I love to answer this one - there is a lot of disbelief that exercise alone is not enough to lose weight. I would love to know where that comes from, maybe a bit of marketing manipulation?
Dieting isn't for everyone and whilst cleaning up your bad food behaviour will definitely help - you can still get results even if you changed nothing about your current diet. Even if its really bad.
The key component to effective weight-loss is being in a calorie deficit. How you choose to do that is up to you.
If you exercise and burn more calories than you consume - you will lose weight.
If you consume less calories than you burn - you will lose weight.
A combination of both - you will lose weight, provide healthy nourishment (diet), gain strength, tone, definition plus enjoy endorphin release (exercise).
Calories are fuel that we give to our body. Without calories we would die, they give our brains nourishment and feed our muscles so that we can do the things we do throughout our days.
Once you figure out how many calories you are eating every day (BMR - Basic Metabolic Rate) Calculate my BMR you can then decide if you want to:
Lessen Calories Through Diet
Never go more than 500 off your current count - even that is extreme - (I never go above 300 for clients that want to lose weight) The reason is that you are starving yourself, you wont be able to function at such a high restriction on calories, you can safely take 2-300 off and see a good drop in weight. 300 calories a day = 2100 by the end of the week, this is a nice way to lose weight with diet - your body and brain wont suffer from extreme restriction but is enough for it to have to burn extra calories that have been stored as fat over time (give it at least 4-6 weeks. Weigh in the morning to compare). Expect to lose over half a pound a week if following 300 cals less a day) That might not sound like a lot of loss when you want to lose weight but starting with a realistic calorie cap means your more likely to stick it out and adjust. whilst you wont see immediate results - within 3 months you would have lost between half a stone to a stone - and that's not a bad deal at all.
Lessen Calories Through Exercise
Find an exercise routine that burns those calories instead. It doesn't matter what kind of exercise you take up - it doesn't have to be drastic - a fast paced walk/jog/run is a great way to start. Swimming is a great all body workout. Dancing
your little heart out burns calories and you have fun while your at it!
My favourite and most effective way to lose weight through exercise is HIIT. (High Intensity Interval Training) the workouts are guaranteed to make you sweat - in a 20 minute session you can easily burn 200 calories plus.
One of the added bonuses to HIIT is that you get an 'after effect' - an elevated
calorie burn for the next 24 hours. Read more about HIIT here.
Estimate how many calories you burn in a workout (Fitbits and other health trackers are great because it tracks everything for you. if you don't have one it doesn't matter, ask google or your coach for a rough estimation of how many calories your activity burns in a session).
200 calories of HIIT a day plus the extra burn would be around 300 cals in total.
If you change nothing about your diet you will lose between and you will be losing weight at the same rate / maybe a tad more (increased metabolism, increased energy expenditure throughout the day).
A combination of eating fewer calories and exercising to burn more calories.
This is the most effective way to lose weight and keep it off. It’s much easier to create a substantial calorie deficit when you combine eating less with exercise because you don’t have to deprive yourself so much, or exercise in crazy amounts.
Studies show that the combination of diet and exercise are compounded to increase weight loss more than the equivalent of one method alone. One theory is that the exercise increases metabolism which rev’s the fat burning even more. Example: If you cut 150 calories a day from your diet and burned 150 calories a day by exercising, you’d lose at between half a pound and a pound per week. You're still losing weight at about the same rate without making such extreme changes to your diet or exercise routine.
The key to any successful weight loss is consistency. Over time your calorie deficit will ‘add up.’ and you will lose the extra weight - so long as you stick to your calorie count.
I am running a 6 week online personal group training for ladies who want to shape up/tone up/improve energy and self confidence.
Email: thehealthandconfidencecoach@gmail.com for more info.