Day 50

Today we weighed ourselves again, and this time I was the biggest loser. From only .3 kg last week, I went up to 2.3 kg this week. Youngest, who lost 2 kg last week, picked up .5 kg this week, while Eldest, after picking up .7 kg last week was down 1.7 kg this week. The Wife followed up her 2.7 kg loss last week with another loss, this time 1 kg.

In the Banting for Healthy Living group today, the question about exercise came up, once again. Exercise is very important for overall body health, and to get that toned look, but for actual weight loss, exercise do not do a lot. You have to, for example, climb 42 sets of stairs to burn the calories from a single slice of white bread.

So why do traditional dietitians then always tell us to do exercise if it helps so little? Because, even though the effect is minimal, it is there. No diet can ever work, even LCHF, if you take in more calories than what you burn. So, by including exercise, traditional dietitians can up your caloric intake, even if by only a tiny bit, giving you a bit more food for the day. And on a starvation-based diet, any bit of extra food helps.

So, why does Banting work without the need of exercise? I went to a dietitian about 15 years ago, and she worked out a meal plan for me. I was on a limit of 8 200 kj (around just under 2000 calories), and I felt like I was starving. I was much smaller then as I am now, so the same dietitian would probably tell me I need to eat around 2,100 calories to lose weight. And that includes calories burnt from exercise. The Wife has an app on her phone that calculates caloric intake, and she decided to check how much we take in per day, just for interest. On the days she checked, we had an average caloric intake of around 1,500 to 1,600. And this is without feeling like we are starving.


That, ladies and gentlemen, is why Banting works, even when you don't exercise. Because, by feeling sated from less food due to higher saturated fat intake, you consume less calories than what your internal organs needs to burn to survive, which forces the body to burn its own fat stores for extra energy. So eat until you feel sated (DON'T overeat!!!), enjoy your food, and see the fat melt away!