Transcript

There are 3 things to highlight in this section.

The first is that the point I made in the previous video “the basics”, that there are MANY benefits to moving more, not just burning calories.  It sensitises your body to insulin, changes the amount of muscle and fat you have, improves your motivation and mood and all of these things are key to long term weight loss.

However, this brings me to my 2nd point – some people think that they just need to move more and NOT focus on their diet.  This is wrong for a few reasons. Some basic forms of movement, like walking, does not use that many calories. The average person will burn about 50 calories per km of walking, but that figure ranges. Hence, if a can of coke is 150 calories, that is 3km of walking to burn that off, which might be about 30-60 minutes of walking depending on how fast you go.  I know lots of people trying to lose weight having one coke a day, one glass of juice and maybe some cordial. That is quite easily almost 500 calories there alone, which is 10km of walking! Are you doing 10km walking everyday? Didn’t think so!

So really, it is smarter to just NOT have the coke in the first place, and still go for the walk.

The final point here is that you want to move WELL before moving a lot.  What I often see is people going to the gym or doing an exercise with poor technique.  At first they get by but eventually, be it months or years, they get an injury or pain because of that poor technique. So please, make sure you move well early on and you can learn this by asking a professional like an exercise physiologist, you may only need 1-2 appointments, or if you have enough body awareness you can read a book on the topic or find a reputable online source of which I will put a few potentials in the following resource.

Please remember If you get any shortness of breath, chest pain or other symptoms then please see your doctor before continuing to exercise.

References:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5556592/