Diet and Exercise

Those are the two scariest words in the English language. They sound so simple, but they are so hard to accomplish.
They frighten adults. We forget that exercise can be play. Children have it easier, they like to play. Adults have been conditioned to think play is not good. We are adults, we have work to do. So we turned exercise into work.

Diet on the other hand is work. It’s always been work and it always will be. It’s so hard to not eat what we want. When we were children we ate what we wanted and there was no problem. Then we finished growing and the trouble began. At least, that’s how it seems that it happened to me. Other people may have had a different path to obesity. Mind you, I didn’t know I had set obesity as my destination in life, but I seem to have arrived.

So, I decided yesterday that I have to combine dieting with exercise. Despite all claims to the contrary on TV; neither will do the job on its own; no magic pills or devices will do it for you. You have to do it yourself. You have to limit what goes into your mouth and increase the output in terms of energy before you will lose any weight. I just wish I could think of a good analogy.

A car stores energy in the gas tank. I know that sounds weird, but the engine of a car converts the gas to energy to power the car. The movement of the car uses the energy stored in the tank. We have storage areas in our bodies. We call them fat cells. If we keep adding fuel in terms of food, but don’t use it much, our bodies convert it to fat. The only way to burn the fat and release the energy stored there, is to move. This only works if you limit the new fuel you put in your body. If there is little new fuel, the body will crack open its storage units and get fuel from there. However, you can’t just go without eating. That’s because it takes energy to open the fuel reserves for use.

A car will use its reserve of fuel, but needs fuel to do so. To that extent, it’s like our bodies. It takes energy to start a car. We don’t have a battery that will do that, so we need to add a little fuel to give us enough energy to crack open our reserves and use that fat. That’s why it takes so long to lose weight. Losing weight too fast is useless, we only put more fuel in than we need and fill the stores again. That’s why many people, me included, lose and gain weight, like yo-yos.

Me, I’ve been using the Wii Fit Plus since January. I’ve gradually moved up until I am exercising between twenty-five and thirty minutes every day. I feel more energized, but I am not really losing any weight. That’s because I haven’t been limiting what goes in my mouth. I have to start doing that, watching what I eat as well as my morning workouts. Then I will start to make better progress. Still I have managed to lose six pounds in the last four months. That’s not bad. It could be better, but at least it’s a net loss. I’m not showing a net gain.

So, I will stop here with this advice: lower your intake, increase your output and good luck.