You will probably never have the kind of body you want if you do not exercise. Diet alone will not do it.
A few of my patients who refused to exercise did reach their goal weights, but still didn‘t like how they looked. They were not very overweight, but their bodies were still flabby, puffy in places, and dimpled with cellulite. Their skin seemed to hang on them like a suit that didn‘t fit, and they just didn‘t have that shining spark of vitality that only exercise can ignite. Even these patients, though, were better off than most patients who refused to exercise. As a rule, when people have failed to exercise, they have failed to reach the weight they want.
In a way, patients are lucky if they can’t lose weight without exercising, because that motivates them to do it — and then they reap the many varied rewards that exercise offers. When patients can lose weight without exercising, it ultimately works against them. For example, I had a food reaction patient a few years ago, Lila, who was about 20 pounds overweight and reached her goal weight without exercising. She was 48 years old and had been sedentary most of her life. Unfortunately, though, she looked much older than 48, even after she‘d lost her extra weight. Her skin was slack and without lustre, and she was often tired and depressed. Her arms weren’t fat, but the flesh under her upper arm was loose and floppy. I tried to talk her into exercising, but she told me she didn‘t need to. She was wrong. She badly needed exercise. There’s much more to having an attractive body than just being able to fit into a small dress size.
A more typical patient who refused to exercise was Rick. He’d been an athlete in college and seemed to think that gave him a free pass on ever again having to work out. Rick lost most of the 30 pounds that he’d hoped to, but he kept the weight off for only a few months.
Without the balancing effect of exercise, the False Fat Diet is notably less effective. The False Fat Diet was designed as a comprehensive, complete programme, and when patients try to pick and choose just the parts of the programme that they like, as Rick did, they seriously undermine the entire programme. The False Fat Diet is a health promoting programme with the motto of: ‘If you strive for thin, you’ll never win. Strive for health, and thin will follow.’ Rick just strived for thin — and he didn‘t win.
Exercise has four primary effects that fight fat, and several secondary effects.
The primary effects are:
1. Exercise burns calories. A fast walk or slow jog for 30 minutes burns about 300 calories. If you do this every day, you’ll burn about 2,100 calories each week. This is enough to oxidize two-thirds of a pound of fat. Therefore, if you exercise 30 minutes each day, you’ll burn the equivalent of about 35 pounds of fat each year.
2. Exercise increases metabolic rate. Exercise can change a slow, inefficient metabolism into a faster metabolism, which burns fat even during inactivity. Every time you exercise, your metabolism stays revved up for several hours. This effect can burn almost as many calories as exercise itself.
3. Exercise adds muscle, and muscle burns extra calories. The normal metabolic actions of muscle tissue require extra calories for energy, even when the muscles aren’t being used. This is one of the primary reasons that it’s easier for men to stay thin than it is for women. Men naturally have more muscle mass than women, and because of this, they burn approximately 10-20 per cent more calories at rest than women do.
4. Exercise helps control insulin levels — and high insulin levels increase fat storage. Exercise can even help to control blood sugar levels without the help of insulin.
As you can see, these four factors are every bit as important as caloric restriction.