Out of shape and feeling overweight… where do I start?
By Jay Vincent
We’ve all been there. Every morning is judgment day. You wake up, look in the mirror and you’re simply not pleased with what you see and how you feel. Many of us swallow it and carry on with our day; accepting that this is the reality of our lives. But what if you didn’t have to? What if you didn’t want to? But where do you begin?
Many of us just begin trying to live a more active life, thinking that burning calories is the answer. We begin scheduling an evening or morning walk, a jog here and there or even seek a personal trainer to help us reach our goals. But guess what, your weight loss journey can begin without you even putting on your gym clothes! That’s right, you heard correctly. Because the primary thing holding you back from losing stubborn body fat is your DIET.
“You can not exercise your way out of a bad diet” claims Dr. Doug McGuff, Ph.D and owner of Ultimate Exercise, a High Intensity Training facility located in South Carolina. Exercising is a poor way to burn calories. A typical 1 mile jog burns approximately 100 calories. Now, since there are roughly 3,500 calories in 1 pound of body fat, that means one would have to run 35 miles to burn a pound of body fat without a single change in ones diet. Clearly, this is an impractical approach to losing weight and unfortunately a widely misunderstood concept for new trainees.
So the logical approach would be… to change your diet! Consume LESS calories than your body requires to maintain its current mass, and your body will tap into its energy stores (body fat) to compensate. A good formula to follow is the Katch - McArdle formula to calculate the amount of calories your body requires on a daily basis;
370 + (9.82 x lean body mass in lbs) ---------> Lean body mass = weight - % body fat.
That is the science of fat loss in a nut shell. For example, say your body requires 2,000 calories a day to feed its current body mass. If you consume 1500 calories a day, within 7 days you would have lost 1 pound of body fat. A largely misunderstood yet SIMPLE approach to fat loss. As Dr. Doug McGuff says “The process is easy, but the application is hard as hell!”.
So in general, eat LESS food with adequate (not excessive) exercise, and your body will do what it must to balance its metabolism. Which is, in this instance, burning excess body fat to fuel the body.
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