Do you need to work out to lose weight?

Well… The short answer is NO!!! Really!? That’s interesting. If that’s the case, then why do personal trainers always advertise weight loss programs? Why do so many people start running every day in hopes of losing a few pounds or start lifting weights for that matter? Why is there a general understanding amongst people that to lose weight, you need to get a gym membership and spend money and time working out in the gym? Well, these are all good questions that we are going to address and answer today.

What's the secret of weight loss?

First off, how does someone lose weight? What’s the secret from going from 300lb to 200lb? And you know what, once we are on the subject, let's dig a little deeper into what’s the secret of maintaining it. Is it a special diet like keto, gluten-free, or carnivore? Or maybe it's the time of day that you eat or a special smoothie or green juice that’s going to shred your fat? Or maybe it's a secret fruit or vegetable that will give you the life hack to get your weight down and finally keep it there. Well, if you ever believed that it was or think maybe that it is one of the things mentioned above, I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but it's a lot more simple than that. The reason why no one is saying it is because it works, and when something works well, then you can’t sell hundreds, if not thousands, of different articles, magazines, and weight loss programs. It's boring. Plus, who’s going to be the enemy that you hate at all costs and blame for all your weight that you put on (I hate you gluten or sugar; you're the cause of all my problems).

Well, if that’s the case, you're asking, what is the way to lose weight and finally keep it down? Also, how do I know it’s true, and that you aren’t just another guy saying something just to make some money? Well, I'm not going to write anything in this article without any peer-reviewed research and studies because, unlike other people, my goal is to try to help as many people as possible.

How does the body work?

So what is the secret to weight loss? Well, it’s very simple, and to understand how the body works, we first need to understand the First Law of Thermodynamics. The First Law of Thermodynamics states, “energy cannot be created or destroyed; it can only be converted from one form to another.” So to explain it in terms of weight loss, your body needs energy to work, and what exactly is that energy, you might ask. That, my friend, is calories. And if you overconsume it, your body stores it as fat, and if you underconsume, your body will use your fat as energy. Your body can’t create energy or destroy it; it can only use it or store it. To make it a little easier to understand, I'm gonna use a parable to explain how this works. Let's say you go to the bank and you open a checking account and you place $100 in the account every month, but you also have a bill of $100. How much money will you have at the end of the month? (Take a minute to give your answer.) Well, if you said zero, you answered correctly. Well, what happens if you get a new job and now you're making $110 every month? Well, the first month you’ll have $10 by the end of the month, the next you’ll have $20, then $30, and so on. What happens if one month you get a bill of $90 instead of $100? Well, you still need to pay up the bill, so the bank will take $10 out of your account. Your body works the same way. If you overconsume calories for long enough, you will gain weight, and if you underconsume for long enough, you will lose weight, and if you maintain your calories, you will maintain your weight

So, for the long-anticipated answer, all you really need to do is figure out your TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) and eat (I’d recommend according to the studies I've read) a 20% calorie deficit (nothing more) long enough, and you’ll lose weight (I’ll be going into more details on how to do this properly in an upcoming article), and if you do a calorie surplus long enough, you’ll gain. [source:]

So, according to this, all I need to do is eat below my calories long enough, and I’ll lose weight? Does that mean I can eat candy all day and I’ll lose weight? The answer is yes, although I don’t recommend it. But technically, yes, it isn’t healthy, but you will (I can't promise that you won't feel sick like a dog, but it will work). I remember reading once about a professor who only ate fast food and lost weight; he said he got in the best shape of his life. I hope I can find the study, if yes, I'll link it right here. That doesn’t mean it's healthy, but you’ll lose the weight.

Why Exercise?

If all I really need to do to lose weight is to be in a calorie deficit, then why exercise? Well, there are a few answers to that question; let's break it down.

1. A lot of people, maybe even you, have lost weight in the past. After a few months of hard work, you look at the scale, and you see that you have achieved your goal (congratulations; you feel like a supermodel now). Only to get off the dreadful pain, suffering, diet to put all your weight back on, and then you go through life like an accordion with your weight going up and down and eventually getting up. So how do you keep it down? Well, studies have shown that people who exercise and diet while on their weight loss journey turn not only to lose the weight but keep it down for good. Not only that, the next reason I give why to exercise is really intertwined with this one as well. [Source:]

2. When you're on a diet (especially if it's an extreme diet with a calorie deficit surpassing a 20%), your body will, in the beginning, use fat as a fuel source for energy. That’s what we want when we are trying to lose weight. But what you have to remember is that fat is there for a reason; it's a backup storage for when we don’t have food. If your body sees that you're using a lot of the storage used for survival, it will stop using your fat as an energy source for two reasons. Now I'm not sure if it's really two reasons or the same, but for our purposes, we are going to

split it into two separate reasons. A) Your body likes to keep a constant equilibrium, which means your body always likes to stay balanced, and if your not eating enough your body doesn’t feel balanced since you're using your fat store so rapidly and one of the ways to stop using fat is by B) using muscle tissue (or other tissue from other organs if the diet is too extreme) for energy instead of fat. Since you're not using the muscles, your body says, let's not use the fat because that’s our backup for when we don’t have food. So instead, we will reserve the fat and use muscle tissue instead. And by that, we will lower our BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate, which means how many calories your body burns at rest). What that does is this; let's say you start a diet and your BMR is 1800 calories, and with the work you do every day according to your height, weight, and age comes out to 2000 calories (remember none of these numbers are accurate). And you decide to go on a diet and you start to eat only 1500 calories a day. Your body, instead of burning fat, decides to use muscle (which will, by the way, make you lose a lot of weight since muscle is heavier than fat, but you’ll still look like you haven’t really lost anything), which causes your BMR to dramatically drop (since muscles require more energy than fat). Now when you get off your diet and you decide to start eating again, your calorie intake that used to be a 200-calorie surplus [for our sake] is now a 400 or 500-calorie surplus. The way to prevent that from happening is by exercising since your body sees that you're using the muscle; it will try not to use it as an energy source, which will prevent your BMR from dropping a lot and also prevent muscle loss. [Source:]

3. The third reason why it's recommended you exercise when you're on your weight loss journey is that when you exercise or train, your TDEE rises (since you're using more energy because you exercise), which means you get to eat more food. Besides that, there are, of course, a lot of other benefits to regular exercise as it’s one of, if not the top prevention of chronic diseases like cancer, diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, cholesterol, stress, and respiratory disease. Which, in itself, should be a good enough reason to exercise.

So to finish off, even though you don’t have to exercise, it's well-established that it's recommended to do so when trying to lose weight, and even if you aren’t trying to lose weight, always remember to exercise to stay healthy and strong as it's one of the top ways to prevent chronic diseases.