Out Exercise a Bad Diet? You’re Funny

Congratulations, after a living a considerable time of being over weight and out of shape you made the wise decision at the beginning of spring to do something productive about it. You did your due diligence with homework and found a great weight loss plan as well as an intensive exercise program to compliment the new diet. You absolutely rocked this new lifestyle and lost about 10 pounds in the first couple of weeks. Then you started becoming somewhat discouraged as the weekly weight loss began to slow down to only a pound or two a week. This rapid deceleration lasted for a couple of months before the losses really slowed to a turtle’s pace of only a pound or so a month. if even that much. Now, it is the end of summer, the kids are back in school, you exercise yourself to near death and the weight is stuck exactly where it was at the first week of June. It is at this point where you are totally exasperated and ready to just throw in the towel because you believe you did everything right, therefore you must be one who is genetically doomed to a life of obesity. What went wrong?

Plenty went wrong.

You did not know what it is that you did not know about successful weight loss and weight management.

The above scenario is one we have encountered many times from our clients and our readers who have contacted us for advice. It is a scenario that gets played out all across the globe among many of those who have decided to get their bodies down to a healthy weight while increasing their physical fitness. If this scenario fits you, it is not all of your fault being as there is so much conflicting information out there in regards to diet and physical fitness. Besides a huge plethora of information telling us “just do this, and don’t do that” from well meaning individuals, there is also an abundance of scam businesses putting out information that only serves to keep you coming back to them as a perpetual income stream. It is enough to make your head spin, we understand this. At David’s Way, our blog information will always be free for your use in order to get fit and healthy.

Note: we are in work now towards publishing e-books which will be sold in order to offset our overhead expenses for the blog. The blog will always be free to you, as our purpose is to help others first and foremost. Anything else, is and always will be, secondary.

Now, lets address why you are not losing weight despite your best efforts. Barring the possibility of any health or medical issues, I am going to first take a look at your dietary habits before addressing your exercise regimen.

DIET

• Do you know how many calories per day your body requires for healthy weight loss?
  1. If you do not know how many calories per day your body requires, you need to find this out before proceeding any further.
  2. You can simply consult our Calorie Counter Pro right in our blog menu to find this information out. This is 100% private. No one, not even we at David’s Way will know your information. We respect the privacy of all and are HIPAA compliant.
• Do you know how many calories per day you are consuming? Do you measure and track your daily intake in order to ensure you are eating the amount of calories per day your body needs?
  1. No matter what other weight loss sites and business might tell you, you had better be tracking your intake of food in some manner or another. If you do not track how much you consume, it is quite possible you are eating too much for your level of activity. Any that tell you that tracking is not necessary are likely going to keep you around for perpetual income.
  2. As much as you do not want to over eat when trying to lose weight, conversely, you do not want to under eat .
     • Under eating will cause your body to go into starvation mode which will both slow down your metabolism and cause you to lose lean muscle mass.
• Do you keep track of the macro-nutrients you consume? Do you know how much protein, complex carbohydrates and healthy fats your body requires for good health?
  1. At David’s Way, for weight loss we recommend a diet high in a variety of proteins, lower in complex carbohydrates and healthy fats.
     • By keeping your protein intake higher, you will feel satiated much longer than when you fill up on carbs.
     • Be sure that your consume a variety of protein sources to ensure you are getting a full profile of the 9 essential amino acids required by your body to repair and replace cells and muscle tissues.
     • We have different protein needs depending on the level and intensity of our physical fitness regimens. For instance as a strength trainer and endurance hiker, I consume at least 1 to 1.2 grams of protein for each pound of my body weight each day. For women who are strength trainers, I recommend .8 to 1 gram of protein per day. Those who are not involved in high intensity physical fitness regimens do not need this much. In fact, the recommendation for women is .62 grams per kilogram of body weight and .8 grams per kilogram for men. A 130 pound woman who is not very active might only need 37 grams of protein per day for good health, but a higher total is going to help her to remain satiated better between meals. Especially if she is also consuming healthy fats to go along with the protein. Fat also helps to keep you satiated longer.
     • Note: A big deal is made by some in regards to excessive protein turning to fat within the body. This is true. However, if you are tracking what you consume, this is not a concern as the same can be said for excessive carbohydrates. The point is to track and know how much you are eating and to not exceed the number of calories your body requires in a day. One gram of protein and one gram of carbohydrates both provide 4 calories to your body. I weigh 170 pounds and consume 2500 calories per day in order to maintain my weight. If I consume 1 gram of protein per each pound of my body weight, this equals 680 of my allotted 2500 calories for 27 percent. Even on my heavy lifting days when I might consume 200 grams of protein, this is still only 32 percent of my total calories coming from protein. With the hunger that comes from a heavy weight training session or a long distance hike, it is much easier to keep my calories under control with protein rather than carbohydrates. By tracking my total intake of calories and macro-nutrients I can properly fuel my body without taking it to an excess. This allows me to maintain my body fat percentage at 9 percent at 56 years old.
• If you are still consuming added sugar, simple carbohydrates without a fiber content, and processed foods, just stop it now. These foods will always keep you hungry as they have a direct impact on spiking your blood sugar and insulin levels. These foods will always keep you craving more.
  1. If you never had control over cravings for simple carbohydrates in the past, you are not likely to have control over them in the present, nor the future.  Simple carbs added together with exercise only means you are likely to end up craving more carbs.
  2. Who am I to tell you to not eat sugar, simple carbs, and processed foods when other weight loss business such as Weight Watchers specifically says you can still eat them?  Consider this, I am not charging you anything for my advice. Others such as Weight Watchers will charge you a monthly membership fee while they know that my advice is the truth. Yet, by telling a sugar addict they can continue eating sugar laden foods, they know that you will be a perpetual income stream to them. I make nothing off of your readership while they make anywhere from $20 to $40 per month off of each of their 100,000 plus members. With this kind of revenue, you can bank on the fact they have nutritionists and scientists under their employment that also know the truth about simple sugars and their role in keeping you over weight or obese.
• Ensure that your diet is well rounded between a variety of protein sources, vegetables and fruits. Ensure that your dietary habits provide with the protein and a full amino acid profile as well as the vitamins and minerals you need for good health and vitality.
• Last word on diet, although there is more which could be said. Let’s assume that everything about your diet is spot on point. You are tracking your calories and macro-nutrients. Your diet is nutritionally well rounded and you still can not lose weight no matter how much you exercise. My question to you is:
  1. Have you adjusted your caloric intake with your actual needs since beginning your weight loss journey?
  2. Are you aware that you have to adjust your caloric needs downward as you lose weight, even if you exercise?
     • If you are a 250 pound female who stands 5′ 2″ and want to lose 120 pounds down to 130 pounds, your caloric needs are going to drop as your weight does. In fact, the calories it will take for a 250 pound woman to begin losing weight at a rate of 1 pound per week will equalize to where that same amount of calories will be what it takes for her to maintain her weight at 165 pounds if she went from being sedentary to moderately active over the course of her weight loss. Therefore, if you do not periodically adjust, you will plateau. This is why almost everyone who goes on a weight loss journey eventually stalls out with 30 pounds or less to go in order to meet their goal weight.

Exercise

Many people will underrate how much food they consume each day and overrate the intensity level of their exercise. Some will overrate their intensity because they simply do not know any better, and then some will do this in order to justify eating their sweet treats or whatever extra it is they feel they cannot live without. I have seen one instance on a weight loss social media site where an individual was tracking their calories burned for their basal metabolic rate as a part of their calories burned from exercise too. This kind of thinking is ignorance at best and pretty dumb at the worse. Another example is the ones who now count their daily house cleaning as exercise in order to increase their calorie allowance for the day. News flash: if those calories burned did not help you when you last month before you began your weight loss program, they are not sufficient enough to help you now.

• It takes 20 minutes at an aerobic level heart rate to burn through your body’s glycogen stores before you even begin to burn an ounce of fat.
• If your heart rate is not getting elevated to where it causes your breathing to become a little bit labored, you are at too low of an intensity to do your body much good. True, you are lapping the couch potato, but not by much.
• If you take your heart rate to the anaerobic level for a couple minutes of true high intensity, do not count your entire session as high intensity simply because, at a high intensity, you cannot hardly breath. If you cannot breath, you are not going to last more than a couple minutes at best. If you think you cannot breath, yet are able to keep moving at this intensity, you are still in a moderate intensity. Maybe you have not figured out what a true high intensity exercise is yet.
• If you use a tracking app for your calories and exercise, be honest as dishonesty only serves to hurt you.
• Your problem can also come from simply over doing it and not getting enough rest and recovery. Always remember that nutrition, rest and recovery are equally important to an exercise regimen as the actual exercise.

I know there are more points that can be made on this topic. If you care to elaborate on one, or address something not mentioned, please feel free to comment and or ask questions. We are always happy to correspond with our readers whether in our comments or through private contact through the blog menu. We hear from privately from readers pretty regular. Also, please feel free to make comments on our forum or create a topic of your own. We would truly like to see our forum begin to grow. Thanks and God bless.