I think one of the big things that I’ve realized about trying to lose weight is really just how important your diet can be to your success.
Think about it – you won’t gain weight for not exercising, but you sure can by failing to watch what you eat! Do the math and most people should be able to lose weight over time simply by regulating their diet and never touching a treadmill, but just try to keep eating crap and think that you’ll just need to do a few extra sit-ups to keep your losses in the black and, well, let’s just say that I tried out this very logic quite extensively over the last seven years and I only really started losing weight this year when I finally gave in and changed my diet…
It’s just so tough to visualize how many calories are actually in the foods that we eat. I mean, I had pizza for dinner tonight because the wife had ordered it and really had to fight taking a third slice because on the plate it didn’t really seem like that big of a deal, even though calorically it was probably the difference between the meal being 600 vs. 900 calories (it was the stuffed crust kind that should really only be a splurge, which it was…). And the problem therein lies that this was only for a single meal, yet the difference is probably more calories than I would burn in a single 1-hour walk around the neighborhood where I sweat like crazy and end up sore for the next two days!
At the end of the day, strictly from a numbers perspective it’s far more impacting for me in the long run to manage my calories properly because slowly over time those numbers really add up. Depending on whose Basal Metabolic Rate calculator you use, I can burn anywhere from 250-400 calories a day simply by sticking to a 2,000 calorie diet … that same 1,750-2,800 calories would take upwards of 12 hours of walking to burn during my aforementioned walks, and sure, maybe the numbers would be better if I did a higher-impacting exercise like the elliptical or kickboxing or something, it still seems more logical to keep my calories under control to avoid creating a deficit that I then have to work against before even getting to the actual fat that I want to burn.