Hi Byte Wellness Fam!

How are you feeling?

I feel secure. I’ve had the chance to exert my personal agency in a new way lately (by emphasizing rest in my life).

I needed that reminder that the decisions we make about our wellness don’t have to be reactions to the world around us.

Regardless of what’s happening around us, we can make plans for ourselves and troubleshoot how to bring them into fruition. And, there are resources all around us to support our efforts. Wellness inspiration and strategy can come from books, podcasts, conversations with friends, etc.

In fact, I'm reminded of this each time we have another #PhyteWellWednesday workshop…that we have power and resources (although it may not always feel that way).

This week, in the #PhyteWellWednesday workshop, we explored the science behind exercise for weight loss to learn what types of movement can move the needle in our lives and our well-being. We’re using our resources to build our wellness power!

If you didn’t get an invite to the Wednesday night workshop, get on the list by texting TEXT to 1(224)302-6224.

Scroll down to our workshop recording see what we discovered about fat-burning workout strategies.

Discussion QuestionS

This week, you volunteered questions to discuss, and we chose a couple to answer. We’ll keep working through the others in the coming weeks.

• How to lose weight without a fad diet or pills

• What is the best way to maintain a healthy weight

We’re leaning on science and your experiences to tackle these questions, what’s your answer? Has a specific technique exercise regimen worked helped you lose weight and keep it off in the past? Leave a comment, shoot a text, or email your thoughts.

One question that our community has asked in more than one of our workshops is whether cutting calories or exercise works better for weight loss.

Here’s what one  study  in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition had to say about it had to say about it:

Yes, we can cut weight simply by eating less (creating a calorie deficit). But, we get higher-quality weight loss when we use both eating AND exercise to lose weight.

Here are the take-aways from the study based on 112 post-menopausal women who qualify as being "overweight" or "obese".

• Women lost weight by just cutting calories or pairing calorie-cutting with exercise

• BUT, they lost more fat (and less muscle) if they paired calorie-cutting with exercise

• For the group of women that only cut calories but didn't exercising they lost almost 50% more muscle than the group that paired calorie-cutting with exercise.

  Remember how important body composition is for driving and maintaining weight loss?

  We need the right balance of muscle and fat in order to maintain a healthy weight.

  Whenever we lose weight, we lose some fat and some muscle. Losing some muscle is inevitable with weight loss. But we want to avoid losing too much.

  Muscle drives our metabolism forward. So, carrying a higher percentage of muscle means we burn more calories just living.

  It follows that if we drop our percentage of muscle mass, that means that our metabolism drops also. Suddenly, we’ve lost the weight we were aiming for, but our metabolism has slowed too much to keep the weight off.

  That’s how a diet-only to weight loss can lead to a yoyo-ing of weight.

  Phew! If you made it this far, good job working your way through all this information. More to come.

Happy Healthy Living,

Dr. Wuse