The Facts – Does it Help Weight Loss?

Today, there are countless fitness, diet, and pharmaceutical ‘cures’ for weight loss, all competing for your hard-earned dollars to help you with weight loss. Some products claim to be able to help you shed the pounds without exercise while others profess that any plan without exercise simply won’t work.

So what is the truth about exercise and weight loss? You could ask many different people and receive all levels of truth; some supporting the exercise and weight loss argument and others professing that exercise makes no difference at all. Well, let’s investigate this topic.

There have been a host of medical research studies that have been conducted on the effects of exercise and weight loss and, for the most part, they all agree that a combination of a healthy diet and exercise is crucial to losing weight. There are certainly going to be studies that find the opposite, but before you jump to any conclusions about this, investigate the source of the study.

Exercise can cover so many different facets from walking around the block to karate three to four times a week. So, depending on what type of exercise you’re looking into, you’ll find different results. For example, someone who is thirty pounds overweight walks one mile a day, four days a week, is not likely to see many positive results in weight loss. However, if that same person jogged for half an hour and then used resistance training exercises such as Nautilus, free weights, or sit ups and push-ups, would be more likely to lose weight.

Exercise is about burning calories and, typically, one pound of fat (or body weight) equals 3,500 calories. If your exercise regimen doesn’t equal, or just equals, your daily caloric intake, then you’re not going to witness any serious weight loss.

Exercise intended to help you lose weight needs to be intense and long enough to get your body warmed up and burning calories. It also needs to be done consistently. Does this mean that you have to devote ten or twenty hours a week to an exercise plan in order to be effective? No. What it means is that you need to have an exercise plan that will help you burn those excess calories.

Magic pills and specially made foods boast great results, and while they may work, exercising performs two important functions at once. The first is to help burn those calories that add to your weight. The second is to help your heart grow stronger. Another added bonus with exercise is that the more you do it, the better you feel and the more energy you have everyday.

Whatever path you choose to help you lose weight, exercise –cardio and resistance exercises- will help you shed those pounds more rapidly and at the same time build your health up and boost your overall energy. The facts are quite clear that the human is a machine that relies on and thrives with exercise and exercise and weight loss can be interlinked, if done properly.