If You Want to Stay Slim, Fitness is the Key
Posted by Christian Aguirre on Wed, Sep 09, 2009 @ 01:37 PM
Eating Well is Important for Weight Loss
What you eat plays a significant role in how your body looks. The National Weight Control Registry collects data from more than six thousand participants who have lost a significant amount of weight and kept it off for an extended period of time. Generally, the participants have lost seventy pounds and maintained this accomplishment for 7 years.
James O. Hill, who is the director of the University of Colorado's Center for Human Nutrition, is a cofounder of this registry. Three common trends he's found among the participants are they pay attention to overall calories, minimize their fat intake and eat breakfast on a daily basis. All three of these trends show the importance of eating well in order to permanently change your body.
However, Eating Well Isn't the Only Piece of the Weight Loss Puzzle
It's important to note that Hill has also found that most of the participants do a significant amount of physical activity. A popular marketing tactic for diet books is to bill them as ways to lose weight without ever stepping foot in a gym. While this approach can result in short-term weight loss, the findings of the National Weight Control Registry show that fitness does play an important role in making a permanent change to your body. Hill backed up this point when he told a WebMD interviewer that while weight loss can be achieved through only eating less, exercise is an absolute must for keeping weight off.
One of the reasons exercise is vital for maintaining the body you want is because restricting your calories isn't sustainable forever. Hill states that eating 1,200 to 1,400 calories a day works well for weight loss. However, he explains that most people can only do this for a few months at most. Regardless of your motivation to lose weight, sooner or later you're going to hit a point where you feel you need more calories.
While this may seem like bad news, as long as you are also focused on fitness, increasing your calories to a reasonable level won't cause your weight to skyrocket.
Yes, Daily Exercise is Possible
Once you accept that getting exercise in San Francisco plays a key role in avoiding the typical lows and highs of dieting, your next question is likely how much exercise you should get. Your goal should be sixty to ninety minutes of exercise a day.
Before you dismiss that as impossible, keep in mind this is just your goal. It doesn't mean you're going to perfectly follow that schedule from Day 1. It means that's where you want to set your sights.
The good news about this goal is it's easier than it initially seems. Your daily exercise doesn't need to be all at once. For example, you can take a morning or evening walk around one of your favorite San Francisco locations. You can also try a boot camp or personal training session several times a week. By making small fitness changes and continuing to build on them, you can create and sustain the type of body you want.
