Studies show that people who exercise consistently are much more successful long term with weight loss than those who don’t exercise.
If you haven’t noticed, a lot of people go on a diet, lose a little weight, then go right back to their old habits. They sit on the couch, eat Doritos and ice cream, and feel lousy. They gain all of their weight back (or more).
When someone is exercising consistently, even if they struggle with their food, they’re keeping their weight and health in focus. They may have a period of weight loss then a plateau, but if they keep exercising they can hang on to their weight loss. Usually they can return to a weight loss phase because they are exercising.
Why is this? Well, not necessarily because they’re burning calories. Anyone can quickly eat up the calories they burned during exercise.
Exercise does a lot of great things for weight loss:
- It keeps you focused on how your body feels. If you’re jumping around in a kickboxing class you can easily tell if you’re too heavy and out of shape.
- It makes you feel good about yourself. Of course when you start it’s tough, but as you build strength and endurance you feel awesome.
- It burns extra calories. So when you do get your food on track it’s easier to lose weight. And when you have a bad weekend it’s easier to counteract those indulgences.
- It keeps you in control. Exercise reduces stress and releases feel-good hormones. This is a great help in controlling your food and behavior choices.
- It builds lean muscle mass. After age 25 we all start to lose muscle. To keep our metabolism up we need to build lean muscle.
Exercising consistently is absolutely essential if you want to lose weight, keep losing, and keep it off.
