Exercise - Big piece or Small piece of the weightloss puzzle?

Exercise - Big piece or Small piece of the weightloss puzzle?

4th September 2014 11:49 AM

Author: Jo Taylor

I was honoured to be invited to be the guest speaker at the Mickleover Mind Your Weight group last night to talk about the role that exercise has to play in achieving and maintaining a healthy weight.

And of course exercise is an important piece in the weight loss puzzle but it is not the biggest piece. The biggest piece by far is good nutrition and a healthy balanced diet where we only take on board the calories we actually need.  So this is good news for the Mind Your Weight folks because that is what the group is all about.

For a long time in the exercise industry their existed a belief that exercise was the magic bullet when it comes to weight loss. But with our diets the way they are now this is simply not the case. You cannot out-train a bad diet. And even if you could achieve some satisfaction in terms if how you look on the outside then you could be sure that damage was being done on the inside.

So why exercise? And how can it help you lose and/or maintain a healthy weight?

Firstly and most importantly exercise makes you feel good. And if you feel good you are less likely to comfort eat. Our bodies are designed to move and move we should. So find something you enjoy and move that body!

Exercise like walking (striding out not strolling), running, cycling or swimming if done at a reasonable intensity will improve your cardiovascular function. If you take the intensity high enough in these activities or try Interval Training or Kettlebells you can burn fat as well as building muscle.

And if you start to do enough exercise on top of eating healthily to start to change your body shape then you need to measure for inch loss using a tape measure and step away from the scales! Why so? Well it is not as is commonly thought that muscle weighs more than fat. How could this be true? A pound of muscle weighs the same as a pound of fat. But muscle fibres are more densely packed than fat so you can carry more of it and still appear to have lost weight. The scales will only depress you as they will not show weight loss. But the tape measure will tell the truth as will the feel of your clothes and the compliments from your friends and family.

Exercise is not the biggest piece of the weightloss puzzle. But it can help and it can bring you great joy.

To find out more visit Jo Taylor's website or contact Jo on 07949 941031.

 

 

Tags: Exercise

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The views expressed in these blogs are those of the blog authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Bridge Centre for Natural Health.