You’ll know if you read Monday’s blog that I went to Disneyland Paris with the family last week.
Not “EuroDisney” as my wife insists on calling it 28 years after it changed it’s name 😉
——— I’ll cover tomorrow why they changed the name (four times) ———–
As with any trip to a theme park, this involved a fair bit of walking.
And queueing,
Far more queuing than I’d hoped for, to be honest.
At the end of one of the days my phone told me I’d done 20,425 steps.
Not a ludicrous amount, I know, but about twice as much the Government recommends each day.
Which, as you can see from the accompanying photo, equated to 437 calories used.
A little disappointing no?
It felt a fair old workout.
My feet were pretty tired at the end of the day (and the kids mentioned approximately a million times how tired their feet were).
But, assuming I’d walk 10,000 on a normal day, this only equated to a little over 200 extra calories.
Which, all else being equal, would be a pound of body fat lost every 17 days.
I say all else being, equal, I was pretty hungry after all that and fairly confident I ate more than I would’ve done otherwise.
From my experience, exercise is often massively over exaggerated in terms of it’s benefits for weight loss.
Eating a couple of hundred less calories would’ve been way easier than all that extra walking.
Both physically and from a time perspective.
Sure, exercise can form part of our approach to weight loss.
And we know that, often, when we are exercising regularly we find it much easier to stay focussed on changes to our eating.
But the actual direct benefit of exercise for weight loss isn’t what we’re often led to believe.
An averaged sized person would burn approximately one pound of body fat by running a marathon.
26.2 miles.
And, again, there’s a pretty good chance of some “compensatory eating”.
Marathons are great as a fitness goal and for personal achievement.
But that’s a lot of effort for losing a pound, isn’t it?
Many FitPros will tell you their workout “torches” several hundred calories and “turns you into a fat burning machine for 72 hours afterwards”…………
Despite no controlled research ever conducted showing this to be the case.
If exercise is the entirety of our approach to weight loss, it’ll probably be a pretty frustrating experience.
If we choose to make the distinction that exercise is / can be great for;
Health, fitness, energy levels, mood, mental health, focus, aches and pains, sex drive, reducing the affects of aging, mobility and much more…………
And it’s our eating for weight loss………….
That can be a powerful (and easier) way to look at it.
Much love,
Jon ‘I’ve agreed to 15 mile “walk” in the Brecon Beacons on the 1st July which is used as part of the Special Forces selection process. I am not looking forward to it’ Hall
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RISE in Macclesfield was established in 2012 and specialise in Group Personal Training weight loss programmes for those that don’t like the gym and find diets boring and restrictive!
