Will Exercise Help Me Lose Weight Faster?

Losing weight is a goal of many.

Achieving weight loss isn’t as easy as it may sound. If you’ve ever attempted to lose weight, you’re likely well aware of the various obstacles that can get in your way.

It’s a goal that eludes many because of a lack of knowledge, effort, and discipline. Successfully losing weight requires a lot of consistency and the right approach. Many people don’t know the key to losing weight which keeps them from implementing effective strategies in their daily life.

In this article, you will learn whether or not exercise (or lack thereof) is holding back your weight loss efforts.

Will Exercise Help Me Lose Weight Faster?

Contents

1. What’s The Principle Of Weight Loss?

Answering whether or not exercise is going to help you lose weight can be difficult. The truth is, yes and no. To understand, you first need to know the principle behind weight loss. The key to losing weight has to do with putting your body at a caloric deficit.

Ideally, you want to do this while you also increase physical activity. However, the main thing you need to worry about when it comes to losing weight effectively is consuming fewer calories than you are burning daily.

You can probably see why the answer is “yes” and “no.” Yes, because adding exercise to your daily life will help you burn more calories. And “no,” because exercise alone will not get you to this point. There is no way to lose weight effectively and consistently if you aren’t going to reduce your consumption of calories through diet.

It would be challenging to maintain an unhealthy diet full of empty calories and continue to burn enough calories throughout the day on exercise.

2. How Does Exercise Help?

Exercise, while important, is not the definitive way to lose weight. Exercise is one of the most important things you can incorporate into your daily life to stay healthy. However, it’s not the primary key to losing weight effectively by itself. When done in combination with an optimized diet, you can get great results by adding exercise to your daily mix. However, if you are looking to lose weight fast, exercise alone isn’t going to cut it.

However, it’s also not going to hinder your weight loss efforts either. It will improve them with a well-optimized diet in place.

While studies show that exercise accounts for a small portion of daily caloric burn, it does account for something [1]. What you need to realize is that anything that puts you at a caloric deficit is beneficial to your weight loss efforts and goals.

Therefore, by default, it’s good for your weight loss goals. By adding more physical activity to your daily life through exercise, you will burn more calories and increase your metabolic rate. This is the rate at which your body burns fat.

Anything you can do to optimize this rate will be beneficial to helping you lose weight.

3. The Type of Exercise Matters

When it comes to losing weight, your goal is to burn as many calories as possible. Also, you want to add more muscle. The more muscle you have on your body, the more fat you burn.

Thus, you want to incorporate both cardiovascular and strength training exercises into your routine. Both of these things can contribute positively to your weight loss objectives.

The average person will burn around 100 calories per mile run [2]. While this is going to change depending on your body composition, it’s a good rule of thumb to live by. This will give you an estimate of how many calories you can burn by incorporating longer distance running into your daily exercise routine.

As you can tell, it’s going to be very difficult to burn a lot of calories to make up for a bad diet by running alone. This is why it’s so important to add dieting to the mix.

Otherwise, you will simply not be able to achieve the caloric deficit you need to effectively lose weight.

4. Exercise is Good For Your Health

This is something that you need to understand when you are trying to lose weight. While exercise may not directly contribute to much weight loss, it’s something you need to add to your routine no matter what.

The main reason is due to its impact on your general health.

The better you feel, the more weight you are going to lose. Keeping your spirits up and keeping you in a positive mindset is one of the most important things to losing weight. After all, it’s a long and tedious process.

A lot of people find themselves getting discouraged with the lack of quick results. Exercise is one of the best ways to boost your spirits and improve your overall health.

This alone can directly impact your ability to lose weight because you will find yourself having more energy throughout the day. Simply getting up and moving more can help you keep your muscles loose and keep your metabolism running high.

You are much more likely to do this when you are actively exercising daily.

5. Diet is More Important

Exercise certainly places a role in determining how quickly you lose weight. However, it’s not nearly what you need to focus on when it comes to improving your weight loss efforts. The majority of your focus should be on diet.

Diet is the single most important thing to determining your weight loss success or failure. Diet is so important because you cannot burn off those McDonald’s meals you are eating daily unless you are exercising non-stop. There is simply no way to burn off excess calories from consuming processed foods and empty calories.

You need to focus more on not eating certain foods than you do on incorporating more exercise into your daily life. Exercise is much more of a supplement to help improve your weight loss efforts.

It’s something you need to add when you reach a plateau of weight loss after the first couple of weeks. It’s always recommended to add exercise to your routine, but it’s not something you want to solely rely on.

Someone that has a well-optimized exercise routine but a poor diet is not going to lose more weight than someone with a well-optimized diet and who gets little to no exercise in their daily life.

6. Can I Lose Weight Without Exercise?

Yes, you can effectively lose weight without exercise. Is it recommended? No. Losing weight is hard enough as it is. You don’t want to make things harder by stacking the odds against you. While it’s entirely possible to lose weight without running every day, it doesn’t mean you should be avoiding cardio or strength training.

Exercise is a good way to boost your weight loss efforts. It’s not something you want to entirely rely on, but it’s something you want to incorporate into a consistent weight loss routine.

How To Lose Weight Without Exercise

Count Calories

The most important thing you need to do when you are looking to lose weight is figuring out how many calories you are taking in daily. This is essential if you want to achieve any weight loss whatsoever.

You will not lose weight if you are consuming more calories than you are burning. This makes counting caloric consumption a must for anyone. After all, you could find yourself on a good diet, but consuming too many calories daily.

You will wonder why you aren’t losing weight.

The reason isn’t that the diet is ineffective, it’s because you are consuming too many calories. Counting your calories has been made much easier with calorie counting applications you can use on your mobile devices.

Track Your Caloric Burn

This is a good way to ensure you are putting yourself in a caloric deficit for successful weight loss. You want to get yourself a fitness tracker. This will help you figure out how many calories you are burning so you can calculate whether or not you have achieved a calorie deficit daily.

Focus On Improving Your Diet

Not only do you want to count your calories, but you need to focus on improving your diet. Adding more whole foods to your diet that are nutrient-dense is one of the easiest ways to prime your body for successful weight loss.

You want to consume more foods that are going to fill you up. A lot of people get in trouble with late-night snacking or consuming snacks in between meals. You can completely negate these things by adding more whole foods and filling foods to your diet.

You will feel hungry less often which can keep you from overconsuming calories.

Drink More Water

Believe it or not, a lot of people eat when their body is telling them to drink water. These signals can get crossed up.

This can result in you consuming more calories than your body needs. By drinking more water throughout the day, you can keep your body from signaling dehydration and you mixing it up with being hungry.

Consume More Fiber

Fiber is a good thing to get into your diet if you want to eat less. While it doesn’t have magical weight-loss powers, it can positively impact your weight loss efforts. Fiber is one of the most filling things you can get in your diet [3].

The more fiber you get in your diet, the more full you will feel. Likewise, it can help your digestive system too. Thus, it’s healthy to get into your diet no matter what.

So, Will Exercise Help Me Lose Weight Faster?

Yes and no. Exercise is not going to hurt. It’s certainly not going to detract from your weight loss efforts unless you are consuming more calories because of it. If you consume a huge pizza and work out to “burn off” the excess calories, it doesn’t work like that.

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You won’t be able to make up for a bad diet with your exercise. Because of this, you don’t want to rely on it solely. To achieve weight loss, you need to focus more on your diet. Your diet will be the main contributing factor that decides whether or not you lose weight successfully. Try to figure out what diet works best for you. Ideally, you want a diet that you can implement consistently.

Something that isn’t too restrictive is much more sustainable and practical.

A restrictive diet is one that you will be more likely to stray away from. Once you have your diet sorted, you can start to implement exercise into the mix. However, it’s best to use it as a supplement to your diet efforts for the reasons stated above.

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