Weight loss – Diet? Exercise? Both?

Hi All.

I follow loads of bloggers, they all brighten my world in lots of different ways, the following blog post encouraged me to sharpen my knowledge about the role of exercise in my weight loss journey: https://davidsway.blog/2019/09/23/ladies-forget-about-getting-bulky-from-strength-training/

I love food, i mean, I really, REALLY love food – I enjoy the tastes, the textures. I can easily be thinking of what tasty morsels I’m going to cook for dinner when I’m eating breakfast! and as I’m capable of light multi-tasking, I’m still fully enjoying my brekkie whilst thinking of the next meal!

As a result of all these years of great tastes and textures, and as a result of not wanting to miss out on a single morsel and stuffing myself senseless, I am classed as obese, and have a good few stone to go before I’m classed as merely overweight! And I’m not alone, it’s reported that this is a growing concern around the developed world.

For anyone following me, you’ll know I am trying to diet and exercise, seems sensible, I’ve heard snippets of info over the years that suggest I need to do both in order to gain the ‘body-beautiful’.

As usual, the more I read about a particular subject, the more I realise it’s much more complicated than first thought.

So here is what I’ve read today, I’ll pop the links I’ve used at the bottom of the post, and just a reminder – I site on a computer all day, and have absolutely no background in science or medical stuff 🙂

So, healthy weight loss is a mixture, between 20-25% of exercise and 75-80% healthy diet.

Now, as an obese person, and for a lot of others out there, all we concentrate on are the scales, and that number going down, and most of us experience a great high after the first week of dieting, we almost don’t believe the number we see as it flashes back at us…. a FAB loss! and then as the weeks roll on, and providing I carry on with healthy eating, the lbs start to dwindle to a much lower number, constantish, but lower.

So, if we’re losing weight we might think to ourselves, ok, I’m losing weight, there’s gains every now and again, but on the whole I’m losing weight. OR. we might think, but I want to speed this up a bit, I know I’ve taken years to put this weight on, but I want it gone within the next 6 months! I’ll exercise!

The guidelines for safe weight loss are to aim for no more than 2lb a week, that’s about 0.9kg.

Well, if we carry on with just the dieting, and are losing more than 2lb a week, we are getting rid of fat, yes, but we are also getting rid of bone density (important for all of us but especially women during and after menopause, I mean who wants osteoporosis?) and muscle mass (which has many benefits, one of which is to support our skeleton). This is something we definitely need to bare in mind if we’re dieting only.

If we add exercise, according to research the weight loss becomes slower! go figure, I mean why on Earth would I put myself through the “JOY” of exercising, if it’s going to slow my weight loss down, right? But, here’s the great thing, providing we exercise regularly using cardio and importantly strength, we are actually encouraging better bone density AND muscle mass growth. And yes, the weight loss is slower, but not the fat loss – and surely that’s the thing we should really want to get rid off? That’s the stuff that’s choking our organs and making our lives rough!

Speaking about strength training – don’t worry, we will not become the next Mrs/Mr Universe – a lot more time and effort has to go into that sort of look than most of can give or be bothered with!

But then we might have a tracker, and see cracking ‘calories burned’ figures, and think well, know what? I’m just gonna exercise my way to health! Apparently, this is a sure fire way NOT to succeed. It seems quite a lot of us will reward ourselves for our great sesh by having a ‘deserved’ treat – muffin or bacon sarnie anyone? If I walk for an hour at 3miles an hour, i’ll still take in more calories than I’ve burned by eating a Big Mac – not really the treat my body deserves 😀

And by the way, why cardio and why strength? So we burn more calories during cardio workouts to strength workouts, but we burn more calories during the period after strength than cardio. Cardio is a great way to burn calories and strengthen our hearts, Strength is great for strengthening our muscles and bones, along with our balance.

And there are some GREAT programmes we can find on youtube, all for free, and they don’t have to be difficult. We don’t even need much in the way of equipment, when I started my strength training, I used 2x 400g cans of veggies because I didn’t have dumbbells.

So, what am I doing for exercise and healthy eating (or trying to do – I’m a work in progress) to lose weight effectively?

• Cutting calories
• Eating healthily
• Cardio/step
• Strength
• c25k
• Stretching/Yoga
• Drinking water
• It helps if we have someone to encourage us or buddy up with us 🙂

In Summary, if we’ve made the decision to change our body shape, let’s concentrate on both dieting and exercising, let’s give ourselves as much chance as possible to reach our goals! Let’s strengthen our muscles and give them some definition, so as we get rid of the fat, those muscles start to shine!

So if you have an aim to lose weight and help you body become more healthy, GOOD LUCK – you can do it!

Please see below for the sites I used for this post.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/exercise-vs-diet-for-weight-loss_n_5207271

https://www.womenshealthmag.com/weight-loss/a19982520/weight-loss-80-percent-diet-20-percent-exercise/

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/sep/19/exercise-dieting-public-health

https://www.emedicinehealth.com/what_is_bone_loss/article_em.htm#what_is_bone_loss

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/muscle-loss_b_974019

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/losing-weight-too-fast

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/cardio-vs-weights-for-weight-loss

https://www.everydayhealth.com/fitness/add-strength-training-to-your-workout.aspx