Increasing physical activity contributes to healthy weight loss, if your caloric intake is also in line with your weight goals. However, increased exercise isn't the only strategy for weight loss, nor is it the most effective. Losing weight and maintaining weight loss over time depends on your making permanent changes to your lifestyle habits. Regular exercise makes a positive impact on your overall health, including your weight. Even so, your eating habits often play a more significant role in weight loss.
Food Facts
The quality and quantity of your diet strongly influence your ability to manage your weight. Restricting your caloric intake serves as a useful strategy for shedding pounds, but setting a healthy calorie target that you can stick with is equally important. Although a target as low as 1,000 calories for women and 1,200 calories for men is considered safe, you may not last long at this level if you stay hungry or feel deprived. If you opt to aim for the minimum, the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute suggests that you increase your calorie target by 200 calories if you constantly feel hungry.
Another strategy for setting a calorie target for weight loss is to identify how many calories it takes to maintain your weight using the calorie needs calculator provided online by the Baylor College of Medicine. Subtract 250 to 1,000 calories from your weight maintenance needs to produce weight loss, taking care not to dip below the minimum calorie recommendation.
Rate of Weight Loss
Changing your diet alone is enough to produce healthy, sustainable weight loss. If you establish a daily deficit of 500 calories, expect to lose approximately 1 lb. per week. Although a daily calorie deficit of 1,000 leads to a loss of about 2 lb. per week, this may prove difficult to manage on an ongoing basis without adding exercise. If you need 2,000 calories daily to maintain your current weight, for example, establishing a deficit of 1,000 calories solely through dietary restriction would limit your food intake to 1,000 calories a day. However, if you burned 200 calories daily through exercise, you could get the same weight loss results with a 1,200-calorie diet.
Options
Moderate changes to your diet and activity routine are the safest steps to healthy weight loss. You doctor may recommend a very low-calorie diet, medication or weight-loss surgery if your weight poses a significant health risk, but using over-the counter diet pills or severely restricting your food intake is not the answer to general weight-loss needs. Depend on a healthy diet to help you reach your goal weight, but note that exercise eventually needs to play a role in weight management if you want long-term results.
Considerations
Although calorie restriction often proves to be the most successful strategy for losing weight, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention explains that physical activity is the only proven method for maintaining weight loss. If you make exercise part of your weight-loss strategy, you'll improve your health and fitness while you work toward a healthy body weight. This strategy also gives you an edge once you reach your goal. When you make exercise and healthy eating a priority, you arm yourself with the tools you need to get healthy and stay healthy. If you have dietary or physical concerns due to health issues, work with your doctor to design an appropriate weight-loss program.
References
- U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Physical Activity for a Healthy Weight
- MayoClinic.com; Weight Loss: Better to Cut Calories or Exercise More?; Donald Hensrud, M.D.; June 2009
- National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute: Healthy Eating Plan
- Baylor College of Medicine: How Many Calories Do Adults Need?
- MedlinePlus: Tips for Losing Weight
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