RUNNING FOR WEIGHT LOSS

07 Sep RUNNING FOR WEIGHT LOSS

How familiar is this story? and how many friends you have that has fallen for it.
They or you feel a little heavy and make a firm decision to run every day let’s say for 40 minutes.
That might sound like a good plan – however why then the weight is not going down as fast as you want? You are putting so much effort into it and nothing changes .

What’s wrong ?
Let’s break it down for few factors that will clear the fog around that matter:

1. Running is no doubt great exercise to improve cardiovascular performance and burn some calories, however, it has exactly the same pitfall like those who go to the gym fall for.
You get hungry and completely forget about your caloric count – so you end up burning 500 Kcal in a run but end up eating a 700 Kcal meal and in the end of the day you are not creating the caloric deficit required for weight loss.

in such a case – there is no chance to lose weight.

2. The human body is an incredible adaptation machine: the body adjusts to everything that is repeated for many times. That’s why for example when you lift certain weight for few weeks – it will become easier and same things happens with running .
If you always run the same distance and in the same pace – your body will just become more efficient in that and will produce the same result in less energy .
That’s bad news for you because you want to burn more but end up burning less .

How can you deal with that ?
Spice up your run : Change distances , change speed , change elevation , change the type of exercise , change route … simple change something that will surprise your body and will require it to adjust : that will kick up the caloric expenditure and make your run much more effective .

3. Many times people that are overweight start running and complain about knee & ankle pain.
That’s not a big mystery as if you think about it you put so much impact on your joints when you run that injury is one step from happen …
And when it does ? you have an excuse not to do anything and then the extra calories flow in and your weight ramp up.

It might be confusing so let’s bring clarity to that matter :

1. You can run – but maintain your daily caloric deficit. Just because you run doesn’t mean you can have a winner’s cake after.

2. Make adjustments to your run so that your body will be challenged and change routine often.
That will lead to higher caloric expenditure and less adaptation .

3. Add resistance training and low impact exercise to reduce injury risk and strengthen lower body muscles – that will keep you running longer and will add more to the caloric expenditure overall .

Ready….
Steady….

GO!!!