Doin' the happy validation dance!

This was one of the 'trivia' questions I got today:

True or False: By adding exercise to your weight loss program, you'll be able to eat more calories and still lose weight.

TRUE!

Explanation: Remember, to lose weight, you need to create a caloric deficit. You can do this by cutting calories from your diet, by exercising more, or by combining both diet and exercise. Because you need to give you body a proper amount of fuel for energy, nutrients, and to ensure weight loss, it can be hard to cut a large amount of calories by dieting alone. By adding exercise, however, you'll be able to eat more and still meet your goals. Just make sure that you account for all the exercise you do when you set-up your SparkPeople program. This way, you'll get an accurate calorie recommendation for you to lose weight at a healthy rate. To learn how your calorie recommendations are determined-and how exercise fits into that equation-check out Calorie Calculations 101.

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See! I don't make this stuff up: move more, eat more!

LOL!

Although I do have a confession: I've been grappling with an issue/question that I'm surprised no one else has brought up.

What's the point of exercise if you just have to eat more to make up for it?!

Then the answer came to me in an odd examply sort of way.

When you lead a typically sedentary lifestyle - basically little to no exercise, your body is like a slow cooker/crock pot. You throw minimal ingredients in, use minimal energy to process it, and then check back in 4-6 hours to see whats become of all the stuff.

When you start leading an active lifestyle - adding in moderate to higher intensity cardio, lifting some heavy things and putting them down again... all of a sudden your body turns into a high powered professional convection oven (and oh my GAWD I need to stop watching so much FoodTV! LOL!) It may take a bit to get going, but once it's fired up, you get pop the ingredients in and a few minutes later you have something fantastic to show for it, and it's going to stay hot to efficiently to take on anything you throw at it.

Like I said - it's odd, but it works (I hope ;)

Basically, when you add exercise into the mix, your body not only becomes more efficient at using the food you give it, it continues to run efficiently after that food is 'processed' hence the need for extra calories.

Exercise + adequate nutrition = Supah Stah results!