You buy a treadmill, haul it home, assemble it and jog on it faithfully for 30 minutes a day for seven days. You also ditch your sugary sodas, eat oatmeal for breakfast and pass up steak in favor of chicken at your favorite restaurant. At the end of the week, you hop on the scale and discover you haven't lost a single ounce. Why aren't exercise and diet working for you?
Expectations
Before you turn the treadmill into a clothes rack and order an extra-pepperoni pizza with extra cheese, consider changing your expectations about weight loss and your approach to exercise and diet. Despite what magazine headlines and late-night infomercials promise, effective weight loss demands more than a seven-day or six-week commitment. Your jogging efforts would help you lose a pound every two weeks, depending on your pace and starting weight. Cutting 500 calories a day from your diet could help you shed an additional pound every week, putting you on track to lose 40 lbs. in six months through moderate diet and exercise.
Long-term Thinking
Exercise is an effective weight loss tool, but it is not a quick-fix solution, according to John Jakicic, assistant professor of health and physical and recreational education at the University of Pittsburgh School of Education. He says 30 minutes of daily exercise may be enough to promote health but 60 minutes is needed to achieve weight loss. And, if you approach exercise and weight loss as long-term goals, you don't have to pursue the most rigorous choices. A mile's worth of walking, for instance, can burn 300 to 450 calories an hour. In a year's time, you could lose 30 to 45 pounds by walking briskly for an hour every day.
Exercise and Weight Gain
Timothy Church, professor at the University of Louisiana, conducted a study published 2009 in PLoS One, that found that women who exercised for 194 minutes a week did not lose more weight than those who exercised for 72 or 136 minutes a week. Some women in the study gained weight. Church said the women who gained weight may have eaten more than usual, either because they felt hungrier after exercising or because they believed exercising offsest a higher caloric intake.
Understanding Portions
Confusion about serving sizes can also hamper your weight reduction efforts. If you order a steak at a restaurant, you may receive a piece of meat that weighs 8, 12 or 16 oz. None of these choices represents a single serving of protein. The smallest steak equals four portions and the largest eight, according to the Mayo Clinic. Similarly, the mound of pasta served for dinner at your favorite Italian restaurant could represent a day's worth of carbohydrates. When planning meals to lose weight, review sample menus and check portion sizes.
Exercise and Diet Combined
Exercise and diet produce results in tandem, according to a Harvard University study reported in 2009 in "Obesity Reviews." T. Wu and other researchers examined more than 40 years of clinical trials that examined the effects of weight loss programs. In programs that lasted between six months and two years, Wu found people who exercised lost significantly more weight that people who relied on calorie-cutting alone. In a study conducted by M.J. Franz, the combination of exercise and reduced-calorie diets produced results superior to including only exercise or only dieting in a weight loss program. The "Journal of the American Dietetic Association" published Franz's findings in 2007.
References
- Mayo Clinic: Mayo Clinic Diet
- "Biotech Business Week"; Scientists at Harvard University, Department of Nutrition Target Weight Loss; (NO BYLINE) May 25 2009
- "Biotech Business Week"; Reports on Weight Loss Findings from M. J. Franz and Co-Researchers Provide New Insights; (NO BYLINE); Nov. 12 2007
- Guardian: Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin
- "The Gazette"; Excess Weight is Hard to Shake; Jill Barker; May 13 2003
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