Top 5 myths about weight loss Myth #2 You need lot of workouts to lose weight

Till the Middle Ages the earth was considered to be flat. Mankind has always been surrounded by many myths and continues to do so even despite science is giving us new insights every day. Weight loss science is no exception. In fact, it is nearly plagued by huge misconceptions. I believe the reason behind more myths prevailing in this space is people’s lack of study and true priority. Weight loss to a large population still needs no expertise. For lot many people it’s just eating less and move more. But with time, change in our lifestyle, eating pattern, busy schedule, weight loss needs deeper understanding and right knowledge. If we had been living in jungles or villages, we would not have bothered about these facts or myths. But in city life it needs deeper knowledge to address this rightly. Let us know about the 5 most popular dis-beliefs  which I find very prevalent in my conversation with people.

To help you allay these dis-belief I started series of my blogs. In my last blog I shared why all weight loss is not always healthy. In this blog I am sharing counter arguments against 2^nd biggest myth.

Myth # 2 You must work-out a lot for weight loss 

Exercise is a most over hyped phenomenon in weight loss. I don’t know from where this psyche came but it’s doing more harm to people than benefit. Probably it’s because fancy videos and photographs of the gym/workouts attracts and can easily become popular. I am not saying one should not do exercise rather I am saying it’s over hyped resulting in de-focus from other more important areas and unnecessary focus and craze on exercise only and that too in un-healthy and mis-guided ways. Want to find out how? If yes read on for exciting unfolding facts.

To find out the truth, let us first find out what causes unwanted weight gain in the first place? Weight gain is a function of many things that happen in body simultaneously. You can say weight gain is a function of hormonal function, calorie surplus, water retention, stress level. People normally oversimplify cause of obesity as calorie surplus. This notion originates from the equation Energy stored (fat) = Energy In – Energy out. That is the stored fat in the body is only dependent on amount of energy we consume in form of food minus the amount of calorie we burn.

Normally exercising is linked to burning calories to create calorie deficit in body. This thought process has 3 fundamental flaws. 

1. Calorie deficit is an important component of your weight loss, not the only component 
2. Your calorie deficit is not so simple mathematics. Mathematically its correct but practically its not true as we can not control ‘Energy in’ and ‘Energy out’ so simply. 
3. Exercise burns very few calorie and large part of calorie burning in your body is actually automatic depending on your metabolism (Basal metabolic rate – BMR)

Let us understand this one by one:-

• Calorie deficit is one of the component and not the only component in your weight loss: There are other much more important things on which your obesity is highly dependent and those are; your eating habits, sleeping pattern and stress level also. Because they in turn affects hormonal functioning in your body. These poor habits also slows down the metabolism of your body. Metabolism is the pace of energy consumption by your body. A healthy person will have healthy and good metabolism. Nd slower the metabolism higher the obesity.

• 

Your body weight is hugely dependent on hormonal functions in your body. Let us see what are the important hormonal functions that causes obesity. The fat storage in our body is lot    dependent on insulin level in your body. Higher the level of insulin higher the conversion of    energy into fat. In turn Insulin levels in our body depends on many factors. Important among those are our carbohydrate intake and stress level. Higher stress raises cortisol (stress hormone) level in our body and that in turn pushes pancreas to produce more insulin. Then again improper sleep raises cortisol level and again triggers same insulin cycle. Higher cortisol also causes craving and thus triggering emotional eating. Improper sleep also causes higher levels of hunger hormone ‘Ghrelin’ and triggers overeating triggering same insulin cycle. So to un-gain weight (read weight loss) you need to reverse these hormonal function. In simple words eating well (low carbohydrate and proper protein with sufficient micro nutrients and fiber), sleeping well and thinking well all three are much more important before focusing on exercise.

• Your calorie deficit is not so simple mathematics. Mathematically its correct but practically its not true as we can not control ‘Energy in’ and ‘Energy out’ so simply. You can control input of energy in your body to an extent (by keeping control on your food intake) however your body will use that energy is not in your control. Its automatically done by body. Body has thousands of functions and mechanism to store and consume energy. With same calorie intake to human beings body can behave differently in storing fat,  consuming energy and deploying energy for various functions. Therefore it’s a complete fallacy that you calorie in and calorie out is a simple mathematics of food you consume minus your physical activity.

Exercise burns very few calorie and large part of calorie burning in your body is actually automatic depending on your metabolism (Basal metabolic rate – BMR); Even then you still wants to mange your calorie by eating less and exercising more, another fact is going to bust your plans. ‘ Exercise burns very few calorie. You need to do exercise a lot to create a meaningful deficit for weight loss’.Bulk of energy burnt by your body is due to BMR. Basal metabolic rate – Energy burnt by your body for natural automatic functions like breathing, heart rate, temperature maintenance of body etc. This much energy would be burnt even when you are sleeping. Your physical activity burns only 20% no matter how hard you exercise. 

To give you a perspective 2 slices of pizza contains 560 cal which can be burnt theoretically by 65 minutes of cycling. To lose one kg weight you need to create a deficit of approx. 7700 cal which can be burnt by 15 hours of cycling..! 

My key intention to highlight this is not to discourage you to  take exercise but to encourage you to develop right perspective for exercise. Exercise should be done to be healthy, active and flexible not to burn calorie because that would counter productive. Over exercising may lead to muscle loss and decline in health and wrong focus will devoid you from results and motivation. So key conclusion is to focus on healthy eating, sleeping, thinking and then exercise. One should not over emphasize on workout. Its good, its healthy but only moderately with good food, good sleep and good thinking…!