Don’t Starve To Lose Weight (PART 2)

EXERCISE

Every diet requires exercise to be effective. It not only burns calories, but arise the efficiency of your gigantic calorie burners, the basal metabolic rate (BMR). Every day the body needs a certain amount of calories just to operate, even if we don’t move a muscle all day. The basal metabolic rate is the calories burned to pump blood, breathe, run the brain, process food, keep the body warm, etc. The astonishing thing is that this BMR for most people is about 75 percent of their total calorie expenditure – close to 1,500 calories. You’d need to run 15 miles to burn 1,500 calories! Many people burn only an additional 300 calories for a whole day’s activities (the equivalent of walking three miles).

Here’s the catch: If you diet, your BMR, which is the giant calorie consumer, will decrease. It is as though the body says itself, “Food shortage! Conserve calories!” The body turns down the “furnace.” Exercise tricks the body into keeping the furnace going full-blast even on fewer calories. The food shortage is ignored when you exercise, and your body burns calories left and right.

Most people will need to walk three miles per day to make this work. Any form of exercise will do. Try to find something which you enjoy: play tennis, ride a bike, go swimming, or work in your garden. Just find out how long it takes you to walk three miles, and then exercise that long each day. And you don’t have to exercise vigorously. You can even divide up your three miles throughout the day and you will burn the same number of calories. You can even exercise leisurely. Whether you run or walk that mile, slow or fast, the same number of calories will be burned.

What’s more, for about a day after exercise (and if the exercise is vigorous, the effect is greater) the BMR is even higher, giving you added help in controlling calories. Amazingly a sedentary person (very little exercise) will tend to have a larger appetite than one who has been exercising regularly.