Just read a fascinating article about weight loss and exercise. The conclusion drawn by the author, after reviewing various sources in the literature and speaking to experts in the field, was that exercise may be making us fat. Huh?! How can that be? Well, turns out one of the reasons is that exercise, especially high intensity exercise, stimulates our appetite. At the same time, amazingly,  it weakens our self-control. So when we finish with a particularly harsh workout, we typically eat more calories than we burned (also assuming we didn’t load up on sports drinks during the bout).

Makes sense to me. I know I am always famished after a good workout. As a trainer, I’ve always been curious about the discrepancy between food consumption and exercise expenditure after seeing so few calories burned on the digital screen of my cardio machine and then knowingly eating far more calories after the workout. This imbalance has always bugged me. Now I understand that it wasn’t just my poor math skills.

So, what about all those benefits about exercise cited in the literature? Turns out they’re all true but exercise was never succinctly defined. We don’t need to kill ourselves in our workouts to get those benefits–just move more. In fact, the article concluded that moving more throughout the day was more beneficial than having a hard workout and then sitting around. It astutely pointed out that after we work out hard, we feel entitled to a little rest  or splurge on a special treat for ourselves which counters all the hard work we just endured. Best to keep it light to moderate throughout the day. This does not stimulate our appetite as much and keeps our willpower tuned up while still burning calories.

What the article didn’t touch on was the connection between exercise and metabolism—our body’s rate and/or ability to burn calories just to maintain daily function–and how that is affected with exercise and/or diet. Exercise and proper diet can boost our metabolic rate and therefore, calorie burning. The converse is true as well.  Also let’s not forget genetics. Let’s face it, Roseanne Barr is never going to look like Megan Fox.  She’s just not built the same genetically and so must work within her  genetic morphology. This is, I believe, where a personal trainer can really be of some help by guiding a client to the exercises that will offset their weaknesses and build upon their strengths.

The bottom line seems to be moderation in diet and exercise will get you where you need to be–depending on what your “needs” are. A difficult concept to swallow in a world where extremes get all the attention.

I’m training for my first marathon and have been reading a great book, The Non-Runner’s Marathon Trainer by David A. Whitsett, Forrest A. Dolgener, and Tanjala Mabon Kole. In it they state that, “… running a marathon requires less than 1 pound of fat energy…”. I find this amazing! Less than 1 pound of fat burning for 26.2 miles of running?!

To me, this emphasizes that fat-burning and, consequently, weight loss is about striking a balance between the triad of  resistance training, cardio, and calorie consumption. Just doing a lot of cardio won’t cut it. Nor will exclusively focusing on resistance training or calorie management. Our bodies are designed to be healthy, and eliminating any one of these disciplines would not meet the criteria of a balanced training regimen.

We’ve all known people, however, who have a tendency to bulk up even with a little weight training. Conversely we’ve also met people who couldn’t bulk up without extreme changes to their diet and exercise program.  Of course, genetics plays a large role, but this emphasizes even more the importance of  balancing the three prongs of the fat-burning triad.

Some people will need to focus more on cardio and less on resistance training or visa versa. Others will need to focus more on caloric intake or perhaps further breaking this down to the sources of those calories. But to exclude one of these processes altogether would be a detriment to weight-loss goals.