I read this article in The Australian and I don’t like the message it sends in my opinion. The message that you shouldn’t exercise if you want to lose weight is bad. The article suggests that diet is far more important than exercise in losing weight, and that exercise is more likely to make you hungry and therefore eat more. It therefore claims that you are better off not exercising in order to lose weight.
The thing is, doing less exercise CAN lead to more obesity…….if you eat the same and do less, the maths is simple.
It is true that you cannot solely exercise to lose weight, but then none of my fitness education has ever tried to say that. As far as I know it has always been known that that when losing weight, nutrition is 70% of the equation. It is true that you get hungrier when you exercise.
BUT, this does not mean it’s healthier to lose weight via diet alone.
The benefits of exercise are many:
- Increased metabolism
- Prevents heart disease
- Promotes healthier blood sugar levels to prevent or improve diabetes
- Improved muscle tone (what good is being skinny and saggy?)
- Feeling better (it is well known that exercise releases endorphins)
- Boost self confidence and prevents depression
- Improved quality of life (being stronger and better cardiovascular system means you can do more in life with less effort)
- Promotes bone density to protect against osteoporosis
- Lowers blood pressure
- Boosts immune system
Now I’m sure there are many benefits I may have missed…….but basically people who suggest that we should just diet and ignore exercise are encouraging people to be self obsessed about weight and actually miss the whole picture…….the whole picture which includes your overall health, not just your weight!
If people ONLY try to lose weight, they invariably fail. If people instead choose to believe in a healthy life style and stop obsessing about scales………..then these people are more likely to be sucessful in their goals!