Is increasing exercising enough to lose weight?

Exercising is important to losing weight, but exercise alone probably wont be enough.  Watching your diet is also very important.  If you exercise and burn 300 calories and do not watch what you eat, you could easily offset part if not all of your calorie burn with additional food.  It takes a 3500 calorie deficit to lose one pound.  That would take you almost 12 workout sessions at 300 calories a session.  If you exercised three times a week and did not increase your calories at all, it would take you about a month to lose one pound.  Exercising does raise your metabolism over time, especially if you are building muscle.  However your progress is going to be exceptionally slow and most people will increase their calorie consumption with the exercise.  Its very important to cut and track your calories in addition to exercising to see good progress.  

Not according to the majority of exercise studies. The general conclusion from many, including the most recent studies on exercise and weight loss, is that exercise alone is not a weight loss program for anyone. Diet is simply far more effective and easier in producing weight loss, but exercise is just as important in maintaining the loss and in delivering unique long-term health benefits that diet alone cannot. Here are the latest facts:

The latest exercise and weight study published in the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) completed in March 2010 followed 34,000 chronic exercisers for 13 years and the average weight GAIN was 6lbs; 13.3% of those who gained slightly less but still GAINED, performed 60min/day of moderate to vigorous exercise and were normal weight at the start.

Conclusion from study:

• Exercise alone is not a weight loss program for anyone
• If overweight, it’s too late to reverse it with exercise alone, you must restrict calories

Earlier short-term studies comparing diet alone and exercise alone were even more dramatic:

Diet alone groups lost an average of 19.8LBS in 6 months, while exercise alone groups lost less than 2LBS in the same period.

 

Keep in mind that one single fact determines the rate of weight/fat loss: the average daily calorie deficit. This is defined as the difference between how many calories you burn and how many calories you consume. Therefore it’s easier to remove 500 calories of food from your daily diet to produce a 1LB/wk loss of weight than it is to perform 1.5hrs/day of vigorous exercise to accomplish the same result. That said, exercise is needed to improve your body structure, function/performance, longevity, visual appearance, etc. Exercise also increases daily calorie burn and helps you maintain your desired weight. So participating in both proper diet and exercise, you get faster, healthier and longer-term weight loss.

When our goal is to lose weight, increasing exercise while staying aware of our nutrition intake works.  Sometimes increasing our exercise will also increase hunger and so it becomes that much more important to eat proper foods.

To lose weight you can increase the amount of exercise you do, but you will never reach your goal if you do not change your diet also.

By diet I mean the foods you eat, and the frequency at which you eat your meals.

To put it simply...

• You must eat good quality food.
• Eat 4-6 small meals a day.
• Get on an exercise plan and stick to it.

When you have these three things covered, you will be on your way to losing weight.

Just make sure you aren't consuming more calories than you are burning. If you need help with that find a personal trainer that can help you get on the right track.

Make sure also that you are having fun with your exercise and nutrition.

If you are enjoying yourself and are happy with results that you are seeing, you will be more likely to continue with your plan and reach your weight loss goals.