Exercise and weight loss
As a cardiologist I get a lot of questions about weight loss and exercising, I’ve answered a few of the questions I get asked most commonly below.
- Should you exercise to lose weight?
No, you should exercise because it’s good for your health, toning and strength, preventing heart disease. It also helps with anxiety and depression, among many other benefits.
- Doesn’t exercise help you lose weight?
Yes, it does, but it’s more efficient to change the way you eat.
For example:
- If I eat Peanut M&Ms every day at work as my afternoon snack (1250 calories/week) I would have to run 2 hours/week @ 5.5mph – 6mph. That’s just to burn the Peanut M&Ms off, to maintain my weight not to lose weight.
- Alternatively, I could not eat an afternoon snack, or more realistically I could change what I eat as my afternoon snack to something that’s easier to burn off. Sugar and fat calories take more work to burn off.
- How much do you have to exercise to lose weight?
- This is very person to person dependent. Hypothetically let’s say you need to burn roughly 3500 calories to burn 1 pound of fat. Then you would need to run 5-6 hours at about 5.5-6 mph over what you already exercise to burn off 1 pound of fat a week.
- So if you work out 3-4 hours a week already then you would need to work out 8 – 10 hours a week. Personally, I’ve tried this before, working out more to lose weight. I find it ends up being hard to schedule this much time to work out every week regularly. Really it’s just more efficient to change the way you eat.
- Do you have to exercise every day to lose weight?
No you don’t have to, but you may find it useful to exercise every day in the following situations:
- If you’re exercising to help with stress and you stress eat then yes it probably would help you to exercise every day. It will help decrease how stressed out or anxious you feel on a daily basis, and then hopefully you’ll eat healthier.
- You find it easier for planning purposes to have a schedule. For example, you schedule 30 minutes to workout every day at 6 pm. This way you can schedule other things like dinner plans or evening meetings around that time.