The relationship between diet, exercise and weight loss isn't a simple one. Ultimately, however, without the appropriate diet, exercise is virtually useless for weight loss and without exercise, diet is only partially effective. The key is to balance things so that both diet and exercise promote two key fat loss ingredients - increased muscle growth and higher calorie requirements for body function and maintenance.
Now if you're a female, chances are that perhaps you read "increased muscle growth" and thought, "I don't want to get big muscles. I just want to lose fat!" I hear that all the time. If I mention to a woman that they should lift more weights, they retaliate and suggest that they aren't interested in getting muscle - they just want to tone. I first ask why they don't want muscle and then follow by attempting to hand them the truth - that muscle atrophy (ie big muscles, like those that you would see on bodybuilders) is incredibly difficult for women. And lifting weight for weight loss is not the same thing as lifting weight for significant muscle atrophy.
Now if you're a female, chances are that perhaps you read "increased muscle growth" and thought, "I don't want to get big muscles. I just want to lose fat!" I hear that all the time. If I mention to a woman that they should lift more weights, they retaliate and suggest that they aren't interested in getting muscle - they just want to tone. I first ask why they don't want muscle and then follow by attempting to hand them the truth - that muscle atrophy (ie big muscles, like those that you would see on bodybuilders) is incredibly difficult for women. And lifting weight for weight loss is not the same thing as lifting weight for significant muscle atrophy.
Now that this is clear, let's skip over to your body's calorie requirements. Have you ever spent a while on a treadmill or elliptical machine, looking incessantly down at the numbers, trying to churn out as many calories as possible? You get 100 calories, 200 maybe after an hour you hit 400... Still, that's generally less than a meal and more than likely a couple snacks through the week make that hour long treadmill session almost a waste of time. But beyond that, endurance activities such as running for an hour are not efficient. This is a huge point that I'd like to make, so read this next sentence well... Your goal when exercising should not be to burn calories. Your goal is to put your body into a state so that it will burn calories for you. Your goal is to workout your metabolism to make it a lean calorie burning machine.
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