You Will Never Lose Weight Exercising 3 Times a Week!
Posted on March 2, 2015
Exercising is your best weapon to fight against diseases like type 2 diabetes, heart disease and osteoporosis. (To name a few of literally 100’s of diseases and conditions exercise helps prevent). On its own exercise prevents most diseases and conditions between 25% and 50%. This is regardless of how much you weigh and what you eat on a regular basis. I used to think this alone would be enough to motivate most people to exercise, but it’s not. We have dozens of clients that when we start working with them they say ‘we don’t care about losing weight we just want to live healthier and independently as long as possible’. When I hear this I think ‘great, they get it exercise is so much more than important than just losing weight’. Then we work together and they love it, they feel a difference in how they move, sleep and overall well being. Not to mention the vast strength and cardiovascular improvements they have made in such a short period of time. Then I get this question, ‘I’m exercising so much, why am I not losing weight?’ This question breaks my heart because I know they are working so hard, are frustrated and just don’t understand how their body works. They have seen millions of images over their lifetime of ‘sexy’ scantly dressed individuals ‘selling’ exercise as ‘the’ way to look good when really it’s only part of the equation. I have made a list below, which touches the tip of the iceberg for this incredibly multifaceted problem and why you will probably never lose weight doing exercise alone.
1. You overestimate the number of calories you burn during exercise
I put this to the test with clients that I train and in an hour they largely assumed they were burning between 600 and 1000 calories for an hour long session, they were very disappointed to find out they more likely burn between 200 and 400 calories in an hour. Which unless you are very sedentary before this will do almost nothing if you need to get to 3600 calories to burn a pound of fat. One of our trainers Richard will be debating this number in an upcoming blog, but for the sake of this article to make a point I’m using this number to signify the fact you need to burn a lot more than you actually are.
2. You reward yourself with food when you exercise
You think you have burned 600 calories in an hour but you actually burned 300, so you ‘reward’ yourself with a dessert for a ‘cool’ 300 calories. You don’t have to be a math expert to see the problem with this thinking
3. You don’t really like to work hard during your workouts
If you really want to burn calories during a workout several things need to happen, you need to keep your heart rate up, you need to keep your muscle time under tension high, you need to take short breaks (interval style works best), you need to use perfect form and you need to do minimum 10 minutes but really 30 to 45 minutes is best so you get a cumulative 3 hours a week approximately. 45 minutes at a time means you don’t have to exercise every day.
4. Muscle is more dense than fat
If you do a lot of strength training and you are not eating less you will likely not see a reduction in weight but will see a reduction in waist circumference and other anthropometric measurements. This is because you are building muscle and burning fat. This type of situation is actually better than just losing weight because you are making metabolic changes that are improving your health and reducing your body fat percentage. I call this the win-win situation.
To Summarize
Something is always better than nothing, so even if you start with only 5 minutes a day it’s a good start and it will be easier for you to build your way up to the 30, just remember there is no endgame accept for you get the privilege of living a longer, happier, healthier life. So try not to get discouraged when you don’t lose any weight. This after all is not a 6 week plan its an 86 year plan.
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