Screw Exercise When You're Obese

Do you know how hard your body is working all the time, just being fat?  Sitting still you’re working hard enough to put yourself in an early grave.  Deciding it’s time to lose weight and starting some Boot Camp to do it?  Suicidal.

They say that every extra pound you weigh puts four extra pounds of strain on your knees.  All that fat is putting strain on your heart, lungs, muscles, joints, and bones.  Talk to fat people about their feet.  Hear any stories of plantar fasciitis, orthopedic inserts, fallen arches, walking fractures, and just general pain?  Have any of these yourself?

You’ve been living your life at some baseline activity level.  For some, this is the sofa and a scooter to get around at the grocery store.  For some, it’s a minimally active life, parking close to your destination, wearing comfortable shoes, and avoiding events that involve a lot of standing.  For some, it’s 75-minute step classes three times a week and mountain biking on the weekends.

It doesn’t matter what your baseline activity level is – just leave it alone when you start your diet.  Change your eating habits.  Don’t put the extra pressure on yourself of changing your activity levels at the same time.

If calories in < calories burned, you will probably lose weight.  There are some medical conditions, and some combinations of the wrong calories (or too few) that will not support weight loss.  But if you pick a medically sound food plan and stick to it, your chances of success are high.

With exercise alone, your chances of success are not high.  Let me share some math to prove it (hang in here, this is worth it).  Let’s say you want to use exercise to take off some weight.  You only burn 100 calories a mile, whether you’re walking or running.  You’ve probably been eating more than 100 extra calories a day, so you’re going to need diet changes at a minimum to limit your intake to what you burn in a day.  Then you add in walking a mile every day.  A pound of fat represents 3500 calories.  That means it will take you 35 days of walking a mile, after you reduce your intake to break-even, to lose your first pound of fat.  Wow.  At that pace, Gandhi would have a hard time staying motivated.

Let the diet do the heavy lifting at first.  For me, I weighed 235 pounds.  That’s a lot on a 5’ 2” woman.  My knees, hips, back, etc. were already feeling the strain.  I decided that I didn’t want to ruin my knees any further by pushing myself to work out.  I felt like crap, I was living on 900 calories a day, and exercise could wait.

This had the benefit of making it possible for me to stick to my diet.  If I were pushing myself to feel even worse, I might have given up.  I believe that making one big change at a time is enough to focus on.

It had the benefit of letting my body direct my movement.  As I got lighter, I started feeling like moving around more.  I found myself puttering around my house instead of sitting on the sofa.  Things got cleaner, my laundry got folded and put away all the time.  I started walking more, most noticeably while shopping.  For hours.  Wandering around, trying things on my new smaller body.  I started wearing shoes with small heels instead of my industrial ugly ones – heels give your thighs a workout all day long.

Eventually, I started shaking my booty at various dance clubs.  I anticipate having some sort of a regular exercise program at some point.  It’s a healthy thing to do, and I absolutely approve of strength training for women, as well as cardio for overall health.  You will have less sag in your skin if there’s more muscle for it to hang onto.  You should exercise, definitely.  But do you need to start exercising to lose weight?  No.  Should you start exercising when your body is already under siege?  No.

Take one thing at a time.  Let your body lead the way.