Good question! As a personal trainer and health coach, I specialize in working with women over 40. Like me! And so far they’ve all come to me because they want to lose weight with exercise. This isn’t surprising considering the fact that over 73% of Americans are now overweight or obese. But how hard is it to lose weight with exercise alone? Let me tell you about that.
The first thing I notice when I start working with a client is that they realize pretty quickly how hard it is! When you’re new to exercise it takes extra effort to move all those body parts that you haven’t been using much. Getting them used to that again is really tough!
So to answer that question: YES, you can lose weight with exercise alone! But it’s a lot harder and takes more time than most people imagine. So it’s not an ideal solution to a weight problem.
Most people think it’s going to be easy to just pick up where they left off years earlier. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. You got yourself into a hole you now need to claw your way out of. After that, you can start working out at a level that will really burn some calories and build muscle.
In this article, I want to help you understand why it’s so hard to lose weight with just exercise, especially in the beginning. So let’s start with why exercise is so helpful for weight loss.
Why we should exercise for weight loss
Exercise is important for weight loss for many reasons. The simple act of moving burns calories while we’re doing it. And ultimately that’s what we need. But by building muscle through strength training we can continue to burn calories long after we’ve quit exercising.
That’s not to say that strength training is more important than cardio. I’m saying that it’s equally important. So let’s look at how the two forms of exercise help us in different ways.
Cardio for weight loss
Let’s focus first on aerobic exercise (a.k.a. cardio) and how it helps us to lose weight.
Our bodies need energy in order to move and that “energy” comes from the calories we ingest. If we don’t move enough our bodies don’t use all the calories we take in and they get stored as fat instead. But any time you’re moving you’re using up that stored fat. So if you move more you’ll lose more!
You should also know that any low-intensity endurance activities use stored fat for energy, which is what we want. But the more intense the movements are the more calories (and fat) we’ll burn overall. For instance, walking is great, but running is even better!
If you’re stuck with a sedentary job or lifestyle, then set a timer to remind yourself to get up every hour for 3 minutes and just do some form of movement. Get up and go to the bathroom, walk the stairs, go fill up your cup with plain water, or go get the mail. Do anything to just move more throughout your day and you’ll burn off more fat.
So like I said, moving more every day is helpful, but moving more intensely will help you a lot more! This is difficult in the beginning because if you haven’t been exercising for a while you’ve become “deconditioned” so you can’t work out very intensely.
Being “deconditioned” means your cardiovascular system and your muscles have all greatly decreased in strength. In other words, you’re “out of shape”! This makes it hard for you to start back up again at anything other than a low intensity which means you’ll get results, it’ll just take a while. But that’s why we call it “training”.
But you have to start somewhere. So do what you can as often as you can and you’ll gradually build up more strength with each workout.
Strength training for weight loss
Strength training is immensely important for weight loss! Muscle is active tissue and it uses more calories than fat does to function. So the more muscle you have the more calories you’ll burn overall. Think of strength training as your long-term calorie-burning strategy.
But keep in mind that your goal for weight loss is to lose fat, not lean mass (a.k.a muscle). So if you do just cardio and no strength training you won’t build much muscle and you’ll mostly only burn calories while you’re working out. Having more muscle is what helps speed up your overall metabolism.
So just remember that the more muscle you have the more calories you’ll burn even when you’re not working out. That’s kind of motivating, isn’t it?! So a combination of cardio and strength training is your best bet for burning calories and keeping it up over the long run.
And my last point is that if you lose weight but don’t gain muscle, your body won’t look as firm. Don’t we all want that firm, or toned, look? That’s why you need muscle and strength training is how you get it.
How to lose a pound of fat
The general rule of thumb for how to lose a pound of fat in a week is to have a deficit of around 3500 calories. Read more here about why this is “general”. Things are always a little more complicated than they seem on the surface but this is an article, not a book!
We know that our bodies are all different and they each respond to things in their own way. There’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to weight loss. This example just gives you a more realistic idea of what it takes to lose weight.
So getting back to my point, 3500 breaks down to 500 calories each day. This is the deficit we want to shoot for to lose about a pound in a week. But how do we get that deficit?
We get some of it with exercise because as I said the more we move the more calories we burn. But we can also reach that deficit more quickly by reducing calories from food or drinks. I’ve noticed that people don’t like this idea very much! Most people want to work out so they can eat as much of, and whatever types of food they like.
Nobody wants to eat less and to be honest, you don’t have to. What you need to do is to eat better. Most Americans are eating foods that are high in calories but low in nutrients. So we’re getting bigger and less healthy because we get nothing good out of so much of what we’re ingesting.
The other problem is that those foods that are higher in calories also don’t tend to fill us up much. So we eat them but we want to keep eating because our hunger is still not satisfied. We need to find foods that actually satisfy our hunger, not just our cravings.
Read labels to help cut calories
I’ve said this many times before and even wrote this article on it. You must start reading labels on the foods you eat in order to make better choices! When you do this you can start finding substitutes that are lower in both fat and sugar and therefore calories.
Most of our extra fat and calories (salt and sugar too) come from processed and restaurant foods. If you eat more natural foods then you’ll naturally ingest fewer calories but get many more helpful nutrients. And you need those nutrients for overall health and energy.
Here’s an example of a swap-out you could do to reduce fat and calories and get more nutrition:
This is just one small example that can make a big difference over time. The idea is to just start cutting down on calories wherever you can so your body stores less. If you ate an apple every day for lunch at work instead of a bag of chips you would save yourself 150 extra calories in a week. And that’s just one simple change.
You might also want to think about the fact that the apple will fill up your belly better than the chips will. After eating the chips you’ll still feel hungry and want more to eat. If you eat the apple, the bulk of it and the fiber in it will satisfy your hunger much longer.
And besides all that, what would you drink with those chips? A pop? Because anything with sugar would taste great with potato chips! Then you’ve got those calories to deal with too. We need to start asking ourselves if we’re hungry or just craving junk because of our mood or habits.
Once you start reading labels, it’s amazing how many little changes you can make that add up big over time. Think about all the drinks you consume throughout your day. How many calories are in each of those? You have to pay attention to labels and make healthier choices if you want to lose weight and feel better.
Calories burned with exercise
Now I’m taking out the big guns! This information is an eye-opener for most people. We tend to think that we’re really burning a lot of calories with things like household chores, gardening, or walking leisurely for 15 or 20 minutes.
How many times do you hear someone say “I cleaned my house so I got my exercise for the day!”? Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. To lose weight with exercise alone takes a lot of work!
Here are some examples of calories burned during 1 hour of various physical activities for a 160 lb person listed at Mayoclinic.org.
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- Low-impact aerobics 365 calories
- Bicycling leisurely (<10 mph) 292 calories
- Ballroom dancing 219 calories
- Elliptical machine, moderate-intensity 365 calories
- Walking at 3.5 mph 314 calories
- Running at 5 mph 606 calories
These are just estimates, it’s hard to know exactly how many calories each of our bodies will burn. You would have to go through some serious testing with some very smart people to find out how quickly your body burns calories! But it gives you an idea of how much time and effort it takes to burn 500 calories.
I’m also stressing that 1-hour time frame because most people won’t engage in these activities for a full hour. You might bike for an hour if you’re serious about it, but the other activities will likely only last half an hour at most. So remember to divide the list of calories burned by the time you actually worked out!
If you want a simple calculator to find out how many calories you could be burning with different activities, click here.
Now is it making more sense how exercise alone is difficult for achieving weight loss?
My final thoughts
You can lose weight without doing any exercise at all. Many people have done it before. You can also lose weight with exercise alone and you can find many examples of this too. But you’ll lose more weight and faster if you combine both exercise and better eating habits. Plus, it’s healthier and more sustainable.
I hope you’re learning that your body will feel and look better by combining both exercise and healthy eating habits. Exercise is good for you for many more reasons than just burning calories. Strong bodies last longer and are able to do more throughout life than weak bodies.
If you want independence long into your senior years, then exercise is a must for that goal. But if you want to avoid disease and not be on 10 different pills as you age, then healthy eating is the answer. If you do one without the other then you’re just making your life more difficult.
But remember that nutrient-filled food is what will fuel your body with the energy you need to exercise. I’m always hearing people complain about not having enough energy to exercise. It’s all those nutrients in natural foods that God created that make us feel good enough to want to move more.
I hope this pulls everything together for you on how you can lose weight easier with exercise and healthy eating. Start with small changes and they will all add up over time. You’ll end up happier and healthier by focusing on your overall health rather than just exercise alone.
Related article: Eat foods without labels!