A natural weight loss healthy diet program

Benefit to Diet and Exercise

Summary

In this page, I discuss the relative roles of diet and exercise, and how exercise, as important as it is, is not the primary path to weight loss. It is certainly very important in achieving and maintaining good health, however.

Exercise is not really an efficient tool for weight loss.

It is, however, a vital part of any weight management program. It promotes good health, both physical and mental, in a variety of ways, which we will discuss below.

Let us now analyze these two statements in detail.

Inefficiency: Each gram of fat contains 9 calories. Thus, to lose 1 lb of fat (453.6 grams), we would expect to have to burn 4082 cal (i.e. 453.6 x 9). However, because body fat is not pure fat (it contains other things like water and protein) that number is reduced to about 3500 calories. Unless one is in training for some Olympic event, this is highly unlikely. Thus, you can readily see that it is far preferable to reduce the caloric intake rather than regard exercise as a real fat-burning approach to weight loss. In addition, in view of the caloric content of fat (9 cal/gram vs. 4 cal/gram for either carbohydrate or protein), you can also see that you get more bang for the buck by watching fat intake, as compared to either proteins or carbohydrates.

The real purposes of exercise are many, such as:

• The primary purpose is to achieve/maintain good health, such as a healthy cardiovascular system, a healthy digestive system, strong bones and a healthy mind (more about these later).
• Additionally, a good exercise program helps maintain, and hopefully build, muscle mass. Muscle mass increases the metabolic rate, while adipose tissue (i.e. fat) slows the metabolic rate.
• As we all know, exercise generates endorphins, which are nature's mood-lifters. When we are feeling stressed-out, it often leads to eating either too much, eating the wrong things, or both. This is counterproductive to any weight management program, to say the least! By keeping physically active, especially with something we enjoy, we can get past those temptations, and live to indulge ourselves with something we really enjoy on some other occasion, when we can afford those calories.
• Weight-bearing exercise helps build bone mass. Both men and women all begin to lose bone mass when we are in our thirties. This continues throughout our lives. Women often experience a rapid bone mass drop during menopause because of all the rapid changes taking place in their bodies. After menopause, their rate of bone mass loss once again becomes comparable to that in men, but the loss experienced during menopause is still important and calls for exercise to reverse it. Without exercise, both men and women are headed toward osteoporosis. Weight-bearing exercise provides a mechanism to slow down and even reverse that trend.
• Exercise helps increase our "good" cholesterol, that is, our HDL (high density lipoproteins), and reduce our "bad" cholesterol, that is, our LDL (low density lipoproteins).
• You can strengthen your immune system by means of regular exercise.
• Improved balance and coordination are products of a good exercise program
• In general, exercise has an anti-aging effect. This is all part of the use-it-or-lose-it philosophy.
• Stretching exercises help promote flexibility.

Just remember - Those who are health conscious frequent a gym; those who ignore their health frequent restaurants! You just don't see that many overweight people in a gym, and those that are, are on their way to a slimmer, healthier body - most assuredly!

As we have mentioned above, exercise is vital, not for losing weight, but for staying healthy in general, and while losing weight in particular. When we speak about losing weight (that is, of course, excess weight), we are really talking about burning fat calories, not muscle. Fast weight loss sacrifices muscle tissue as well as fat, which is very unhealthy.

When we hear stories about people who go to the gym and lose 2 to 3 pounds during their workout, we have to remember that such a loss represents primarily a loss of water, through perspiration and respiration. When they replenish the water their bodies require, most of that weight loss disappears.

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