Why Exercising Can Quickly Go Pear Shaped

It is common for people wanting to control weight and in particular reduce their body fat to join a gym, play more sport or ramp up an exercise plan. This is generally a good decision, but why do people often find that the harder they work they either see no change in their weight and percentage body fat or worse their weight increases? Then being discouraged by poor or negative results they ditch their regular exercise only to see that their weight continues to go pear shaped - literally. The reasons and common steps are:

1. Exercising is great but will naturally create more demand for fuel and cause a greater desire for more food due to increased hunger and feeling the need to eat larger portions at mealtimes.
2. Without good nutrition we will usually pump in more of the same foods with high sugars, carbs and fat content with far greater calorie content than the calories we burn during the exercise.
3. The good thing is our cardiovascular fitness and strength can improve steadily but on the negative side we see a maintenance or worsening of our weight situation and our fat stores can increase.
4. Then we stop exercise through discouragement but are now accustomed to having larger meal sizes and don't cut down which leads to a rapid burst of weight and fat gain until our body reaches relative equilibrium.
5. The end result being heavier with more body fat than when we began :(

So should we not exercise? NO! - exercise and activity is an essential ingredient to achieving our heath goals and especially for weight management but exercise alone contributes only about 30-40% of weight control where good nutrition contributes the larger 60-70% portion. So what can we do?

1. Develop and implement a healthy nutrition plan low in processed foods, fats and sugar and high in protein and fibre before you launch into a new exercise regime.
2. Learn the real demands your body needs in your normal day to day activity and meet those demands with good nutritious and nourishing food that is particularly high in protein such as eggs, lean chicken, turkey, fish, lentils and nuts - especially almonds!
3. Get into the habit of drinking more water - work up to 8 glasses a day. Your body metabolism will improve and you will feel fuller and desire less food.
4. Begin your exercise plan and adjust your calorie intake up to meet it especially by increasing your mid morning and mid afternoon meals being careful to not to increase the sizes of your regular breakfast, lunch and dinner.
5. A combination of great nutrition and varied moderate impact exercise which is well monitored will help you to meet your health goals.

By the way what are your health goals?

Make a list and if you need help - ask your impact health coach for help!

PEAZ!
John