Weight loss: cut more calories or do more exercises

There has been an age old argument over the best way to promote weight loss. There are those who are in the corner and promote cutting calories drastically to promote quick weight loss. Others say that you can lose weight quicker by increasing your activities or exercise routine. So which is right? It is really hard to say as both bring some benefit to weight loss and both can give a person quick weight loss if they make drastic changes in their diet or exercise program.

Cutting calories from 2,000 a day which is what the average person eats to 1,200 a day would provide a person with weight loss of 1-2 pounds per week without any exercise routine or activity added to the program. This program will work for approximately four to six weeks. Then the body gets used to that amount of calories being eaten and slows the metabolism to reflect that.

This is where the weight plateau area of time comes in that all dieters hate to go through. If the weight loss program does not make a significant change at that point and time it can be some time before the weight loss will continue again. Many of the popular diet programs take this into consideration and work into their program either a day or a week of eating a higher amount of calories. What this does is shock or trick the body into thinking it needs to increase the metabolism again into burning the higher amount of calories that have been ingested.

The dieter can then go back to the lower amount of caloric intake and weight loss will increase again to the amount that they were seeing before the plateau time occurred. This will happen from time to time and the dieter needs to keep this in mind and plan for a shock period to trick the body into higher metabolism mode to keep weight loss going in a constant manner.

Exercise routines can promote weight loss as well as improve health as they promote the body flushing toxic fat stores from around the tissues and organs that have been stored previously. Exercise routines also promote building of muscle mass in addition to weight loss. Due to this people who do extreme body building or exercise may notice that they do not lose as much weight as someone who is cutting a large amount of calories. The reason for this is due to the fact that they are getting rid of fat and replacing the fat with muscle mass.

Muscle tissue weighs much more than water or fat tissue which is what the body has rid itself of. Therefore weight loss will be at a slower pace for people who concentrate specifically on an exercise or body building routine to promote weight loss. They will however have the added benefit of having a much leaner and more healthy body form. They will also have a much lower BMI which according to health care providers is much more healthy for adults. BMI is body mass index. It takes into account the amount of fat that the body is storing and containing. The higher the number shows higher fat stores in the body. The lower the number the leaner the body is and shows a healthier profile.

Both of these options can promote weight loss and offer different types of benefits and particular issues with each program. The best way to promote weight loss it seems is to combine both reduced caloric intake and include an exercise routine which gives the dieter the best of both programs. This can also stop or slow down issues with reaching the weight plateau that occurs with reducing caloric intake. Working both programs can also get rid of the issue of not losing an adequate amount of weight by exercising quickly as well.