I did lose weight without doing exercises. Yes, I’m telling you the truth right now.
It’s totally not fanfiction or a joke. It’s totally true and it happened, to me, and it will happen to you, too.
I promise that me and you, we can lose weight without doing exercises. Thanks to the brilliant scientific research and the below amazing methods that I will share with you right after this.
First, I would like to show you one science behind the exercises for weight loss. Several studies show that in fact, exercises are actually pretty useless in this losing weight journey.
Why?
Ph.D. Kevin Hall at the National Institute of Health has done some important studies on exercises and weight loss, and he shares that exercises are actually beneficial for health but not the utmost or the best tool for weight loss.
The reason why exercises are not the way to weight loss is physical activity is actually a tiny component of our daily energy burn, or what we can call the total energy expenditure.
There are three main ways our bodies burn calories:
- Resting metabolism: how much energy your body burns just for its basic functions to keep you alive, which takes up from 50% to 70% of the total energy expenditure and relies on genes, age, gender, muscle mass, crash diets/starvation, etc.
- Food breakdown: how much energy is required to break food down in your body, which can take up from 10% to 20%, depending on which kind of food you eat. The highest thermic effect is for protein, then carbohydrates and the lowest is for fat.
- Physical activities: how much energy is used for any movements we do all include in this part, which take up from 10% to 30% of the total energy our bodies consume in the day.
So based on the above fact about total energy expenditure, we can assume that if we increase the amount and level of workouts or any other kinds of exercises, we can lose weight. However, it doesn’t happen as we expect.
We will make all kinds of behavioral and physiological adaptations when we start increasing the number of exercises.
And the most common thing that happens is that we tend to feel hungrier and tend to feel less control over the amount of food we eat after hard training in the gym.
The other scenario possibly happening is called compensatory behavior, which means you will reduce the amount of other physical activities after doing exercises.
I, myself, in fact, couldn’t lose a single pound after 9 months of heading to the gym with a personal trainer.
Even though my body seems toned and my mass muscle increases, what I expect to lose weight seems slowly happening.
Because I cannot eat less when I need to workouts, and if I reduce the food amount, my body reaction is slower and my blood pressure drops to make me feel dizzy.
The funny thing is that I started to lose weight one year after I quit going to the gym and switch to yoga, from 59kg (130 pounds) to 48kg (108 pounds), and I know it’s not because of the gym or yoga.
Therefore, based on my own lesson, if we rely only on exercises to meet our weight loss target, it is totally not enough.
So how can I lose weight?
The truth is that I just need to eat less. I am a person who loves to eat, so I cannot control myself under some strict rules of limiting daily calorie intake or even low-carb diets or such.
So I seek the method that is the easiest way to follow and fit into my daily schedule as an office woman, which is the 16:8 method or Leangains diet, or you can apply meal skipping sometimes, which means that I only eat when I feel hungry.
Those two methods can occasionally mix up based on how your body actually interacts with the diet. You can look for detailed guidelines and instructions about this 16:8 diet on the internet and follow it based on your current health status.
Moreover, I will also share some of the tips and tricks I used besides my daily intermittent fasting diet are:
1. Increase your water intake during a day
The thing is that your body will easily confuse when you are hungry or you are actually just thirsty.
So I prepared a full 1.5-liter bottle of water right next to my laptop to reach for it every half an hour and targeted to finish that bottle before leaving the office.
2. Clean up your refrigerator
Clean up snacks, cakes, biscuits, and instant foods from your cabinet and refill your refrigerator with fresh fruits, boiled vegetables, and boxes of meal prep
This will help you to make a healthier choice when you’re hungry at night. I even don’t seek nuts or oatmeals as an option to reduce my carb and salt intake.
3. Spend at least 20 minutes for each meal
Extend your eating time to make sure that you will spend at least 20 minutes for each meal even if the amount or portion is big or small.
I join in almost every eating-out event in my company with colleagues, partners, and sometimes customers.
Eating with other people means that you will keep eating as much as the other people do and you also cannot control yourself leading to overeating.
So I practice making myself eat really really slowly and chew with really small bites, then I can join the other people eating from the beginning till the end of the meal without losing control.
4. Eat the thing you want but eat it in a small portion
I love eating sweet treats, even though I know I should avoid them as much as I can during my diet, but I still wish that I could have them once in a while.
Hence, I decided to still eat my favorite sometimes, but promise myself that I never exceed half of its portion.
5. Cut down the portion of carbs and fats
Cut down the portion of carbs and fats in your daily meal, and increase protein and fiber. This will help you in losing weight and also make your lifestyle better.
Finally
For the outlook of how we can lose weight without exercise, there are still a lot more tricks and tips shared on the internet that you can refer to and find yourself the best suitable method to follow.
However, this process will take time for you to trial and error. It will not happen in a day or two and requires much patience and persistence to make it come true.