Lose Weight Program > Why You Don't Lose Weight

It is wonderful to learn that if you lie flat on your back all day and watch the world go by, your body burns up some 1,700 calories worth of energy just to keep alive. Add to this another 800 calories for the energy expended in sitting, walking, playing, and washing dishes, or thinking seven or eight hours at an office desk, and you have a grand total of 2,500 calories that you must take each day in the form of food merely to keep your weight stationary. These figures apply if you weigh about 160 pounds.

Now suppose, after you have eaten your 2,500 calorie quota, you spy a solitary doughnut left over on the dessert plate. Its loneliness touches you; unless it is eaten it is going to be thrown out with the coffee grounds and cantaloupe rinds. Sheer waste! So you eat it. Sheer waist!

That single doughnut is a treacherous, subversive influence. It packs a 200-calorie punch. It boosts your daily calorie intake 200 degrees above par, for a total of 2,700. It is these extra calories you don't need that keep you from getting slim.

Actually, not every calorie in this case of the superfluous doughnut (we don't mean to be rude to doughnuts; they're delicious) is laid down in you as fat. Because of the stimulating effect of food itself, and through other regulatory means that nobody understands very well, you are usually able to handle a small portion of those surplus calories in your stride.

In practical terms, however, a daily intake of 200 to 300 calories in excess of needs results in a weight increase of eight to ten pounds a year. Only three fifths of a pound a year is considered allowable; at least, that is the usual annual weight increase of normal persons as they grow older. One investigator with a diabolically mathematical turn of mind has calculated that one extra pat of butter a day beyond one's needs will add 165 pounds to one's weight in twenty years.

When you eat more food than you need, it is possible to take extra exercise to prevent its turning into fat. But we might as well be honest with ourselves. It takes more exercise than we think. For instance:

If you consume, above your maintenance requirements in calories - the additional exercise needed to burn up these surplus calories would require a 5'6" woman weighing 140 lbs to:

One large apple (3.25 in diameter, 116 calories	Jumping jacks, moderate intensity for 24 minutes
A peanut butter sandwich with 2 large slices of whole wheat bread (109 calories each) plus 2 tablespoons of smooth, salted peanut butter (188 calories), 406 calories total	55 minutes of jogging
1 pint of Haagen Daaz butter pecan ice cream, 310 calories for a half cup serving, times 4 servings per pint = 1240 calories	Walk at 3 miles an hour for 2 hours and 25 minutes

Pretty somber, isn't it? Each horrendous pound of fat stored on your person represents about 4,000 calories, and to use these up you would have to climb stairs for nearly four hours. That is why, although exercise is a splendid accessory, it is not practical as a sole method of reducing. Or are you tougher than we think?

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