Exercise tips for weight loss: Don’t count THESE calories

'Exercise Tips for WEIGHT LOSS' is a series devoted to giving you bite-sized tips you can implement into your lifestyle TODAY to start using exercise to help you lose weight immediately.

Tip: Pretend that exercise DOESN'T burn calories

One of the most common errors people make when they are exercising as part of a weight loss plan is to count the calories their exercise burns.

On the surface this seems like a good thing, because if the treadmill says you burned 10 000 calories on your 10-minute run you feel like you have made huge strides in your weight loss that day.

There are two problems with this:

1. The treadmill has NO IDEA how many calories you burned

How can it? Even taking your age and weight into account, the best it can do is generalise. And the treadmill company will give you the most generous number they can get away with to make their product look good.

You are not the same as anyone else. Your running style, internal health, muscle to fat ratio and various other things play a pretty giant role in figuring out calorie expenditure when it comes to exercise.

You are not the same as anyone else.

So the number you're quoting to everyone at the water cooler is likely to be completely fabricated. And ...

2. It will make you eat MORE

Knowing that you burned a certain number of calories at the gym will likely make you eat more that day. It happens time and time again.

We even have fancy terms for the food to make it sound healthy. 'Pre-workout meal', 'post-workout meal', 'intra-workout supplements' - essentially extra calories you take in because you are exercising.

BUT AREN'T YOU EXERCISING TO LOSE WEIGHT?!

The whole point is to burn some calories and NOT REPLACE THEM. 1 - 1 + 1 = 1 after all.

Pretend exercise doesn't burn ANY calories.

The solution:

Pretend exercise doesn't burn ANY calories.

Tell yourself you're doing it to make your body look great, and for improved fitness.

This will help you not to feel like you can eat more because you burned 'so many' calories in the gym. Do this and you WILL lose weight faster.

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