My thoughts on Time magazine article
Flickr: clevercupcakes
In the last 10 years of my life I have spent at least 5 hours per week working out. By my calculations that puts me at 2,600 hours of aerobics classes, boot camps, running, yoga, spinning and many more activities which would be too painful to list.
After reading the recent Time magazine article “Why Exercise Won’t Make You Thin” I was at first slightly peeved and not for the reason that you may think. You see this article which spread like social media wildfire wasn’t exactly news to me. I had realized a long time ago that exercise alone was not going to make me lose weight.
Why won’t exercise alone make you lose weight?
While I did find the article not to be particularly newsworthy I did enjoy the writing and found myself chuckling throughout especially when the author wrote:
“The basic problem is that while it’s true that exercise burns calories and that you must burn calories to lose weight, exercise has another effect: it can stimulate hunger.”
Bingo – The author hit the nail on the head here.
Last year while training for my first marathon I must admit that I thought one of the side effects of the training was going to be weight loss. I was wrong – I was coming home after training runs and stuffing my face with pasta, salt and vinegar chips and anything else I could get my hands on. I thought that the burned calories during training would counteract all the calories I was putting into my body. Wrong again. By the end of the program I had gained weight. That said I was one happy marathoner.
What have I learned?
I think the biggest thing I have learned over the years is that it is a combination of good nutrition and exercise that will make you a happy and healthy person. I believe we should NOT be striving to be ‘thin’ but rather healthy individuals.
Finally, the big question – Why do I exercise?
Simply put because I enjoy it. Life’s to short to do things you don’t love.
Tagged as: exercise · fitness · magazine · time · why exercise won't make you thin
