Have you ever felt like a hamster on a wheel when it comes to exercise? You just keep going and going and not matter how much you go, you can’t lose weight. Or, if you do lose the weight, you just gain it back. Because of this, it can often feel like exercising for weight loss is pointless.
Here’s the reality: you don’t have to try so hard, because your body isn’t designed to lose weight through constant, strenuous exercise.
Exercising will not work for weight loss long term. In fact, the harder you push yourself, the more likely you are to put weight back on when you slow down a little. Strenuous exercise triggers your stress hormones which throw all your systems out of whack.
Exercises for weight loss won’t work long term, but here’s what will.
Balance Exercises for Weight Loss With Diet
The first thing to examine is what you are eating.
When your body is stressed out, it fights to store all the energy it can instead of burning it.
Eating all natural, whole foods helps balance your systems back out and fight against the fat building stress. You don’t necessarily have to cut out all carbs or other food groups. Just try to stick to natural, whole foods.
Keep in mind, cutting out food categories like carbs can actually be detrimental to your weight loss goals. Deprivation makes your body think you are going through a famine. As a result, it will pack on the fat stores to protect you from running out of energy.
The problem is, our systems can’t tell the difference between a diet and starvation.
Instead of resorting to processed sugars, fill your carb needs with healthy carbs. Things like sweet potatoes, peas, brown rice, and Quinoa are great examples of healthy carbs.
How to Exercise for Weight Loss
This sounds counter intuitive, but you actually might need to exercise less to lose weight.
If you are killing yourself in the gym for an hour every day just to lose weight, it’ll only work for so long. It won’t work long-term though. In reality, the more strenuous your workout routine is, the more stress hormones you are triggering in your body.
While you know you are just working out, your systems don’t know you aren’t running for your life. Because of that, your body will store as much energy as possible to keep you fueled in this dangerous situation. Energy is stored as fat. Therefore, your body is holding onto fat.
Exercises like cardio are good for keeping your heart healthy. It also boosts your metabolism but all good things in moderation. However, doing too much cardio or not pairing it with other kinds of exercise and a nutritious diet can eat away at your lean muscle mass instead of your fat. Longer bouts of cardio might actually make your body store fat for energy instead of burn it.
On average, you should jog for 20 minutes 3 to 4 days a week. If high-impact running won’t work for you, try walking instead. About 40 minutes 4 to 5 days a week will do the trick.
Low-Impact Exercise for Weight Loss
While you don’t have to exercise to lose weight, it is good for your body. On the other hand, high-impact exercises like running are extremely hard on a person’s joints. This can cause a lot of lingering pain and possible permanent damage.
Low-impact workouts keep pressure and pain off of joints while still burning calories and building muscle.
Here are some low-impact workouts to try instead:
- Walking
- Swimming
- Water Aerobics
- Bicycling
- elliptical
- Strength Training
Lose Weight Without Strenuous Exercise with Metabolism Reboot
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Learn about sustainable weight loss without extreme dieting or exercise with Metabolism Reboot. We teach you how to reboot your metabolism to promote permanent weight loss. Schedule a call to learn how to rebalance your hormones and reduce inflammation.