Lose weight without exercise? Well, what about the tortoise and the hare?
We would all love to lose weight without exercise, but it is never that simple. The theory part of it is easy, and we know it already… when the food we eat contains more calories than the energy we burn up through exercise, then those excess calories are stored as body fat. And it is hard to get rid of.
Technically we can lose weight without exercise. We can get someone to lock us up in a jail cell for several days and feed us just water. Do that, and we will lose weight for sure. It would not be fun though, would it?
But what is far worse, putting ourselves in such a horrid situation would not lead to any permanent weight loss.
All we will have managed to do is get ourselves into a state of ketosis. That is when our bodies thinks we are starving, so they starts to automatically burn up our fat to supply us with the energy you need to stay alive.
Burning fat – it sounds good, doesn’t it?
When we burn fat without exercise, or even with exercise, our weight loss is dramatic. We can lose about two pounds or one kilogram per day. I know this to be a fact, because I have done it myself on more than one occasion.
The problem kicks in the moment we start eating again.
Our our bodies are already in starvation mode. This is a survival mode, instinct or behaviour that is built into all mammals – and that includes human beings. The body assumes there must be a food shortage or a famine so unlike your automobile, it switches the engine to economy mode so it burns up less fuel.
So as soon as we start eating or drinking anything that contains calories of energy, our bodies desperately store up as many of those new calories as they can as body fat. Our starved (but still overweight) bodies start increasing weight once again, but now it is at an even faster rate than before.
So there is no point in trying to lose weight quickly if it’s only going to come back again with a vengeance. The best weight loss is a slow and steady weight loss that you get by eating moderate meals with carefully-controlled portions.
Moderate and gentle exercise will also help with our weight loss in two different ways. The first and most obvious way is that it burns up some calories. But the second and more important way it helps us all to lose weight is because getting some exercise on a regular basis speeds up our metabolisms; and with a metabolism that is working harder, our bodies can burn more calories for the same amount of work.
And doing moderate exercise, such as going for regular walks, has a few other added benefits.
Firstly, it gets us off our backsides and out of the house. It also gives us something else to think about while we are walking, and that gets us out of our normal head-space. That it is good for us emotionally. Heck, we even get a chance to exchange pleasantries with other walkers… real human being, not computers!
So, if we really want to lose weight and keep it off, just remember the fable of the tortoise and the hare.
That hare was in a mad hurry and burned up all that energy racing all over the place. He was fast, but he lost the race in the end. The tortoise walked all slow and easy, but in the end he won the race.
