Lose Weight Faster If You Exercise Too

There are really only three ways to lose weight: eat less, exercise more or get sick.

The average person consumes about 2000 calories a day.   2000 calories may seem like a lot but it goes quickly.  A McDonald’s Big Mac hamburger has 560 calories, a glass of whole milk 160 calories, a small apple has 50 calories.

Don't adopt a weight loss diet that reduces calories by too much

Cutting more than 500 calories from your daily 2000 isn’t recommended.  The body has a built in protection system that lowers your metabolism to conserve energy if food consumption is drastically reduced.   If you go on a 800 calories a day program within a week your body will compensate.

To lose a pound - about a half a kilo - of body fat

To lose one pound you have to either cut 3500 calories from your normal diet or exercise enough to burn off the 3500 calories. As you can see it takes about a week to lose a pound of fat, if you were to cut calories by 500 per day. 

Is your weight loss fat or water?

The first week of your diet may result in losing MORE than one pound, but it’s probably just water weight.  Most diets increase the levels of fruits and vegetables which don’t contain salt, and decrease the level of prepared and processed foods which do contain a lot of salt.  Lowering the level of salt consumption results in water weight loss.

Combining exercise and a calorie controlled diet

If you combine exercise with a restricted diet you can nearly double the weight loss. Walking slowly for 15 minutes uses about 63 calories, while brisk walking uses about 126 calories.   So brisk walking for 30 minutes in the morning every day, combined with lowering your caloric intake, can mean you can lose about one and a half pounds of body fat a week.   If you can exercise for another 30 minutes in the afternoon you can take off another half pound!

Your free weight loss courtesy of increased metabolism following exercise

Exercise has another advantage in that it boosts your metabolism for about one hour afterwards. The freebie is this metabolic boost, and you may burn up another 60 calories or about 1 sixth of a pound of body fat each week, if you do the two brisk walks every day; every six weeks up to another pound gone magically.

Exercise for weight loss doesn't have to be over the top

An exercise program doesn’t have to mean hours in the gym lifting weights.  You can sneak in exercise almost painlessly.  Use the stairs instead of the elevator or escalator. Park at the edge of the parking lot.  Walk instead of driving.  If you have stairs where you work, change into tennis shoes and go up and down several flights on your lunch hour.  Make it a point to get up every hour and do some stretches. Every little but helps.

Combining diet with an exercise program means you’ll not only lose weight faster, you’ll have more energy, and be healthier.