One of the major issues with exercise is that people do it for weight loss. Yes, exercise burns calories but sadly not as much as I wish it did. So when someone’s exercising for an hour – 6 days a week and frustrated with little or no weight loss, they quit. I would too if that’s why I exercised. I would be 10% body fat if exercise made us skinny. You could run a marathon everyday and not lose weight if you are taking in more calories than you are expending. You’ve heard the phrase: you can’t out exercise your fork (this is true!) Sadly it’s not hard to eat more than you burn. It takes me about 90 min to burn 500 calories. How fast do you think I could eat 500 calories. 5 min? Not eating 500 calories is a lot faster burning 500 calories.
Financially everyone knows what happens when you make more money. You spend more. It’s extremely important to be careful about burning more calories. When your exercise more, you’re more hungry and it can be harder to not eat more than is needed. It becomes a vicious cycle and you’ll start to dread exercise and be doing it for the wrong reasons or not at all. What about lifting weights? I know you’ve been sold on the concept of muscle burning more calories than fat. Not only is that true, lifting weights helps build bone density and fight osteoporosis and improves our quality of life. However, its often an excess of body fat that is the biggest issue (if you have a substantial amount of weight to lose) not a lack of lean muscle for many.
Exercise is the cheapest, effective medicine for anxiety, depression, heart disease, high blood pressure, etc. It’s the medicine I take first thing in the morning and have for over 25 years. The exercise guidelines that give us the health benefits we want is 150 min a week of moderate activity, strength training twice a week, and a regular stretch routine.
