No More Diets

How important is exercise to losing weight?


It’s pretty important because

1. it burns calories
2. it boosts your metabolism - even when you’re not exercising
3. it strengthens and firms your body making you look slimmer
4. it helps maintain skin tone and avoid loose skin problems
5. it makes you feel good - at least once you’ve finished your exercise for the day
6. it keeps you busy and away from the fridge!

and they are only the reasons that help with weight loss. There are of course many other reasons to exercise such as keeping you healthy, helping you sleep, boosting your energy levels etc.

All in all exercise is a GOOD THING.

Having said that it’s not ESSENTIAL in order to lose weight - it just helps. You CAN lose weight by diet alone. I don’t recommend it but you can.

What I will say is that if you are not keen on huffing and puffing away at the gym, vary what you think of as exercise. Find an activity (or activities) you enjoy instead such as dancing or swimming or ice skating and don’t let the dreaded exercise word cross your lips. Have fun instead of “exercising” while burning calories and losing weight

I’m 33 years old, 5.2” inches and weigh 75 kg (165lbs) Over the last 2 years I’ve put on 10 kg. Before that I was going to the gym but can’t go regularly any more. Can you help and guide me with what to do?

You know how easy it is to put on 5kgs (11lb) over a year?

Dead easy!

If you eat just 105 calories a day more than you use then there’s your 5kgs. That’s just a couple of apples or a milky coffee too much. And if you were exercising 3 times a week at the gym and stopped going that could explain your weight gain too.

It’s generally not the odd blow out meal or lack of marathon running which affects our weight so much as the daily cookie too many, the daily walk too few.

I’m not that fond of diets for lasting weight loss but I am very fond of gradually changing your habits so that you are eating healthier food and moving a bit more in your everyday life. That doesn’t need going to the gym. It just means climbing more stairs and taking fewer lifts or escalators. It means taking as many steps as possible rather than sitting down. It means putting more energy into everything you do. It also doesn’t mean eating rabbit food all the time but it does mean going easy on fatty or sugary foods and eating a smaller portions.

There’s such a fine line between weight gain and weight loss that just a few habits changed for the better can swing things back in the direction you want to go.

And if you decide to diet anyway - choose one you could live with (in a modified form) forever so that you are establishing long term good habits.

I have read so many diets which all propose different calorie amounts. How many calories should I be eating to lose weight?

The simplest calculation for the number of calories you need to maintain your weight is to take your weight in pounds and multiply by 12. (Remember, there are 2.2lbs in a kilogram if you weight yourself in kilos.)

If you weigh 10 stone (or 140 pounds) that’s 1680 calories daily just to stay the same.

To safely lose weight, subtract no more than about 250 calories from that and then make sure you get active to the tune of 250 calories a day. That doesn’t have to be formal exercise - it can be doing gardening, housework, cycling or walking - anything active.

This will give you a 500 calorie a day deficit, and should result in you losing about a pound a week.

Actually I’m not that fond of calorie counting because it’s too easy to underestimate the amount you are eating or to forget to add something in and too easy to overestimate the number of calories you are burning. And even if you manage to lose weight by being meticulous in your calculations, who wants to keep calorie counting forever? When you stop counting the weight piles back on.

To my mind it’s better to forget about counting calories and to train yourself to eat sensible portions of delicious healthy food and to change how you interact with food so that you have good habits and a slim body for the rest of your life - and so that’s what I teach in my 8 week weight loss coaching program.

Does a certain type of exercise or sport lose its effectiveness re weight control when your body becomes accustomed to it?

I wasn’t sure of the answer to this one so I asked a friend Tracy Griffen for help. Tracy is a top fitness trainer here in Edinburgh and you can see her website at http://www.TracyGriffen.com Here is her response. Thanks Tracy!

In a word, no. You will not burn less calories from becoming accustomed to exercise. In fact it’s the very ‘getting accustomed’ to an specific exercise (e.g. running a 2km distance) that brings on fitness benefits and weight loss.

Imagine this, the first time you run a 2km run, it takes you 13 minutes. With a bit of practise and training, you whittle that down to 10 minutes. You are not taking any less steps to get there, so you are not burning any less calories. In fact you will probably be burning more, as when you become fitter you also boost your metabolism, thereby burning more calories (even at rest). You will also feel like running even further as you’re now fit enough to be able to enjoy it more. Good news all round!

The only way you could burn less calories from doing a set pattern, is if you ‘cheat’ or lose form in an exercise. For instance, becoming bored of an aerobics routine and cutting corners. Which I don’t recommend!