Everyone knows you "need to eat less and exercise more" to lose weight. But what if that is a big fat lie? Do you need to exercise to lose weight?
Are You Trying To Get Ready to Put on a Bikini?
It's summertime and those ads are everywhere trying to shame you to lose weight so you can put on a bikini. They will try ANYTHING to get you to lose weight- and in the summertime, it's the exercise ploy. But does exercise really work to make you lose weight?
If you believe what "everyone knows" that all you have to do it "eat less and exercise more", you'll fall right back into that hole again. Learn why hard exercise may actually sabotage your goals.
World Class Heavy Runners
All you have to do it watch this amazing video and article in National Geographic magazine to see Mirna Valerio run ultra marathons in her fat body. She is a world class athlete who runs miles, does cross fit and other exercise and doesn't have a thin runner's body. She has not run her butt off, or any of the fat on her body for that matter!
She's not alone either.
Fat Athletes
You see fat exercisers everywhere. And there are fat athletes who compete in marathons and other competitive sports.
Although the world tells you that you need to exercise to lose weight it is NOT the truth. Just look at The Biggest Losers! While it may help some people drop some pounds, there's no guarantee that the weight loss will be maintained. The worst injury that happened to The Biggest Losers is that they damaged their metabolisms by undereating and over-exercising. Research scientists are working with them now to see if they will ever recover the pre-Biggest Loser metabolisms. Many of them must eat thirty percent less just to MAINTAIN their present weight of heavier before they started!!
And, if a fat athlete injures themselves, the weight can return immediately! We really know very little about why some people can eat tons of food and never gain, and why others can't lose weight!
Overexercising is Stressful
One thing doctors do know is that exercise, while good for you at certain levels, can also be stressful for your body. Stress affects your appetite and your metabolism. The truth is instead of depending on the Diet Industry which profits from putting you on various diets, we need unbiased research that explores all the aspects of weight! Some researchers are so biased that they find results that they want, instead of what the study actually shows!
But exercise doesn't always equal weight loss. In fact, putting on muscle, which weighs more than fat, can pack on extra pounds. Working out also increases appetite. And there are many other genetic, social and environmental factors that can tip the scales against someone.
"It's called the obesity paradox, and we don't know why it is that some of these people don't lose more weight," Weil says. "Obesity is far more complex than people think."
- from The NYDailyNews.com
Fat Athletes Praised
The public is so anti-fat that even when a heavy person exercises they are not left alone to enjoy themselves. Many runners and others who are heavier receive "encouragement" in the form of applause for working out. It probably never occurs to these people that many of these heavier exercisers have played sports for YEARS and not lost weight and changed their bodies!
Will Exercise Make You Lose Weight?
While you may be lead to believe that exercise will make you lose weight, don't get down on yourself if and when this doesn't happen for you. If you get on a scale you may notice that you actually have GAINED weight with increased exercise. That's because muscle weighs more than fat. Furthermore, hard exercising makes you hungry to replenish lost calories that your body does naturally to keep you at a weight set point.
But DO get up and get moving. Do sports you enjoy. It will destress you and help you sleep better at night, which affects your hunger and satiation hormones. And fitness is more important than your weight when it comes to being healthy.
Yoga for Weight Management
It turns out that Yoga may be the best weight management exercise. That's because it's stress relieving. When practitioners of gentle yoga (that's right- not power yoga) were compared with aerobic exercisers, although the intense exercisers lost a few pounds earlier, they also regained the weight. It took a longer time for gentle yoga practitioners to drop a couple of pounds, but it stayed off, for at least the time the study continued. So there!
