9 Cold, Hard Weight-Loss Truths
(Page 1 of 2)

It Really Is Quite Simple: Burn More Calories than You Eat and Drink

If someone tells you about a fabulous new diet and it sounds a little too good to be true…
Well then, it probably is! Recent questionable hypes include:

• Eat what you want and lose weight!
• Lose 30 pounds in 30 days!
• Finally, a diet that really works!
• Lose one jean size every 7 days!
• Top 3 fat burners revealed
• 10 minutes to a tighter tummy!
• Slim in six!

These outrageous claims are quickly challenged by anyone who’s actually tried to lose 10, 20 or 40 pounds or more. Losing actual weight just isn’t that easy. There is no such thing as the magic weight-loss pill, and it doesn’t happen in 30 days.

If you are serious about getting in better shape and willing to look past all the ‘too-good-to-be-true’ claims, there are a few cold, hard truths that diet companies won’t tell you because it isn’t the easy solution that everyone dreams, but it is definitely possible. And these truths might help you take a more realistic look at losing weight and keeping it off.

Truth # 1:
You Have to be Highly Active for 30-60 Minutes a Day

If you are serious about losing weight, experts1 recommend getting at least 30 - 60 minutes of moderate exercise every single day; which can even include chores around the house like shoveling snow or cutting the grass. Real research indicates that people who want to lose the weight and keep it off too, have to exercise about twice as much as they did before.

For example, a group2 of over 5,000 people who lost an average of 66 pounds and kept it off for over five years - were highly active for almost an hour, every day. In another recent study3 , 200 overweight women went on a diet and exercise program and researchers followed them for two years. The women who were able to maintain a weight loss rate of 10 percent of their starting weight for two years, by being highly active for about 60 minutes, at least five days a week.

In other words, things like taking the stairs instead of the elevator, walking to the store and gardening are all great ways to increase your activity level, but losing a lot of weight means being highly active every day for almost an hour. However, this doesn’t mean you have to start running or kickboxing - the most often reported form of activity, and one of the most successful, in the study was power walking.

1 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
2 National Weight Control Registry (NWCR)
3 July 28, 2008 Issue of Archives of Internal Medicine

Truth #2:
A Half-Hour Walk DOESN’T Equal a Brownie

Picture this: you go out with some friends after a healthy bike ride. Your friend comments on how you all deserve a small treat since you just spent the day exercising, when you really had only taken a relaxed 20-minute ride through the park. This activity would have only burned the amount of calories found in a slice of bread, but nowhere near the amount found in a chocolate fudge brownie.

It’s easy to under-estimate how many calories some foods contain, and it’s even easier to over-estimate how many calories we burn while exercising. Even if you exercise a lot, it’s not a free-for-all to eat whatever you want.

A report studying the commonly-held beliefs about exercising4 found that although exercise does burn calories during and after exercise, for overweight people, “excessive caloric expenditure has limited implications for substantially reducing body weight independent of nutritional modifications.” In other words, to lose weight, you have to increase exercise and decrease calories.

4 Journal of the American Dietetic Association

Truth #3:

You DO Have Time to Get Active

If you have the time to check your email, watch TV, surf the internet, meet up with friends, go shopping, etc., then you have time to do something that is highly active. Yes, sometimes you have to give up something you enjoy doing in your free time and make exercise a priority to fit in your schedule. But the benefits you get from working out are totally worth it.

In fact, for all of you into math, it is easy to figure out much time you really do have for physical activities every day:

• There are 168 hours in a week.
• If you go to school and work part-time for a total of 8 hours per day, that leaves you 16 hours per day.
• If you sleep 8 hours per night, that leaves you 8 hours per day.
• So if you are highly active for 1 hour a day, that leaves you 5 hours per day.
• You can use those 5 hours per day to do anything else you need or want to.