Exercise isn't great for losing weight...

I know right. Mind-blown.

 I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but don't shoot the messenger and all that.
Sorry folks, the science proves it. Diet or rather the calories you choose to consume matter significantly more than the calories you expend during exercise or any other kind of physical activity. 

According to research done by Harvard Medical School; "If one person cuts back on calories without exercising and another person increases exercise without cutting back on calories, the first person would probably find it easier to lose weight. That's because it's easier to cut 500 calories a day from your diet than it is to burn 500 extra calories through exercise. You'd have to walk or run about five miles a day for a week to lose one pound of fat."


Not only is it a lot easier to cut calories from your diet vs. cutting calories by exercising, but the fact of the matter is that while you have 100% control of the calories that go into your body, you really only have about 25-30% control over the calories you burn every day as you move. The other 70-75% is predetermined by what is called your base metabolic rate or BMR.

Base meta-what's-it?? 

Your base metabolic rate or BMR is described by the American Council on Exercise as, "...the number of calories needed to fuel ventilation, blood circulation, and temperature regulation. Calories are also required to digest and absorb consumed food and fuel the activities of daily life. Or put another way, metabolic rate is an estimate of how many calories you would burn if you were to do nothing but rest for 24 hours. It represents the minimum amount of energy required to keep your body functioning." Put simply, if you laid in bed all day and didn't move an inch, this is the number of calories you would burn in one day.

Now that we're both on the same page again...

I want you to have realistic expectations and to regard exercise as a positive experience.

Here it is, we've been sold a false narrative. By corporations that push highly processed foods and soft-drinks filled with high fructose corn syrup. They want us to believe that we can consume as much of their products as possible as long as we exercise enough and it's just not true.

With all this said, if we go back to the research I previously mentioned from Harvard Medical School, "If you only cut back on calories, you're more likely to regain the weight you lose." Our bodies react to weight loss almost as if it is in "starvation mode", and in response, it slows our metabolism. When our metabolism slows down, you burn fewer calories, even at rest. When you're burning fewer calories, there are two things that can happen; number one, if you continue eating fewer calories you will stop losing weight as quickly as you have been or number two, you will stop losing weight altogether. Afterward, when you increase your calorie consumption, you tend to gain weight quicker than you would have prior.

The answer is to increase physical activity in addition to reducing calories in your diet because doing so will help in counteracting the metabolic slowdown caused when you reduce calories.

One last point.

Exercise is LITERALLY one of the best things you can do to improve your health and to benefit your overall life (statistically, second only to quitting smoking.) 

We need to exercise and we need to move, it is a NECESSITY. What I want my clients and all of my readers here to avoid is the tendency of viewing exercise and your workouts in general as a punishment for what you ate last night or yesterday and rather to start viewing your training as a way to enrich your life.