Lose Weight Without Exercise

Losing weight isn’t easy for anybody, and it is particularly difficult if you are trying to do it without exercising. Almost every diet program that you hear about is quick to point out that the best, quickest and most effective weight loss program includes both cutting the calories that you are taking in and increasing the calories that you are expending by adding exercise. But there are a number of reasons why that method doesn’t work for everybody. Some people are unable to exercise because they are medically restricted. Others may simply dislike the effort involved and choose not to exercise. The truth is that almost any increase in your physical activity can be considered exercise – even vacuuming your house or going food shopping. But if you’re not increasing the amount of that that you’re doing, then you need to concentrate
all of your weight loss efforts on cutting the calories that you’re taking in.

Losing weight without exercising is certainly possible, but it is going to take you longer, especially because as soon as your body recognizes that your caloric intake has been cut, it is programmed to slow down your metabolism. This is an evolutionary survival mechanism that’s left over from our primitive ancestors. Back in ancient times, caloric intake often signalled the body that there was a famine situation. In order to keep from starving our bodies learned to slow down the rate at which we burned calories so that we could hold onto our fat stores longer in order to live through difficult times. Most of us today stop taking in calories because we choose to and want to lose weight rather than because we are forced to, but there’s no way to let our bodies know that.

How Much Weight Can You Lose Without Exercising?

Determining exactly how much weight you can lose without exercising has a lot to do with what you weigh now, whether you are male or female, and how old you are. The bottom line on weight loss is that you need to take in fewer calories than you are burning during the day, regardless of whether you are exercising, so the first thing you need to know is what your BMR, or basal metabolic rate, is.

Basal Metabolic Rate

Your BMR is the number of calories that you are burning in each day without doing anything – basically the number of calories that you are burning if you just laid in bed all day long. Your age matters because your metabolic rate slows down as you age, and your current weight matters because the more you weigh, the higher your basal metabolic rate is – which means the more you can cut out. If you are a skinny little thing, your BMR is probably just a hair above a caloric level that would be unsafe to drop below. But if you have weight to lose, chances are you can drop a few hundred calories out of your diet without putting yourself at risk. Remember, you have to cut 3,500 calories to lose a pound, so if you have a BMR of 2,000 and you cut yourself to a caloric intake of 1,500, then you can lose a pound a week.

How Many Calories Are you Currently Taking In?

The next thing is actually much more difficult. You need to take a look at what you are currently eating. Most people don’t like figuring out their caloric intake because they think it’s too hard and too labor intensive, but the truth is, you probably eat many of the same foods on a repetitive basis. Once you identify how many calories you are taking in on average you can figure out how many you can cut … and you can probably identify ways that you can cut calories too. Remember that if you drop your caloric intake too much your body will think you are starving and slow down, so it’s a good idea to eat lots of small meals rather than two or three that are larger. Also, just the act of digesting boosts your metabolic rate and burns some calories.

Other Weight Loss Tips

Remember to drink plenty of water. Not only will it help you feel fuller longer,
but the colder the water is that you drink, the more calories you burn. Also, remember that if you add the slightest bit of exercise you will speed up your weight loss process and help yourself to keep the weight off in the long term. Exercise doesn’t have to mean sweating at the gym. If you take a couple of water bottles and lift them over your head twenty times, that’s exercising. So is walking your dog, or shopping at the mall. Any movement that you do beyond laying in bed all day will add to the number of calories you burn, and help you to lose weight.