1.1 Why exercise is the wrong approach for weight management

1.1 Why exercise is the wrong approach for weight management

There were two times in my life where I focused on exercise consistently.  What I found was that the motivation for working out was different each time, but the fundamental beliefs about what exercise was and what it did was not understood.

The Gym

The first time that I got into exercising, I was 21 and I was going to the gym to tone and build muscle.  It was interesting in the way that I went to the gym with a friend and the support of going to the gym together was enough to keep us going.  This lasted for about a year and a half and we definitely built muscle and shaped our bodies.  During that time, I gained predominantly muscle weight and shaped my body in a very stereotypical way.  The problem was that when I stopped going to the gym, the body shaping was undone.  This was a lifestyle change that was unsustainable!

Over the next 5 years, I would describe my lifestyle as largely sedentary.  My weight did not change tremendously, but the shape certainly did.  Over the following 7 years, my waistline increased, my pants size increased and I gain roughly 5 lbs every year.  Eventually, my doctor said that I needed to hold the weight where it was.

Martial Arts

The second time that I got into exercising, I was 35 years old.  I joined a Taekwondo class with my 5 year old.  This time the motivation to stick with it was, "if I don't go, he doesn't go".  This was going to accomplish the goals that my doctor wanted.

It worked, in the first year I lost 10 lbs.  That was great, after 10 months, I lost 10 lbs.  After we broke for the summer, in 2 months, I gained 8 lbs back!.  The second year, I stepped up the training and I lost 15 lbs, I gained 7 back in the summer.  The third year, I lost 12 more lbs and gained back 6 lbs in the summer.  This pattern was very similar to the weight training, the more effort I put in the better I did, as soon as you stop it is undone!

The Ah ha moment

One night I was watching a martial arts video series from Sense Ando.  I saw this fantastic video about how if you look at exercise as a way to shape your body, you really only have 7 opportunities to shape your body in a week, and that's if you do it every day.  If you also look at diet as a way to shape your body, diet is automatically more effective because you have 21 opportunities to shape your body; more if you include snacks.

I took this logic a little further and said, if you look as sleep as an opportunity to shape your body, it is half your life!  The conclusion that I reached was that, the most effective ways to shape your body in order are:

1. Sleep
2. Diet
3. Exercise 

Once I started to look at my diet, the weight came off without the resistance that I felt before.  The exercise was like an accelerator.  The most important thing was that when we stopped for the summer, I did not re-gain any of the weight, in fact it just kept dropping off.  I came to one further conclusion, or at least slight distinction.  Diet is for weight management, Exercise is for muscle management, Sleep is for health management.

If you want to learn more about my diet, take a look at how I healed my thyroid.