Help! I Keep Exercising but the Weight Won’t Come Off.
Countless numbers of people are still busy working on their new year’s resolution to lose weight. Some are still having a tough time of it. One adjunct to any good weight loss program, besides eating fewer calories, is to burn more through an increase in activity. Yet many people find that, although they continue to exercise, the pounds are not melting away. How can this be?
It’s mathematics: It takes a certain number of calories (either eaten or burned) to make up a pound. This number is approximately 3500. If you eat 3500 calories more than you burn (such as I did over several days during my last vacation) you gain a pound. If you burn 3500 calories more than you eat, you will lose a pound. This happens over time: it’s nearly impossible to eat 3500 extra calories in one day and also nearly impossible to burn 3500 extra in one day working out.
So weight loss happens gradually: When you start cutting out 500 extra calories each day (a large caramel latte made with whole milk and topped with whipped cream, or a king sized snickers bar, or a super sized french fry order–you get the picture) you drop a pound by the end of the week. If you’re exercising to get the weight off quicker, what better result can you expect?
For strenuous activities–like jogging, aerobic dance, bike riding at 16-18 mph, or cross country skiing–you might burn 500-700 calories an hour. If you run 7 miles in an hour, that’s about 100 calories per mile. Do the math–this means it will take 35 miles of running to burn a pound off your body. Somehow, that just doesn’t seem fair! So many of you have started such great exercise programs–walking, weight lifting, cardio classes–and have not seen the results you want. But see it from an evolutionary perspective: If our ancestor cavemen were working hard hunting food (read: chasing wild animals) for a few hours each day, we wouldn’t have survived if it meant losing a pound every other day!
Then, what can we expect from exercise? It definitely helps keep the pounds off, as well as getting you in good cardiovascular shape, reducing stress, increasing muscle tone and flexibility, and in the long run your muscles will be burning more calories 24/7 than before you worked out routinely. Exercise really works more by keeping weight off and preventing weight re-gain after you lose, than it does to get the weight off initially. Consequently, that makes it a very important habit to establish even if you’re not getting what you want from it right now.
Don’t despair, the benefits are definitely there: For each mile you run (or walk–it just takes longer to walk it) you burn about 100 calories. If you’ve started to walk 2 miles a day on five days each week this will add up to 1000 calories burned weekly. You won’t notice a change on the scale right away, but at a third of a pound each week you’ll have melted off 10 pounds by mid-summer! And if you keep it up you’ll be 17 pounds lighter every year for walking less than 45 minutes a day.
Bottom line: Keep physically active for the many benefits to your health; eat less of the foods that aren’t contributing nutrition to your diet; and make these into good habits that will last a life time, so you won’t end up with the same old resolution next year!
photo credit: Ed Yourdon
Written by Laurie Beebe
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About The Author: Laurie Beebe has been a registered dietitian for 25 years and is certified in adult weight management. Laurie currently serves as a Related posts:
3 Comments
I have been working out a least 4 days a week 15 min on crosstrainer, then weights, then 30 min on crosstrainer or climber or treadmill. I have not lost any weight yet and it has been two months. I am somewhat discouraged.
ReplyI understand your frustration in not losing any weight–is it literally not ANY? A lot of times people answer, “Oh, yes, but just 3 pounds and that’s nothing!”
It certainly sounds like you should have lost 5 or 6 pounds from the activity you were doing but consider the following: Were you doing no exercise before and now you are consistently doing 4 days a week for an hour a day (or were you doing some before?); Did you change the way you eat at all (more hungry after working out? Drinking some type of protein shake? Giving yourself permission to eat a bit more since you are working out so hard?)
In order to lose weight there must be a balance struck between intake and output, of course.
Keep up the exercise because it’s GOOD for you (not just to lose weight) and in the long run it should definitely cause some weight loss; in the mean time if you were not exercising this means you would be gaining weight so it’s certainly doing some good.
ReplyAnd also consider that you may be gaining muscle tissue, which weighs more… are your clothes fitting better? If so then you ARE getting results!
Hey I totally understand that it is really irritating when you workout for so long and you don’t loose weight. But it is really ok, don’t get discouraged. I think you should get motivated and make your will strong that you will lose weight in any case. This will help you to do more workouts. You will definitely going to loose weight. All the best, god bless you!!!
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