FAT DIET LIE NUMBER NINE: Long-term fat loss is possible without working out.
This is like saying you can earn 1 million dollars a day without working. It’s a simple, bare-faced untruth.
Leave out the program of sensible exercise, and any fat loss diet will be missing an absolutely essential ingredient. Without exercise, it just won’t work.
The four essential ingredients to any fat loss diet are:
1. A diet of wholesome, natural foods;
2. Physical exercise
3. Aerobic exercise
4. Motivation, comprised of a positive mental attitude and self-esteem.
To effect fat loss, there must be a calorific deficit (the difference between the number of calories you consume and the number you expend) that is achievable.
It is accomplished by reducing your calorie intake (eating less), or by increasing the number of calories burned by working out, or by both.
Of these two methods, burning calories to achieve the calorific deficit is far more effective and fruitful.
I’ve discussed the reason for this earlier in this series. Achieving your calorific deficit by only eating less fuels the risk of you starving yourself – a course which is ultimately harmful and is likely to backfire when you return to your former eating habits and regain the weight.
You really must learn this valid rule of thumb:
As crazy as it may sound, the best way to achieve fat loss is to eat more and to exercise more . Look at it as high energy in: high energy out. You’re fueling a super-fast metabolism, and are thereby allowing yourself to avoid starving to death!
Oddly, it’s the starvation option that so many people choose. They cut the calories, but don’t exercise at all, and that doesn’t work. You have to eat the right diet, and exercise must be part of your daily routine.
So, what are the objections to eating more and burning more fat through exercise?
Perhaps some people believe that eating more and training will negate one another – so why bother with the effort.
Others believe in the myth that too much cardiovascular exercise results in muscle loss.
Frankly, the opposite of that is true. A combination of cardio and weight training is the only body fat loss program that encourages you to eat more, achieve a calorific deficit, and then burn the fat – both at the same time – without decelerating your metabolic rate.
Let the benefits of exercise speak for themselves:
1. Exercise increases your metabolic rate; diets alone decrease it.
2. Exercise helps you achieve a calorific deficit without starving yourself; dieting alone is a form of starvation.
3. Exercise is a bonus for your general state of health; dieting by itself can harm your health.
4. Exercise, particularly working out with weights, tells your body the muscles are needed and won’t burn them for energy; dieting can take up to half the achieved weight loss from lean body mass, which is muscle tissue.
5. Exercise generates fat-burning enzymes and hormones; dieting reduces their number.
6. Exercise enhances your cells’ sensitivity to insulin, so that carbohydrates are burned for energy and stored as glycogen, rather then being stored as fat.
In other words, any fat loss diet that does not include physical exercise or training is a scam.
Even if weight loss through dieting alone could be accomplished, exercise should be included in your daily routine for your health’s sake, too, and not to only burn belly fat.
FAT DIET LIE NUMBER TEN: Lose thirty pounds of fat in thirty days.
Have you ever been tempted by that sort of advertisement? What a fast, magic solution it seems to offer!
And the amazing fact is: It really is possible to lose thirty pounds in thirty days.
The problem is that you can’t do it healthfully, and it wouldn’t last.
There’s a big difference between weight loss and fat loss. Because your body is nearly three-fourths water, you could indeed lose weight very quickly. Don’t drink any water over the weekend, and you’ll lose up to a dozen pounds. But such a course of deliberate dehydration would be foolhardy and dangerous.
The established and accepted weekly limit for safe weight loss has been widely recognized to be two pounds per week.
People may become impatient with such a weight loss rate, but trying to accelerate it only promotes the burning of muscle and the slowing of the metabolic rate. When the diet ends, all the weight returns.
Yes, you can lose thirty pounds in thirty days, but you can’t lose thirty pounds of fat in that same period of time.
Over time, you can more or less set a personal target for the amount of fat you’d like to lose. However, there are limits to the speed at which you can safely and sensibly achieve it.
It will take time, and the time factor should offer all the more reason to start sooner than later. There are no reliable shortcuts; but, if you stick to a sensible program, you’ll see the inspiring results in six to ten weeks and eye-popping progress in eight to twelve months.
Martin Collins, fitness expert
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Please Note: The information presented throughout Lose100Pounds.org is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice. Please see your physician before starting any diet and/or exercise program.
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