Fat Loss Lie #9

If you eat the right foods, you can lose fat permanently without exercise.

A full-page ad in a recent issue of the National Enquirer featured this headline:

"Lose Up To 2 Pounds Daily... Without Exercise."

Yeah right! And you'll make a million dollars a day too...without working! That's a whopper of a lie if I've ever heard one.

Trying to lose fat without exercise is like trying to sit on a chair without four legs. If one leg is missing, your chair is going to fall over.

An effective fat burning program must have four crucial components:

1. Aerobic exercise
2. Weight training
3. A nutrient dense diet of natural foods with a mild calorie deficit
4. Goal setting, motivation and a positive self image

Except for those genetically gifted, fast-metabolism types (that we all love to hate), it‘s extremely difficult (if not impossible) for most people to lose fat permanently without exercise. It’s always better to BURN THE FAT than it is to try to starve the fat (refer back to Fat Loss Lie #2 for the reasons why).

To lose fat, there must be a calorie deficit. Such are the laws of thermo-dynamics and energy balance. However, there’s more than one way to create a calorie deficit. One way is to decrease your calorie intake (eat less). The other is to increase the amount of calories you burn though exercise.

Of the two ways to create a calorie deficit, burning the calories is the superior method. This is because large, prolonged calorie deficits cause muscle loss and trigger the “starvation response.” Ironically, most people do the opposite: They slash their calories to starvation levels and exercise too little or not at all.

Paradoxical as it seems, the most effective approach to fat loss is to eat more (keep the calorie reduction small) and let the exercise burn the fat. In fact, I wrote an entire full-length book on this subject, titled “Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle.” You don’t have to starve yourself – you just have to choose the right foods and make exercise a part of your lifestyle.

Why would anyone resort to starvation diets when they can burn fat more efficiently through exercise? Perhaps they believe that eating more food and working out at the same time will “cancel each other out. Maybe they shy away from the hard work involved in exercise. There’s also a trend these days towards avoiding too much aerobic exercise because of the notion that it will make you lose muscle. Quite to the contrary, aerobic exercise –combined with weight training - is the only method of fat loss that allows you to create a calorie deficit and burn fat without slowing down the metabolism.

Here are the reasons why exercise - not dieting - is the superior method of losing body fat:

1. Exercise – aerobic and weight training - raises your metabolic rate. Dieting decreases your metabolic rate.

2. Exercise creates a caloric deficit without triggering the starvation response.

3. Exercise is good for your health. Dieting is harmful to your health.

4. Exercise, especially weight training, signals your body to keep your
muscle and not burn it for energy. Dieting without exercise can result in up to 50% of the weight loss to come from lean body mass.

5. Exercise increases fat-burning enzymes and hormones. Dieting decreases fat burning hormones and increases fat storing hormones.

6. Exercise increases the cells sensitivity to insulin so that carbohydrates are burned for energy and stored as glycogen rather then being stored as fat.

If anyone ever tries to sell you a program for losing weight and it doesn’t include exercise (it’s just a “diet”), hold on to your wallet and run for cover. Even if you could get lean without exercise, you should be working out for your health anyway, not just for cosmetic reasons.