Running and Weight Loss
If you go running three or four times a week consistently, you’ll find it almost impossible to not lose any weight. This is essentially because running burns up more calories than most other activities such as swimming, cycling, and walking for example. This of course means if you choose running rather than swimming, you won’t require as much time in order to lose weight, and this is something which can be of great importance to those who lead a hectic lifestyle. To a great extent, one could say that running and weight loss go hand in hand.
As you no doubt already know, scores of fad diets hit the market every year, with all of them promising the impossible. To make matters worse, most of the fad diets you come across involve you having to embark on a highly restrictive program, where you’ll practically be forbidden to eat any of those foods you really enjoy. While it may seem as though many of these diets have been put together by leading scientists, none of them actually involve anything special. To the contrary, if you look into them, you’ll find that most revolve around basic common principles, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be doing you any harm.
What you need to remember is that in order to lose weight, you need to burn off more calories than what you consume, and this is what each and every fad diet is based on. Of course, if the people marketing those fad diets made it sound so simple, they would end up out of business in the blink of an eye. Irrespective of what anyone has told you in the past, if you’re using up more calories than what you’re taking in, you are going to lose weight, and this is exactly why running and weight loss go so well together.
If you’re still in any doubt regarding running and weight loss, then you owe it to yourself to give it a try. Here are a few quick tips to help you on your way:
Tip one – You need to realize that you didn’t put on weight overnight, but instead, it probably happened over a period of several years. When you want to lose that weight, you shouldn’t be tempted to get rid of it as quickly as possible, but instead, you should aim to lose half a kilogram each week. This essentially means you’ll need to reduce your calorie intake by approximately 500 calories per day.
Tip two – Your running schedule shouldn’t always have to take second place in your life. Yes, there will be times when something crops up and prevents you from the running, such as when you’re ill for example, but for the most part, you need to discipline yourself to stick with your program.
Tip three – Try to increase the intensity of your training every so often, because by doing so, you’ll inevitably end up burning calories at a quicker rate. This doesn’t mean you need to run twice as far or twice as fast. Instead, whenever you go for a run, complete the last 20 to 30 steps at a faster pace.
Tip four – because running and weight loss go hand in hand, the more you run, the more weight you will lose. A great way to achieve your goal in as short a time as possible would be for you to enter into a race such as a 5K race for example. This is not something you need to do every week, but it certainly will help if you do so occasionally.
Tip five – This last and final tip is perhaps the most enjoyable one of the lot. Whenever you finish running, you need to refuel by eating something nutritional. Now, even though you need to refuel, you still need to keep an eye on those calories, so make sure you only eat something which has a low calorie count. After such a strenuous day, you’ll also need to make sure your body gets an adequate amount of rest. You should always make sure you get between six and eight hours of uninterrupted sleep each night.
There you have it; weight loss is virtually inevitable once you start running, so as you can see, running and weight loss do go hand in hand, so now is the time for you to forget all those ridiculous fad diets you’ve no doubt come across on the Internet.
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I wholeheartedly agree with you.
However you say “If you go running three or four times a week consistently, you’ll find it almost impossible to not lose any weight”, which I also agree with. But. If I look at how many calories I burn when doing, say a 30 minute training run, or fast 5k (say 20 min!)…then the calories burned are only say about 400. Which is LESS than the lucozade sport I had before the run.
so the exercise itself cannot be the cause of weight loss directly right? There must be a MASSIVE indirect benefit whereby your metabolic rate is boosted and of course that boosted rate operates 24×7.
discuss!
I have been trying to lose weight for a long time and tried out each and every individual method and diet program but almost nothing appears to function. Please suggest a thing that works.
These are some of the ways to burn calories simply by moving around more and making an effort.
It truly is unhealthy to disregard the build up of excess body fat and you clearly hit home with some of the points that you address.