STRICTLY COME DANCING WEIGHT LOSS: DON'T BE FOOLED

As the weeks went by and the competition progressed, fans of Strictly Come Dancing quite rightly grew more impressed with the ever- improving dance skills of the sequin-clad, perma-happy celebrities. No doubt they were equally impressed by the celebrities ever-decreasing waist-lines too. None more so than that of the eventual winner Ore Oduba who posted this selfie just days after winning the much coveted glitter ball...

As the lifts, jumps and pirouettes got bigger, the celebrities got thinner so to speak.

And as a personal trainer, this is great news for me because it vindicates the idea that if you exercise loads you’ll shed a ton of weight.

However, can the same be true for us mere mortals?

The short and simple answer is YES'ish'. You see the theory behind weight loss is very simple. To lose weight you must create a calorie imbalance and this can be done in 3 ways: 1, by burning more calories than you eat through exercise or activity. 2, by consuming fewer calories through eating less or 3, a combination of 1 and 2.

In the case of the Strictly celebrities, their weight loss comes about largely due to option 1. Because they are training for upward of five hours per day, five to six days per week they are able to burn calories like a pyromaniac burns down schools.

But how realistic is this for us mere mortals?

Not very, after all how many of us can afford to give up work and train like a professional athlete to lose weight? Very few, if any of us. That’s why for most of us we’d be better off focusing more of your attention on option 2. That is, to lose weight, reduce the number of calories we consume.

Don’t believe me?

Well, think about this, according to the Readers Digest to burn off just one slice of a 210 calorie Dominos cheese pizza, it would take 22 minutes of cycling. That’s over 20 minutes for just one slice, and how many of us can stop at just the one slice? So, you can already see just how difficult and time consuming it would be to burn off at least 4 slices of pizza, and this is the case for many other calorie dense foods too.

At best, we simply do not have the time or motivation to out-run, out-cycle or out-swim a poor diet. At worst, we simply CAN’T out-train a bad diet because we aren’t fit enough to be able to train long enough or hard enough for it to happen. Our bodies simply can’t handle it (I've written more about this here in a previous post). Sadly, the irony is that the people most able to train for anywhere near long enough or hard enough to out-train your average poor diet are professional athletes, who by and large, need not worry about their weight in the first place!

So exercise isn’t important then?

No, as your average wannabe gangster rapper from leafy, suburban Essex would say ‘Don’t get this twisted’. Exercise is important, it’s important for a number of reasons, none more so (when it comes to weight loss) than the preservation of muscle mass. You see when people lose weight, they lose a hell of a lot of muscle mass in the process, which isn’t a good thing because muscle helps to burn calories which in turn helps to keep the fat off long term. Exercise, particularly resistance training and an increased protein intake can help prevent this from happening quite so drastically.

So although the average unconditioned person may not be able to burn a shed load of calories within a single session, they should regard exercises as an extremely important way of helping them maintain their weight once they get to be the size they'd like to be.

The take home message… 

When it comes to weight loss the most sensible and sustainable approach is to go for option 3 (a combination of exercising more and eating less calories) with (especially if you have a lot of weight to shift) a particular focus on eating less.

Thanks for reading.

Matt

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