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Controlling Your Weight

Worldwide, it's an obsession. You'll find weight control messages on the front page of nearly every magazine on the newsstand. The basic idea is clear: you can lose weight through diet and exercise. However, putting this rule into practice requires patience and a period of trial and error, especially when it comes to exercise. You measure food intake by counting calories. However, after your doctor gives the OK to exercise, the questions remain: what kind of exercise and how much?

The key to weight control is keeping energy intake (food) and energy output (physical activity) in balance. When you consume only as many calories as your body needs, your weight will usually remain constant. If you take in more calories than your body needs, you will put on excess fat. Exercise increases your energy output, calling on stored calories for extra fuel. Recent studies show that not only does exercise increase metabolism during a workout, but it causes your metabolism to stay increased for a period of time after exercising, allowing you to burn more calories.

How much exercise is needed to make a difference in your weight depends on the amount and type of activity and on how much you eat. Aerobic exercise burns a combination of carbohydrates and stored body fat. You burn more fat with moderately intense exercise or just by exercising longer. That is, the body "rewards" longer bouts of exercise by using more fat stores as time increases. According to the President's Council on Physical Fitness, a medium-sized adult would have to walk more than 30 miles to burn up 3,500 calories, the equivalent of 1 pound of fat. Although that may seem like a lot, you don't have to walk the 30 miles all at once. Walking a mile a day for 30 days will achieve the same result, providing you don't increase your food intake to negate the effects of walking.

If you consume 100 calories a day more than your body needs, you will gain about 10 pounds in a year. You could take that weight off or keep it off by doing 30 minutes of moderate exercise daily. That's why experts agree that the key to weight control is a combination of exercise and diet.

Because muscle tissue weighs more than fat tissue and exercise develops muscle to a certain degree, you can't always rely on your bathroom scale to measure your weight in terms of fat. Weight lifters, for example, may have very little body fat and weigh as much as a nearly obese person. In fact, if you are doing a regular program of strength training, you may become frustrated because you are not losing weight. But don't despair. You may be gaining weight at the same time you are losing fat. That's why a body fat index offers a better indication of your condition than body weight.

For  more  information  please  ask  your  physician  on  your  next  visit.