Weight loss by exercise
“To lose weight, you need to burn more calories than you consume”. “It is just math”. “You just have to eat less than you consume”. These are the mantras that you hear as relates to weight loss. Exercise can help you achieve this by burning off some extra calories. However, some people claim that exercise isn't effective for weight loss on its own. This may be because exercise increases hunger in some people, making them eat more calories than they burned during the workout. We believe that the lack of effectiveness of exercise alone is because it is hard to burn enough calories to really make a difference. It is also easy to consume an amount of calories equal or greater than those burned if one is not careful.
Lifting weights helps you burn more calories around the clock. All physical activity can help you burn calories. However, resistance training — such as weight lifting — has benefits that go beyond that. Resistance training helps increase the strength, tone and amount of muscle you have. One hour of lifting weights may only burn 300-400 calories. So this will not make mathematical sense. BUT… Lifting is important for long-term health, since inactive adults lose between 3–8% of their muscle mass per decade. This is particularly true for adults in the fourth decades or older. In a recent study 48 overweight women on a very-low-calorie diet found that those who followed a weight lifting program maintained their muscle mass, metabolic rate and strength, even though they lost weight. The key here is to realize that lifting alone may not drop your weight - you may increase muscle and actually increase your mass. But - It will make you stronger and more resilient. To loose weight this type of exercise must be accompanied by a low calorie diet. However, dieting alone may cause you to lose muscle.
Because of this, doing some form of resistance training is really a crucial addition to an effective long-term weight loss plan. It makes it easier to keep the weight off, which is actually much harder than losing it in the first place. One of the main problems with exercise and weight loss is that exercise doesn't just affect the "calories out" side of the energy balance equation. It can also affect hunger, which may cause you to eat more. It's also been suggested that exercise may make you overestimate the number of calories you've burned and "reward" yourself with food. This can prevent weight loss.
Interestingly, studies show that appetite is suppressed after intense exercise. This is known as "exercise anorexia" and seems tied to a decrease in ghrelin (a hormone tied to hunger).
Aerobic activity on the other hand can help with weight loss. But you have to do a significant amount. One of the most popular types of exercise for weight loss is aerobic exercise, also known as cardio. Examples include walking, running, cycling and swimming. Aerobic exercise doesn't have a major effect on your muscle mass, at least not compared to weight lifting. However, it is very effective at burning calories.
In an almost one year study 141 obese individuals were fount to lose weight.
Group 1: Burn 400 calories doing cardio, 5 days a week
Group 2: Burn 600 calories doing cardio, 5 days a week
Group 3: No exercise
Group 1 participants lost 4.3% of their body weight, while those in group 2 lost a little more at 5.7%. The control group, which didn't exercise, actually gained 0.5%. This is a significant amount of exercise. For a 180 lbs male Four hundred calories is approximately 30 minutes of running or almost an hour of cycling depending on effort or heart rate. It is even more for a lighter female. As a result to burn what amounts to a King sized chocolate bar or a small ice cream sunday- one has to run 30 minutes or more. If additional calories are consumed after the workout - one has to burn even more. This is why in that study - individuals also followed a low calorie diet.
AS A RESULT THE TRUE ANSWER IS THAT TO LOSE WEIGHT (WITH OR WITHOUT EXERCISE) YOU HAVE TO AFFECT THE CALORIES ON THE “CALORIES IN” SIDE OF THE EQUATION. WE ARE STRONG BELIEVERS IN THE ADDITION OF WEIGHT TRAINING FOR PEOPLE OLDER THAN 40 TO MAINTAIN (OR BUILD MUSCLE).