Types and Genetics
Can Exercise Make Me Lose Weight?
How Many Calories do you Burn from Exercise?
Scientific American has some really fascinating articles that have absolutely astounded me. I wouldn’t consider this publication a source of biased information. It was carefully researched by a scientist who compared calories burned by Africans chasing a wounded giraffe (it was going to be dinner for their tribe) with Americans who sit on their butts working in front of their computers all day. I had to read it a couple of times to really believe it. Apparently, there is some fail-safe mechanism in our bodies that prevents us from burning too many calories with activity. They describe it as an exercise paradox.
The Africans who ended up running over 20 miles until the wounded animal dropped dead – and then they had to carry it back all that way, only burned about 150 more calories doing all of that activity than office workers in the US. I SWEAR it’s true!
The Perfect Exercise To Lose Belly Fat
I bet you thought I was going to tell you that weight lifting is the best exercise you can do to change our body. Yes, if done properly, it will tighten your muscles and can improve your shape. Keep in mind that muscles weigh more than adipose tissue (fat) so it can seem like you’re gaining weight. But muscles use more calories than fat.
You Can’t Choose Where the Weight Comes Off
The other thing is a diet will never let you lose weight from where you choose! Every time I would lose weight the first place it would leave is on my face! People would ask me if I was sick! Of course it didn’t come off my butt which is where I wanted to lose weight. That’s because the shape of my butt was an inherited characteristic that I had even as a one year old baby’s average weight! Believe me, it’s true. I even have photographs of my baby butt and it was round!
Exercising Your Butt Off
If you are using exercise and trying to exercise your butt off you are suffering from a different problem. It’s called a diet mentality. It means that your life is controlled by your dissatisfaction with your body and you are focusing all of your efforts on changing your body with diet and exercise. You have fallen for the lies: all you have to do is eat less and exercise more.
I even fight with my own husband about it. He says, like everyone else who is uninformed- if you eat less that your body needs you will lose weight. Well, my body stands in testament that this is untrue. I did a 10 day FAST and lost one quarter of a pound. My body is supremely tuned to keep me at my weight set point.
Your Weight Set Point
Your weight is stuck. But it’s stuck at the highest weight you’ve attained in all likelihood. You can diet, exercise and even starve yourself. But for some people that scale won’t budge, and if it does and you lose weight, it’s only a matter of time until your body brings you back NATURALLY to your weight set point.
MANY people even have their weight bounce back after bariatric surgery. I know you will rarely hear that from anyone in the Diet Industry. But besides all the terrible side effects from this surgery, it can also fail to do what it promises: make you maintain weight loss!
gentle yoga is powerful
good for health-not weight loss
Yoga For Stress Relief and Weight Maintenance
It turns out that slow yoga, restorative positions and mindful yoga (and mindful eating) are wonderful practices that re-establish a healthy relationship with your body and eating. Many men and women who have been on a chronic diet or one diet after another have lost touch with their body’s signals of hunger and satiation. Yoga can help you learn to trust your body again.
You may no longer HAVE an appetite (better check your body temperature to see if your thyroid is damaged from dieting!). And many who try to eat mindfully are still emotional eaters from stress. While mindful eating can help you figure out how much to eat, it’s not going to stop stress eating! But these slow forms of yoga actually lower your stress levels, not only during class but for hours later. Having a yoga practice affects not just your mind, but your body as well.
Exercise Improves Sleep
Exercise, or really just moving yourself out of your chair and using your body is a great way to improve your sleep! Quality and quantity of sleep is very important to prevent weight gain. Movement is also wonderful for stress relief. You can feel your mood elevate from even taking a walk!
Yoga for Every Size Body
Yoga opens you to a different view of your body. It also helps you manage the stress that changes your hormonal release and contributes to making you feel hungrier! And it’s been found that practicing slow restorative yoga results in twice as much weight loss as doing active exercise! (although there’s not a lot of weight loss, it’s still better than aerobics!) You see, the real cause of overweight is STRESS!
For many people, it’s not what you are eating, but what is eating you that is getting you fat. Make sure you get my free report to get the the real facts about how gentle yoga for stress relief is more effective for managing weight, than aerobic exercise!
