Move More Or Eat Less to Lose Weight Permanently?
Do you prefer to move more and don’t observe what you are eating? Or would you rather limit your eating in order to not break a sweat?
It depends on your goals…
If you’d like to improve your health and lower your risk getting ill, exercise will help you. If you increase exercise without eating less calories, you’ll increase your fitness- but don’t expect to lose a lot of weight.
In fact, there is a danger in doing that: Many people increase not only their exercise. They increase their calorie intake as well. The typical thinking is “as long as I am burning it off, I can eat as much as I’d like to”. This does not work for permanent weight loss.
The amount of calories burnt during exercise is usually overestimated, and the amount of calories in food is underestimated.
You’d probably do better if you see your exercise as a contribution to a healthy lifestyle, and not so much as a contribution to permanent weight loss.
If you eat less but don’t exercise you will lose weight. But: Part of the weight loss will come from losing muscle mass and not from losing fat. You need an exercise program including all muscle groups of your body. Swimming is good. Or Yoga. Another disadvantage of “eat less, no exercise” is you are likely to regain whatever you’ve lost because your metabolism slows down. So, “eat less, but no exercise” does not help to lose weight permanently.
To lose weight permanently you need to combine eating less calories and exercising more. This will lead automatically to losing weight and a healthy lifestyle.
Recommended Reading:
Exercise After Menopause And Increase Your Quality Of Life
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3 comments
I totally agree with you Gerald, I used to be over weight before and that exactly what I do. Eat less and move more. But the sad thing is more and more people gaining unnecessary weight. When the economy is down, people are depressed, and yes….depressed people eat more. Moreover, technology has made people gain weight, stuck in their computer for a long period of time. Anyway, great read
Bart, you’re so right – being able to handle challenging situations (including financial challenges) is part of successful long term weight loss. Stress contributes a lot to growing waistlines.
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