Exercising rather than dieting
Calorie deficit is a necessity with any kind of weight losing program. It’s the law of thermodynamics and energy balance. However, there’s more than one way to create a calorie deficit. One way is to decrease your calorie intake from food. The other is to increase the amount of calories you burn though exercise. Of the two ways to create a calorie deficit, burning the calories is the superior method. This is because large calorie deficits cause muscle loss and trigger the starvation response. Ironically, most people do the opposite: They slash their calories to starvation levels and exercise too little or not at all. This causes a decrease in lean body mass and invokes the starvation mechanism. Paradoxical as it seems, the most effective approach to fat loss is to eat more (keep the calorie reduction small) and let the exercise burn the fat. You don’t need to starve yourself – you need to choose the right foods and make exercise a part of your lifestyle.
Why would anyone resort to starvation diets when they can burn fat more efficiently through exercise? Perhaps they believe that eating more food and working out at the same time will “cancel each other out. Maybe they shy away from the hard work involved in exercise. There’s also a trend these days towards avoiding too much aerobic exercise because of the false belief that it will make you lose muscle. Quite to the contrary, aerobic exercise, combined with weight training, is the only method of fat loss that allows you to create a calorie deficit and burn fat without slowing down the metabolism.
Why is it better to focus on exercise rather than on dieting?
Exercise raises your metabolic rate, creates a caloric deficit without triggering the starvation response. Exercise is good for your health, and serious dieting is harmful to your health. Exercise, especially weight training, signals your body to keep your muscle and not burn it for energy. Dieting without exercise can result in up to 50% of the weight loss to come from lean body mass, also increases fat-burning enzymes and hormones. Exercise increases the cells sensitivity to insulin so that carbohydrates are burned for energy and stored as glycogen rather then being stored as fat.
Establish what your minimal calorie requirements are and never go below them! Use that as your rock bottom calorie number. Because nutrition must be individualized, it’s difficult to set an absolute single figure for everyone as a minimal calorie requirement, but the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) has suggested some guidelines. In their position stand on healthy and unhealthy weight loss programs, the ACSM recommends 1200 calories as the minimal daily calorie level for women and 1800 as the minimum for men. They also suggest a maximum deficit of 1000 calories below maintenance. The 1000 calorie maximum deficit is good advice, but it’s just a guideline. Sometimes a 1000 calorie per day deficit can be too much. People with low bodyweights and/or low activity levels will have relatively low daily calorie needs, so 1000 below maintenance could be too low. For example, it’s not uncommon for a female to require only 1900 calories per day to maintain her weight. If she were to drop 1000 calories off this already low maintenance level, this would bring her to a dangerously low 900 calories per day. 1200 should be her rock bottom number, and a small 20% deficit of only 380 calories would be even better (1520 calories per day). Now, go and do some exercising. It’s the action that moves the world!
Read Also
No comments yet.