Most people think that the key to losing weight is calorie restriction…starving yourself. While watching what you eat is important, when you eat too little, your body goes into starvation mode. It’s a little left over from our caveman days that helped us survive long periods with very little food.

That’s why crash diets don’t work. You will drop a few pounds in the initial stages but before long your body catches on and starts conserving it’s fat stores. It thinks you’ve just settled in for a long winter with very little to eat. Your metabolism slows, your energy level drops, your insulin levels rise, you become one stubborn fat storing machine.

That’s also why you bounce back so fast after you become exhausted from dieting and gain even more back than you originally weighed. Your body doesn’t trust you anymore so it stores a little extra for the lean times it believes are ahead.

Sounds like it’s useless dieting, doesn’t it? Well, it is. If you think starving yourself is the answer, shame on you. Yes you should cut down on what you are eating but not to starvation levels, and you need to move too. A brisk one hour walk each day will burn off 300 to 400 calories. But more important than that you not only see an increase in calorie demand, but also you are strengthening your circulatory system, altering your lipid composition by increasing your HDL, or good cholesterol, lowering your total cholesterol, and lowering your blood pressure.

Additionally research has shown that weight loss from increased physical activity resulted in reduced levels of obesity, especially abdominal obesity and insulin resistance in obese men. They also concluded that exercise without weight loss also reduced obesity levels, and prevented future weight gain from happening.

Research on sedentary woman looking at how intensity and duration affected the outcomes on weight loss. They concluded that all participants in the study demonstrated increased weight loss and cardiovascular fitness during the 12-week program, with both diet and exercise. They also concluded that intensity and duration had no significant effects on this group of sedentary woman. In other words, you don’t have to kill yourself exercising to lose weight. In fact it really doesn’t help to spend 3 hours a day in the gym.

Bottom line, eat wisely, 1500 to 2000 calories per day and take a walk. No you won’t lose 40 pounds in 30 days but you will drop 40 pounds in a year. And you’ll keep it off! If you’re a man and you’re 200 pounds over weight, it may take you two years. If that sounds like too long to get to where you want to be for life and stay there, what the heck are you doing that is more important over the next two years anyway?

We’re talking about our lives people. I don’t know about you but I hate being fat. I hate being discounted on everything because I am fat. I started working on my blimpish self a year ago. I’m down over 90 pounds and I have about 70 more to go. My life has changed for the better forever. Yours can too.

Remember, dieting alone leads to failure because you’ll just gain it all back when you’re done dieting. Exercising your butt off every day leads to failure because you won’t keep it up forever.  All things in moderation. Eat a little less and talk a walk every day.  You can do this!

Here is the article that inspired this blog: http://www.getprograde.com/walking-and-weight-loss.html?advert_id=CN

Greg Arnold
How I am losing my big butt