The bad news: If you run, swim or ride a bike, you usually won't lose weight just by doing so. The good thing: When it comes to maintaining a lower weight after a diet, there is hardly anything as helpful as regular exercise.
The calculation is simple: If you want to lose weight, you must not take in more energy than you use. Exercise has been proven to burn more calories than sitting, standing or lying down. So if you sweat often, you will lose weight over time. In practice, however, it is hardly possible for most of us to exercise enough to permanently lose more weight than we gain through eating.
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| Jogging burns fewer calories than most of us think |
Many people also overestimate how many additional calories they burn through sport: a 75 kilogram runner who jogs slowly for an hour loses just as much energy as there is in a bar of chocolate. And if you train in the gym for an hour, you only burn around 500 calories. If you eat a plate of pasta with ricotta in the evening, your energy balance will be balanced again
Why exercise alone is usually not enough to lose weight is explained by human evolution. Our metabolism is adapted to frequent food shortages - and saves energy wherever it can. If the organism regularly consumes more calories for exercise, it reduces its general energy consumption as a precaution. The result: The more exercise a person does, the fewer calories the body burns the rest of the time.
Anthropologists have compared the energy consumption of people in industrialized countries with that of hunter-gatherers in East Africa. Although they exercised a lot more, overall they did not burn more calories per day than subjects with a Western lifestyle.
Many people experience cravings after exercise
In addition, some people who spend an hour on the ergometer or weight bench are exhausted afterwards, put their feet up, turn on the TV and relax. On the other hand, those who have not exhausted themselves often maintain a higher level of basic activity, perhaps emptying the dishwasher or fetching something from the cellar; Calories are also burned during these everyday activities.
Many people also experience cravings after exercise. Your body demands the energy it has used up again - or you simply want to reward yourself for the strenuous training. For a study, US researchers asked several hundred overweight women to exercise regularly. After six months it became apparent that the most active among them apparently compensated for the increased level of exercise by eating more.
Experts therefore agree: The key to sustainable weight loss lies not in exercise, but in changing your diet. But that doesn't mean that physical activity can be dispensed with when dieting.
In fact, exercise helps you maintain the reduced weight. This is because the body reduces its general energy requirements when it receives fewer nutrients than usual - as with a diet. And those who have lost weight need fewer calories to fuel their now lighter bodies.
Anyone who moves a lot during and after a diet ensures that the organism does not immediately form new fat deposits from excess energy. US data on men and women who have successfully lost weight in the long term shows how central the importance of physical activity is: 94 percent of those surveyed said they exercise or play sports regularly.
However, nutritional doctors have so far advised overweight people who have been inactive to only increase their exercise volume cautiously at first. If you are unsure how resilient you are, you should have a family doctor examine you and, if necessary, have an electrocardiogram done to check your heart function. To burn calories through jogging, it's enough to start with a leisurely five-minute run or even just a walk.
Muscle gain offsets some of the fat loss
Beginners in particular often run too long and too fast: If your joints hurt, the training was too ambitious. But if you only experience sore muscles, you don't have to worry about permanent damage. Once the body has gotten used to the unusual amount of exercise, the workload is increased by five minutes per week.
Even those who are not experienced in strength training are best started carefully, i.e. without weights. Are the joints healthy, for example with push-ups. Even if you initially only have enough strength for two repetitions, after a week you can often do three. Squats are also suitable; Three sets of six exercises are enough to start with.
In order to maintain your new weight, a combination of regular strength and endurance sports makes sense in the long term. Courses in the fitness studio are suitable for strength training: strengthening your muscles at home requires not only knowledge of suitable exercises but also more discipline. However, the equipment in the studio should be used under supervision: If you train incorrectly, you risk damaging your joints and bones.
In addition to walking or jogging, endurance sports suitable for beginners include cycling and swimming. However, no one should torture themselves with a sport that they do not enjoy. Because then the likelihood that regular exercise will be permanently integrated into everyday life decreases.
Ultimately, any type of physical activity helps: the body also burns calories when playing football, dancing and climbing stairs. In particular, people with a body mass index of more than 30 should take care to protect their joints. For them, swimming or water aerobics are the most suitable sports.
Regular exercise also has externally positive effects on the body: it not only breaks down fat, but after a while it also visibly builds muscle. And no one should be discouraged if the weight loss is not initially as significant as desired: the muscle gain eats up part of the fat loss. In addition, muscles are generally heavier than fat - but are anything but harmful.
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