One of the things I like to do to spur me on in my continuing quest to loose weight and get fit is watch TV shows where people who are out of shape seek to get in shape. I find things like Biggest Loser can be very encouraging.
Having said that, I was watching the X-Weighted episode "Jill" from 2006 this afternoon while I did various administrative tasks, and I was very unhappy that the message they seemed to deliver at her mid-point weigh in was that it was her lack of exercise that was hindering her weight loss. Now she was the one who stated that first, but the trainer, Paul Plakus did not correct that view. Instead, he encouraged it by his response talking about how many calories (3500) she would need to burn to lose a pound.
The thing is, while exercise can and does help lose weight, the vast majority of a person's weight lose will be because of diet, not exercise. It all comes down to eating less calories than you use in a day. Exercise, when all is said and done, will contribute only be a small portion of that. Exercise gets you fit and strong.
My personal experience is that was true even for me back when I was on the various fad diets out there. The thing that made the difference was calorie consumption. If I controlled that I lost weight whether I was exercising or not. That is why most of those diets work be it the Atkins, South Beach or whatever. They all cut a persons calories consumed.
With that in mind in this episode of X-Weighted the person, Jill, was at the gym having a snack. Now the snack was an improvement on what she said she would have had before, but it was still rather high calorie for a "snack."
"What was that snack?" you ask. It was an apple, almonds and water.
While those are all healthy options, and are good for you, the almonds in particular are quite high in calories. It looked like she had about .5 to .75 of a Cup of almonds. That would mean just for the almonds (assuming dry roasted not salted) a calorie count of 412 to 618 calories. This assumes I estimated the amount of almonds correctly, and I was trying to be conservative in my estimate. Add a medium apple at about 95 calories and that snack come in at 507 to 713 calories. That is probably more than half the calories she should be eating a day if she wants to lose weight. By the way, it is more than most of the full meals I eat especially if the amount of almonds was closer to .75 of a Cup. I am guessing any of the calories she burned while on the stationary bike at the gym were replaced immediately with that "snack."
When she was disappointed with her weight loss, I can say based on what was shown, she was simply eating too much. A better snack would have been 2 apples and water or one apple and maybe and ounce of almonds. Better yet, if she could do it, just have the water with no "snack" at all.
The lessons from all this are pretty straight forward.
1) If you want to lose weight you need to know how many calories are in what you eat, and how many you want to eat per day or week. Without controlling your calories, you will not have significant weight loss.
2) Don't fall for the idea that exercise will make you lose weight quickly even if you don't take care of how much you eat. It simply won't happen. You will get more fit, a good thing in itself, but you will not get rid of the fat quickly with just exercise.
