Burning Calories and Losing Weight with Regular Exercise

An Exercise Physiologist Explains the Real Secrets to Maintaining Permanent Weight Loss

Anyone that’s ever embarked on a weight loss plan has undoubtedly heard the old adage, calories in, calories out. The theory being, that if you expend more calories than you consume, maintaining your ideal weight should be a snap. If that’s so, why are over 97 million people in the United States spending more than $33 billion annually on weight-loss products and services while they continue to struggle with their weight [26]?

About the time that you’ve graduated from college, married and started your first career, you begin to notice small, insidious changes in your weight. The average sedentary individual will experience an annual 1% slowdown in their metabolism between the ages of 25 and 50. That’s a 20% decline by middle-age. If you think of your metabolic rate as the “idling speed” of your body, even if you maintain the same body weight over the years, you will gradually becoming more obese.

Your total body weight is generally compartmentalized into two major components: fat and fat-free tissue. We’re all pretty familiar with fat tissue. It’s the stuff that prevents you from getting into last year’s bathing suit. Fat-free tissue is everything else: muscle, bone, blood, connective tissue, etc. Fat-free tissue can be thought of as metabolically active tissue: it burns calories. Fat does not; it’s just along for the ride. So, whenever you think about weight control, the goal is to maintain as much of your fat-free tissue as possible, while eliminating fat.

People also store body fat in a couple of different ways. Generally, men tend to store fat around their mid-section (the ANDROID type, or Apple shape). Women tend to store fat below their waist (the GYNOID type, or Pear shape). Recent studies have indicated that there is a higher associated risk for heart disease in the android fat-storers.

There are three common approaches to weight reduction: diet only, exercise only and the combination of diet and exercise. A number of things happen to your body, depending on which approach you decide to take.