Exercise is an essential part of weight loss. You may be able to lose some weight without exercising, but if you expect to reach your goal weight exercise is going to have to enter into the picture somewhere. Besides helping you lose weight, exercise helps you maintain your health in other ways.
1. Exercise Prevents Muscle Loss. Keeping your muscle may not seem important to you, but it should. Your muscle is what helps you burn calories while you are rest. If you lose muscle, your body will not be able to process the calories you ingest as efficiently. Studies show that dieters tend to lose 25 percent muscle and 75 percent fat. You need to try not to lose any of the muscle. Maintaining your muscle is done by doing strength exercise. Strength exercise involves resistance, such as; exercising with weights or dyna bands.
2. Exercise increases the calories burned. Bottom line here is that when you exercise you are going to lose weight, as long as you make reasonable choices most of the time. You are going to be able to consume more calories just because you exercise. Exercise can be used to offset that extra piece of pizza you had for dinner.
3. Exercise helps control your appetite. You may feel increased hunger the first day you exercise, but after that due to your body using stored glucose and fat; your sugar levels will remain more even. When sugar levels are even you have less trouble with hunger.
4. Exercise makes you feel better about yourself. Exercise releases endorphins in your brain. This is a chemical that makes you feel good. The psychological effects of exercising do a lot towards keeping you motivated. This benefit by itself should encourage you to exercise. When you feel positive about things, it makes it easier for you to make the right choices.
5. If you exercise regularly you will lose more weight and keep it off. Research shows that the people that are most successful at losing weight and keeping it off the ones that have a regular exercise plan as part of their lifestyle. They also burn off about 2500 to 2800 weekly. This translates into about 6 hours of walking, 3 1/2 hours of swimming or 9 hours of bike riding weekly.
The best way to stick with an exercise plan is to find something you like to do. If you try to make yourself do something you don't like, you will never stick with it. Exercise has many benefits. One thing is for sure, if you want to lose weight and expect to keep it off, exercise will have to become a regular part of your lifestyle.
Marjorie Salada is the owner of
Weight Loss 3000, a website that contains information on weight loss, exercise, weight loss surgery and living a healthy lifestyle.
