Dump Futile Lose Weight Programs And Diet And Exercise Myths

     Long Term Weight Loss

You want effective, permanent, weight loss, right? You can get that by busting the myth that exercise is the best strategy to lose weight because it burns a lot of calories. This myth just will not go away because it is the basis of the multi-billion dollar gym industry, and it is closely related to the myth of calorie counting, and that is behind the multi-billion dollar diet food industry, and the multi-billion dollar artificial sweetener industry. With that amount of money involved you hear lots of things that are mainly designed for you to spend your money, not lose weight. And despite the research that busts this myth, weight loss programs and TV shows perpetuate the myth while bringing in the dollars.

It is really important to understand this main point once and for all. You do not have to join a gym or become some kind of jock to lose weight. The idea that calorie counting is the best way to lose weight has been the prevailing wisdom about weight loss for years. The basic idea is that you are a simple machine that takes food energy in as calories, and burns up that energy. When you burn more calories than you take in you have to burn up the energy you have stored as fat. That means if you burn more calories up by exercising you lose more weight. But for some funny reason it just does not seem to really work that way. While the number of health club memberships soared from 23 million Americans to 45 million, people in our country became more obese, not less.

Exercise Is Not The Most Effective Strategy

Just think about all the folks who actually use the gym memberships they bought, or jog religiously, but still have that bit of flab hanging over their belt. Why is that? There are two really important facts to consider. First, consider the difference in calories burned when you exercise from when you just sit around. For example, walking a mile typically burns about 100 calories, but sitting around for the same amount of time burns 50 to 60 calories. So the exercise itself only burns an additional 40 to 50 calories. If walking an extra mile a day is your strategy to lose weight, it will take almost three months to lose a single pound. That certainly does not sound very promising does it? And doing some other exercise that burns 3, 4, or even 5 times as many calories like jogging will still take you forever to lose weight. In fact, a recent research study at LSU showed that there was no significant difference in weight loss between women who did not exercise and women who worked out with a personal trainer for three and a half hours per week.

The second fact about exercise, and this is the big one, is that it stimulates hunger. That means you eat more. This is not about low will power or other such macho-thinking stuff. It actually is a basic psycho-physiological response. The research is clear that the more you exercise the more you naturally want to eat. Now just think about it. You do a difficult activity that has little weight loss benefit and that makes you want to eat more. Does that make you crazy or what?

That certainly does not mean that exercise is pointless. In fact moderate exercise is very healthy for you. It is just not the best strategy to lose weight. The key thing to remember is that effective weight loss and exercise should not be a struggle. And the more of a struggle you make it the less likely you are to succeed. To lose weight you have just got to make adjustments to what and how you eat. The single most important factor in maintaining and losing weight is to understand the glycemic index and glycemic loading. Then eat in such a way that you maintain a relatively constant blood glucose level.

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