Maria's Last Diet

If You Keep on Exercising, Chances are This Will Motivate You to Keep On Losing Weight

by Maria's Last Diet

Exercise alone might not do the trick when it comes to losing unwanted weight, but exercise alone can help you feel more satisfied with your body—that is, if you keep to the exercise regimen. These are the results of a research study in the journal Body Image.

The importance of this research is that when women were helped a lot to stick with a good exercise routine, they stuck. How important is that, all you women who find it hard to exercise?

Conclusions: Feeling you are competent. Seeing yourself rise to the challenge—and conquer it. Knowing you have the ability. Overcoming barriers. All of these psychological motivating factors led to greater body satisfaction, even more so than any change in physiological factors like body weight and body composition.

Now, take these findings and apply them to the weight-loss process. Need help losing weight? Get lots of it. Use weight-loss psychology to help you stick to a diet slash plan for losing excess weight. Would the same conclusions hold? Feeling you are competent. See yourself as rising to the challenge and conquering it. Knowing you have the ability. Overcoming barriers. Would all of these psychological motivating factors lead to you having much less difficulty losing weight?

 

Exercise and Weight Loss - Not a Happy Couple

by Maria's Last Die

Exercise alone—says the latest research—will not make you thin. But it looks like it contributes a great deal to helping you stay thin, once you’ve gotten there. This is not to say that you shouldn’t exercise when you are trying to lose the weight. Exercise can contribute to your overall health in numerous ways, and it can also make you just plain feel better. But if you are counting on exercise to make you shed the pounds, you will probably be disappointed.

So, the problem of weight-loss success is once again relegated to the area of food. But, of course, it’s never just the food that’s involved. If you could simply pick a weight-loss diet that has less calories—and stick to it, no one would have weight issues.

For women, especially, the issues related to their eating habits are the biggest nuts to crack (no apologies for the food lingo).

For example: Why do you eat too much? What does overeating do for you? Do you really want to be thinner, or are you afraid of that? Is the weight a kind of security for you? Do you feel empty in your life and try to fill the hole with comfort food? Do any people close to you count on you being fat for their own reasons? Are you afraid of big changes? Do you have a lack of confidence in your ability to make big changes? Do you feel defeated before you start because of the memory of past failures?

When you spell things out like this, it can be much easier to see that even if you go on the best diet plan, you’re still facing very powerful obstacles—obstacles that reside within you.

Wouldn’t it make the most sense to tackle these obstacles, either before you start on a new diet plan, or at least at the same time?

If you don’t, won’t you be looking at another failed weight-loss attempt?

What’s What About Exercise and Weight Loss

by Maria's Last Diet

You want to lose weight, right?  So, exercise, exercise, exercise, right?

Well, it’s not so clear-cut. It’s complicated and not a sure bet that exercise will directly help you lose the weight.

The current thinking is that exercise alone does not, in fact, help you lose weight. It’s far more likely that exercise will help you maintain a weight loss, once you have achieved it.

One of the reasons for this is that people tend to eat more when they exercise, in order to make up for the extra energy expenditure. Contributing to this is that exercise has a significant effect on appetite. Furthermore, this increased appetite from exercising seems to be at work specifically in women. This may be nature’s way of ensuring that women maintain enough energy stores for reproduction.

All of this is not to say that exercise doesn’t benefit you, as a woman, in many other health-related ways. But in order to lose weight, you will need to address your eating—and all the issues surrounding it. There’s no getting around it.

If you want to read more about the latest thinking on the effect of exercise on weight loss, go to The New York Times, April 12, 2010, "Weighing the Evidence on Exercise". 

What Good is Physical Exercise if it Doesn't Help You Lose the Weight?

by Maria's Last Diet

So you don't lose the weight when you exercise. Don't get disappointed. Exercise in and of itself (i.e., calories out) does not stand up to overeating and eating fattening foods (calories in).

But you do derive benefits from exercising that can affect your outlook on taking too many calories in.

Exercise does make you healthier. Among other health changes, exercise can lower systolic and diastolic blood pressure and lower resting heart rate. Exercise can affect your psychological state, as well, making you have more positive moods and feel more positively about yourself.

These non-weight-losing benefits of exercise get you moving in a direction that can lead to weight-loss. For example, as a result of exercising, you are more focused on your body and doing things that make you (and your body) feel better and look better. The motivation is there. The positive feedback is there. You've established a regimen. All of these steps bring you closer to doing something about the calories-in side of the equation.

To Get Fit, Your Exercise and Diet Regimens Have to Fit (You)

by Maria's Last Diet

Let’s say you want to lose the weight, and you decide the best way to do it is to start dieting and also start an exercise program. This is a common way to go about losing weight—a good way.

Did you know that there is an issue of “fit” here? What this involves is the fit between who you are, and the means you choose to achieve your goal of losing the weight.  The method or methods you choose as tools to get the weight off need to mesh with who you are and how you like to live your life. If you choose dieting and fitness programs that don’t “feel right”,  it will most likely disrupt your effort at some point—probably sooner rather than later.

So, if you choose a diet that is totally alien to you—for example, a low-carb diet when you really don’t like meat or fish or cheese, or a weight-loss plan with a daily calorie count that is drastically below what you are used to eating, or an weight-loss diet plan that requires you to follow particular recipes when you don’t have time to do it—all of this will not jive with life as you know it. Yes, of course, dieting requires certain changes, but you need to pick a weight-loss diet plan that asks you to change in ways that are more comfortable for you, rather than demanding changes that feel strange and painful.

The same is true for any exercise program you decide to undertake. It should feel doable; it should be something you think you can enjoy. You know the join-the-gym-then-quit syndrome. People sign up thinking suddenly they’ll be able to make themselves go to the gym 3 times a week, but then can’t do it. For many women, starting out with a couple of walks a week is a gentle way of easing into exercising. It doesn’t feel strange, and it’s not too hard. That’s the idea.

If your dieting/exercise program is a really good fit for you, you are starting off with an effective tool. When you feel good about what you are doing, when you feel like it all fits you well, you will undoubtedly be more fully engaged in the weight-loss process, and you will be far less likely to fail.

Exercise and Diet: What Are the Psychological Benefits of Exercise?

by Maria's Last Diet

The evidence of physical activity's beneficial effect on losing the weight is unclear. Some studies suggest that improving eating habits along with increasing physical activity is more effective for losing the weight than simply changing what you eat. Other studies show that exercise has a beneficial effect on maintenance of the weight you've lost, but not on weight loss itself.

However, on the psychological side (the Maria's Last Diet side), exercise is good for the process of losing weight due to factors having nothing to do with the actual physiology of weight loss.

Here are some pluses on this psychological side:

• First, exercise can be a healthy alternative to eating. It can focus your energy, take it away from food, and center it on an activity that is at odds with overeating.

• Then, exercise can put you in touch with your body--or back in touch--since many women who are overweight have mentally and emotionally abandoned their own bodies. When you exercise, you feel what it's like to move your body in one way or another. You can throw off the limitations being overweight may be putting on you. You may also rekindle a desire to move better, move freely, to do things you perhaps used to do with ease.

• Many women also find that exercising--even a little bit--gives them a boost in the self-esteem department And once you're feeling better about yourself, you're more likely to feel positive about your ability to do what it takes to lose the weight.

Burning Calories: What to Expect

by Maria's Last Diet

 

Calories-in minus calories-out, that’s the formula for keeping your weight right “wear” it is—and you being none the worse for “where”.

Did you know that there are 3,500 calories in one pound of fat? A 250 lb man burns 3 calories climbing a flight of stairs. To burn the calories gained from eating one slice of bread, this man would have to climb 20 flights of stairs.  

Doesn’t sound possible to lose the weight by the calories-out method, does it?  

A better mousetrap has already been built—concentrate your efforts on the calories-in part. That’s where you do something about your food intake. You can limit your intake, change what you eat, or start dieting. This should help with the calories-in.  

What about the calories-out? Exercising. Burning off the calories you take in. Exercise is not the great equalizer to calories-in that it’s cracked up to be. Exercising burns off the calories-in at a very slow rate, and cannot catch up to the weight gain from calories-in—except if you exercise to the extreme. So you can’t count on exercising to help you lose weight, unless you’re ready to climb those 20 flights of stairs.  

Nevertheless, exercising does a lot of good for the woman who wants to lose weight. Here’s how. Exercising is a great motivator. For example, from exercising, you can get the idea that if you can stick to an exercise regimen, you can stick to any regimen, even an eating regimen. From exercising, you feel better physically because you are taking better care of your body. This helps you to realize how loading up on the calories-in destroys this “new body” of yours. This realization leads to handling the calories-in so it is more compatible with the “changed you” that’s coming from exercising.  

So don’t count out exercising. It has enormous motivational and confidence-building value. But when it comes to losing the weight, focus your efforts on the calories-in side of the equation. (And remember, the calories-in side is not all about food. There is a psychological side to calories-in.)    

Losing Weight is not the Same for Everyone

by Maria's Last Diet

Of course you know that people are not the same when it comes to losing weight.

A recent study reported in the International Journal of Obesity confirmed this fact once again. Even when people did the exact same amount of supervised exercise, they lost different amounts of weight.

Keep this in mind.

Diet And Exercise Are What It Takes - True or Not True?

by Maria's Last Diet

Diet and exercise, diet and exercise: this is the way to lose weight? Is it really?

Did you ever stop to think that this may not be so? Exercise might not be the great weight-loss enhancer that it's touted to be.

Let's look at exercise as part of our "energy" system. A pattern of energy imbalance with more energy being taken in than expended is what leads to us being overweight. Eating is energy taken in and exercise is energy put out. The three components of energy expenditure are resting energy expenditure, thermal effect of meals, and energy expenditure from physical activity. It's this last one, energy expenditure from physical activity - exercise - that we are focusing on.

It's been calculated that in order to lose weight at a rate of 1 lb a week, you would need to create a daily energy deficit of 500 calories. If you were to do this through exercise alone, a 176 lb person would have to walk almost 2 hours a day every day. A number of years ago, British researchers from the Medical Research Council Human Nutrition Center and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine calculated that the 1,411 calories from a Big Mac lunch would take a walk of 9.5 miles to burn off.

As you can see, the exercise part of the prescription, 'diet and exercise', is not really the effective part when it comes to burning off those calories you've put on. It's the diet part that counts. And if it's the diet part that counts, it's the dieting part that really counts.

The Overweight and Obesity Epidemic is Not Caused By Decreased Physical Activity

by Maria's Last Diet

Overweight and obesity come from an imbalance between what we take in as energy (food) and what we expend as energy (physical activity). This is not in dispute.

But hold onto your hats! Physical activity expenditure has NOT declined since the 1980's - in fact, it has increased.

The research that is behind this revelation was reported in the August 2008 International Journal of Obesity. The report further observed that physical activity expenditure is in line with the energy expenditure in wild mammals.

So what did the study report as its conclusion? Simply this: Since physical activity has not declined since the 1980's, a period of time in which obesity rates increased, then low levels of physical activity is NOT the cause of the obesity epidemic.

In the early 1980's, 8% of adults in the U.S. were obese. By 2005, the number had increased to 22%.

Since obesity is the result of an imbalance between intake of food and expenditure of energy, but the expenditure of energy has not decreased, doesn't this imply that food intake alone has been fueling the obesity epidemic?