Working Out Works!
By: Daniel Green
So many women still think that starving themselves is enough to initiate and maintain a weight-loss program, when in fact they are simply setting themselves up for disappointment and ultimate failure. Very few people are able to maintain a "starvation diet," since it by definition leaves the body wanting and unsatisfied, not to mention adversely affecting overall health and actually slowing down the metabolism (see
10 Ways To Increase Your
Metabolism). Dieting (or better yet, eating sensible and balanced meals) must be combined with cardiovascular and resistance training to be successful long-term.
Daniel Kirschenbaum, Ph.D., the director of the eating disorders program at Northwestern University Medical School, writes what should be obvious to everyone by now in his book The 9 Truths about Weight Loss: "exercising is critical for effective weight control." We are so used to hearing this by now that we may miss the real importance of that statement. Dr. Kirschenbaum is not writing about weight loss, but rather weight control, or the ability to lose weight and keep it off, which is where so many of us fail. Dr. Kirschenbaum goes on to provide a comparison of active and inactive individuals, offering a list of 50 benefits of exercise. Numbers 1 and 2, respectively: Increase weight loss and Improve maintenance of weight losses. In other words, to lose weight and keep it off you must combine sensible eating with exercise.
What many women leave out of this equation is strength training, which is an essential component of a positive lifestyle change. A strength-training program will help maintain or build muscle tissue, which becomes increasingly important as we get older. Don't be discouraged if you don't see immediate weight loss when you add a strength-training component to your workout. Because muscle is more dense than fat, you will look and feel healthier before these changes are reflected on the bathroom scale. Try instead to pay more attention to the way your clothes look and feel on your body as you add muscle tissue and erase unwanted fat.
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Daniel Green is the Managing Editor for the American Council on Exercise (ACE) and an ACE-certified Lifestyle & Weight Management Consultant. He is also a Contributing Editor to both ACE
Fitness Matters and ACE Certified News. Visit the ACE Web site at
www.acefitness.org.
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