Whole & Healthy

Can You Lose Weight Through Exercise Alone?
This and other evidence has dispelled the popular canard that you cannot lose weight with exercise alone. Various types of exercise consume varying numbers of calories. In fact, with an increasing consumption of calories and with your regular diet, you can lose a definite and anticipated amount of weight.

Another medical study further confirms this. A group of impecunious college men was offered generous sums of money provided they kept their weight constant. They were neither to lose nor to gain. The caloric content of their diet was then altered. First, the students were placed on a low calorie diet. On this diet the students discovered that they had to limit their activity to avoid losing weight. Then the diet was upped to 6,000 calories.

Now the students had to exercise frantically to keep from gaining weight. They ran, they rowed, and they did exercises-and their weight remained constant. Exercise and weight are inseparably related. People who lie around on weekends doing nothing have already discovered this as they sadly read the scales on Monday morning.
Doubtlessly you have heard that you would have to chop wood for five hours to lose a pound. Or walk for seven hours to accomplish the same result. The implication is that no one in his right mind would chop wood or walk for hours on end for such a paltry reward. These figures are accurate as far as they go.

However, a second look at these statistics is revealing. If a pedestrian walked at a good clip for thirty minutes four times a week, he would consume about 1,000 or more calories, which equals almost a pound of body weight. In a week he would have lost a pound with no diet at all. In a year he would have gone down about fifty pounds, a weight loss with no diet. Any other type of exercise fits the same logic.

Another factor in caloric expenditure is just now receiving medical attention. This is the difference in grace and efficiency of motion between obese and lean individuals. The postulate is that obese people perform a given task with more grace and efficiency, thus burning up fewer calories, while lean persons are perhaps less fluid in their motion, requiring more calories. For example, it is possible that an obese person walking down the street slithers along with very little effort. His lean companion is a bit more gawky and awkward, using more calories to go the same distance. These empirical observations, however, need more medical corroboration.

Exercise, not diet, is the easiest and most predictable way to lose weight. Medical evidence shows that optimum weight loss proceeds at approximately two pounds per week. At this rate the dangers of depression and the chances of long-range success achieve a balance which tilts in favor of the patient. Moreover, contrary to popular belief, exercise destroys diet. The old notion is that if you exercise more your appetite increases and you eat more. No athlete I know can sit down after a vigorous workout and eat. It is not possible.