Stop exercising to burn calories… 🏃🏼♂️
Whenever someone wants to lose weight inevitably they place a huge focus on exercising to burn more calories. Exercise appears to be the holy grail of weight loss behaviours. Exercising to burn calories becomes the main goal. And yes, of course it’s important to exercise and yes of course it does increase your energy output but, as I’ve discussed before, you will never ever be able to out-exercise food.
So whilst I wholeheartedly support people exercising more (I’m an instructor so obviously I do!) it’s not with the sole purpose of burning calories. That’s last on my list of reasons for anyone to partake in exercise and it should be last on yours too!
Instead, move your body to improve your mental and physical well being. There are so many reasons to exercise that go beyond burning calories.
• Exercise improves muscle mass and joint health and keeps you functioning independently into old age.
• Whilst excess exercise can down-regulate immune function, regular exercise serves to improve the resiliency and expression/activity of immune cells and mediators so it improves immune function and helps protect against disease.
• It makes you feel stronger and more empowered
• It improves mood, can reduce anxiety and some symptoms of depression and relieves stress.
• It improves cardiovascular health and reduce disease risk
• It increases self confidence
Above all – exercise to celebrate that you can! Not to burn calories!
🤗xx
Every Step Fitness 