Lose It For Ever – Dave Elger

There is good reason why only 1% of the National Weight Control Registry reported success using exercise as a sole means of weight loss. First, many people are not able to sustain 200-300 minutes of moderate exercise per week on a consistent basis. Work schedules and family commitments simply may not allow that much free time.

Second, some who take up exercise unknowingly end up over-compensating by eating or drinking extra calories. You could easily end up gaining weight instead of losing!

Finally, few people realize that net calories burned during exercise, particularly walking, are actually quite low. Believe it or not, total calories burned during a workout is NOT what matters, especially for weight loss, because that figure includes your basal metabolic rate (BMR), or the number of calories you burn whether you are exercising or not. It also does not consider how many calories you may have taken in.

An average 150 pound male has a BMR that burns approximately 1,600 calories in 24 hours, or 63 per hour. For every hour of exercise, 63 calories should be subtracted from his total in order to calculate the net calories applied to his calorie deficit. So forget the number you see on a treadmill digital readout- more than likely that number is significantly higher than your net calories burned because it includes those BMR calories.

Researchers out of Syracuse University have come up with a formula to estimate net calories burned per mile of running and walking.

Running .63 x body weight (lbs)
Walking .30 x body weight (lbs)

As you can see, walking only burns about half the number of calories per mile as running. Here is the shocker. Say you weigh 150 pounds and like to walk for exercise. Multiply 150 x .3 and you get 45 net calories per mile. In order to burn off just 1 pound of body fat (assuming 1 pound of fat is the energy equivalent of 3,500 calories), you need to walk 77 miles (3,500 divided by 45)!

Do not be discouraged! Walking is still the most popular form of exercise for weight loss and research supports its many benefits. For effective weight loss, all you need to do is find a way to cut 300 calories a day out of your diet and burn an extra 200 net calories, the equivalent of walking about 4.5 miles or jogging 2.1 miles. That should enable you to comfortably lose 1 pound a week.

Remember, that your exercise does not have to be all at once, so all of the walking miles you accumulate throughout the day counts toward your total.

If all you do is walk 20-30 minutes a day, now you can see how tough it is to lose extra weight without changing your diet!

source: Lose It Forever by Dave Elger, released Feb 2009

Lose It For Ever