Beginner's Fitness Programs

When people think about losing weight, they think DIET such as: low- calorie diet, Atkins diet, Weight Watchers’ diet, etc. They are right -they do need to change their diet. However, this is not the whole story if you want to keep weight down after losing it. Healthy eating habits AND exercise are vital to healthy weight loss!

Most dieters, after losing weight, gain back the lost pounds and usually more. In fact, they lose both body fat and muscles when they diet, and when they gain back, they gain all body fat. Every time they diet, they end up to gaining more body fat! About 2/3 of dieters fail to maintain the weight they lost and fully gain back the original weight (and more).

Here is why diets alone do not work:

1. Most people go back to old eating habits. Why did they gain weight in the first place? Because they have bad eating habits! If you continue doing the same thing, you get the same result.
2. If you reduce the calorie intake, you automatically reduce physical activities. One university study found that every time they fed monkeys lower-calorie food, their activity level lowered to compensate for the lost calories. It is the same for people. If you don’t eat enough, you feel tired and are less physically active. This stays the same after the diet, and you gain weight very quickly.
3. For the same reason, if you start to diet, especially a very low-calorie diet, your body goes into conservation mode and lowers its metabolism. This new metabolic rate won’t change after the diet, as the body thinks there could be another “starvation” period coming.

So what can we do? Add exercise while following this new diet!

Studies show that even a moderate workout while dieting keeps the metabolic rate at normal levels and you actually lose weight much faster than with a diet alone. Even after finishing the diet, people who exercise regain weight at a far lower rate than people who do not.

The benefit is much greater if you keep working out after the diet. You gain more muscles while “recovering” from the diet, rather than body fat. Also, people who work out tend to eat less than people who do not.

Why can’t people lose weight with exercise alone? For the same reasons mentioned above: People who work out more tend to eat more to compensate for the used-up calories. You eat more, if you work out. (Although, this is not the case for those who do high-intensity workouts. They can use far more calories than they can eat – or want to eat – and they lose weight. But most of us will never reach that level of exercise regimen.)

Of course, there is another path: Change your lifestyle to eating healthy foods and develop an exercise regimen for real weight loss. This is not a “diet”, but a change in eating habits, and you stick with it for the rest of your life. At the same time, you work out. It may take longer than a very low-calorie diet, but it is surely less painful, and in the end you will win.

In any case, exercise is vital for healthy weight loss; so diet or not, start working out today!

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