The TRUTH about Exercise and Weight Loss – Part 1

Everywhere we look these days, there are health and weight loss do’s and don’ts.  Am I right?  How do we sort out which ones are safe, effective, meaningful, true to us…?  It can be downright challenging!  It’s hard to know who to trust even when we try to do the “research” on these things.  Let me just say this: stop and ask yourself how you REALLY feel about a certain piece of information.  Does it sit right with you?  Does it resonate with you?  Does it sound sustainable?

 

You may remember a quote I shared with you a while back, “Not all positive change feels positive at first.”  Change can be hard!  Questioning our current thoughts and beliefs doesn’t always come naturally either.  They’ve become so ingrained in us that we forget to ask, “Is it true?”  So, just because you hear a new idea, one that may even come in contrast with something you’ve previously learned or been taught, doesn’t mean it’s wrong.  There are lots of things that come into play when we try to decide how we truly feel about something.  Are we open-minded enough to explore new ideas, while also really listening to what our intuition says?  It’s just as important not to discredit new ideas as it is to question our old or current thinking!  One thing we can do to gain clarity is to ask ourselves, “Is _______ serving me?”  So, when reading the following post, keep all of these things in mind.

 

In regards to weight/fat loss, we often get the message that exercise is necessary.  Now I don’t want to send the opposite message that exercise is unnecessary, but this statement simply isn’t totally true.  In fact, of course one can achieve weight loss without exercise.  I’m sure you’ve also heard from many people how they just started {insert exercise method here} and that’s how they lost their weight.  Yep, you’ll hear from both sides about the relationship between exercise and weight/fat loss.

 

So what is true?

 

Well, first let’s clear something up!  The words EXERCISE and CALORIE BURN are NOT SYNONYMOUS!  I feel so often I see these terms being used almost interchangeably (without actually doing so).  So, let’s just separate those terms!  PLEASE!  In fact, I really like to use different terms like activity and movement, or specific labels like weight lifting, resistance training, running, etc.  So if those terms are tied in your head, consider using different words.

 

Now that we got that out of the way….

 

Of course, as always, any relationship between exercise and weight/fat loss is going to come down to you, as an individual, and what works for YOU!  You’ll hear me say that over and over again in my work because one thing that is TRUE is that no one thing will work for EVERYONE!  And there are no simple, magic pills that work for everyone either.  We have to simply DO THE WORK, FORM THE HABITS…

 

Exercise is not synonymous with calorie burn, right?  Okay- just making sure we got that down.  It is very common for people to think that they should start running or increase their running (or some other form of exercise) to lose weight.  Why?  Because they’re thinking about burning calories.  If we are TRULY honest with ourselves, I would guess that there is only a small portion of the population that actually ENJOYS running….notice I said TRULY HONEST!!!  There is, however, a MUCH larger part of the population that THINKS THEY ENJOY or have FORCED themselves into BELIEVING THEY ENJOY running because they’ve been taught it will give them the results they desire.

 

After all, most of us know that if we somehow eliminate 500 calories a day for 7 days that equates to eliminating 3,500 calories in one week, which should result in 1 pound of fat loss, right?  Well, have you ever tried this?  Did it work for you?  Maybe it did for a short time.  Did it work over the long-term?  Not likely.  That’s because fat loss isn’t that simple!  Sticking with running as our example, if we are trying to eliminate those calories by running, we are also quite likely to induce hunger, naturally causing us to eat more food (we DO WANT to listen to those hunger signals), which means in the end, we may not have actually eliminated 500 calories per day.  Again, that’s speaking about this in regards to calories only, yet there’s so much more.  While it’s true that sustained cardiovascular activity (aka chronic cardio or endurance training) often burns the most calories DURING activity, we also must consider what type of hormonal signals this is sending.  HORMONES rule {almost} everything in the body!

 

You’ll have to stay tuned for next week’s post (Part 2) for more information on this topic, along with some tips. 

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