Don't believe everything you read!

So by now I am sure most of you saw the recent article about how exercising does NOT help you lose weight. Well, this is partly true but also partly false! The premise of the article was to watch your diet to help you lose weight. True. It also said that exercising can increase your appetite, false. This is completely subjective, in fact exercise has actually been shown to REDUCE your appetite. Now if you recall a few articles back, I wrote about how to actually calculate how many calories you need in order to lose 1 and 2 pounds a week.

So, looking back at that article we see that we need to create a calorie deficit of 500 calories a day in order to lose 1 pound of fat a week. Or the other option is create a 1000 calorie daily deficit to lose 2 pounds a week.

Now this is where the recent article in the media how weight loss really misleads you. Exercise; increases hdl cholesterol (good cholesterol), stroke volume, lowers heart rate all of which have nothing to do with weight loss but diet alone can not complete any of the before mentioned tasks.

BUT wait!! THE ONLY WAY YOU CAN DO TO BUILD NEW, LEAN MUSCLE MASS AND MAINTAIN EXISITING MUSCLE MASS is to exercise, yeah!! That's it, there is no other way. Dieting along you can lose fat, however you also lose muscle and its more difficult to lose weight because we are typically not burning enough calories by reducing our diet alone. Also, by exercising while dieting you preserve lean muscle mass making fat lose easier. Plus, by building new muscle mass you increase your metabolism which means you burn more calories which means you don't have to restrict your diet as much!

The final straw on this debate is that dieting alone will help you lose weight, but some of that weight is also going to be muscle. Which means your metabolism slows down, which means you have to restrict your diet more, which means you always have to eat less to accomplish the same task.

Bottom line is that by having diet and exercise together you will reach your goal that much faster along with other benefits the ONLY exercise can bring. The truth is diet alone won't do it, and exercise alone won't do it, but combined together you have the ultimate weapon. So for all those out there who said, "see I told you exercise doesn't do anything" you are in fact wrong. So I will see you at the gym on Monday!