There is a very thin line to success in weight loss. It is a scientific fact that you must save 3500 calories for every 1 lb of weight you wish to lose. If you want to lose 2 lbs that means saving 7000 calories! It is for this very reason that weight loss has a very thin line to success and is best done with 3 keys – diet, exercise and metabolism correction.
You just cannot save enough calories from dieting only as you would have to be so strict you would be permanently starving and miserable. Further if you slip up at all you can quickly eat into any calories saved and end up with no movement on the scales. This is very easy to do considering there are 400 calories in a typical slice of cake, 200 calories in every pint of beer and almost 800 calories in a burger and chip!! Diet is the place where people can make huge savings but simply not enough on and ongoing basis for steady consistent weight loss.
Yes, exercise allows you a little bit of freedom with your food and the room to give yourself a few treats here and there. It can also help you compensate if you do break out on your food. However there are even greater reasons why you just cannot lose weight without exercise. Exercise is the fastest way to wake up a sleepy metabolism and even more important if you lose weight without exercise (especially toning), you end up a saggy weight loss mess, you may get a bit slimmer but you will also get saggy! Finally exercise brings absolutely amazing mental benefits that you just cannot get from diet only.
It is important to note however that no matter how much exercise you are prepared to do, you cannot lose weight through exercise alone! You would have to do so much you would be at it day and night and your body simply could not sustain it even if you had the willpower to do it. A typical 1 hour workout burns 500 calories so you would need to exercise 7 hours for each 1 lb of weight you wish to lose. Yes, because you must save 3500 calories to lose 1 lb of weight, you simply must combine diet change with exercise, but it needs to be balanced so that you do not have to go to extremes in either. It needs to be realistic and sustainable.
However combining diet and exercise still will not save enough calories for strong steady weight loss. There is a third key to weight loss that is the most important key of all – your metabolism! Your metabolism is you weight loss master switch. With a good metabolism you burn more fat, every hour, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, even when you are sitting and sleeping. This is the secret to real weight loss. This is the factor that when combined with diet and exercise gets you serious weight loss results. Many people have metabolism faults like slow thyroid, high blood sugar level, sluggish digestion, constipation, hormone imbalance, PCOS, Endometriosis, nutrition deficiencies and impaired liver function that make weight loss very difficult no matter how much dieting and exercise you do. Then there are those that keep shutting down their metabolism with habits such as skipping breakfast, long gaps between meals, excessive drinking and over use of medications.
To lose weight properly you need to fix any metabolism faults that you have and make sure that your lifestyle habits do not switch off your metabolism and undermine your diet and exercise efforts. When you combine the 3 keys – diet, exercise and metabolism correction – your chances of weight loss success sky rocket and the results are strong and powerful and will soon shock you and your friends!
