10 facts that prove running won’t help you lose weight

Many people have the idea that running is the farstest way to health and weight loss. Unfortunately this is a myth, that have been stuck to our society for years. But if running is not the solution to maintain health and lose weight, the what is?!

Follow our 10 reasons on why you shouldn’t run to lose weight:

Running will not burn fat

Most people, whenever they want to lose weight, they opt for either starving themselves on a very low calorie diet, or they go running every day trying to burn more calories. However, running is not effective for weightless. Running is aerobic, but workouts like CrossFit are anaerobic. It’s a more intense workout helping you to gain muscles and burn fat.

Running increases your appetite

When you want to lose weight you need to burn more calories than you consume. Of course you burn calories when running, but many people overestimate the amount of calories they burn. Moreover, it’s said that carbohydrates are important for your performance when running, but that doesn’t mean you need to eat a big plate of pasta and lots of bread, just because you run 5 kilometers this morning. The worst part whatsoever, is that running has an effect on your hormones making you even more hungry, and many have a tendency to justify more unhealthy food choices, just because they have went for a run.

If you want to lose weight you should go for some intense interval training. It’s known to reduce the hormones that increases appetite after exercise.

Running won’t target belly fat

Studies show that if you want to lose weight, weight training and high interval training, helps to improve better insulin sensitivity, reduces the level of the stress hormone cortisol, and increases the testosterone level. That means that theses types of exercises are more beneficial targeting belly fat, than running.

Running will make you tired

When you wont to lose weight you should increases the amount of NEAT, which stands for Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis. NEAT is the amount of calories burnt due to everyday activities like biking to work, standing, walking, cooking and so on. It’s activities you do, that won’t make you sweat. When going for a run, it can leave you tired for hours or even days, If you have burnt around 500 calories from your running, it can ens up removing more than 500 calories from your NEAT, because you are to tired to function.

Moreover, a long run, will increase hunger exponentially, making it easy to overeat, without even noticing. A bite here and there can easily add up and can cause weigh gain in the long run.

It can be difficult to motivate yourself to go on a run, when the weather sucks, and your will probably just stay at home doing nothing. But there loads of other types of exercises you can do, when the weather is bad.

If you hate running, then don’t!

This might be objective, but running or jogging is so boring. If you want to get any benefits, your need to spend so much time on the road or treadmill. By that said, you should only go running or jogging, if you love it – if not, find some other exercise to do. When you want to lose weight it’s important to find activities you like, to make sure you’ll stick to it.

79 percent of runners get injured every year

We all know that to prevent injuries you need a strong body. However, running is inefficient to build strength, which results in that more than 79 percent of runners get injured at least one a year. Even though, running is the second popular exercise on Earth – only surpassed by walking. If you want a functional body when you get old, you need to build muscles or at least prevent muscle loss.

Stay on the couch and lose weight

A study which was published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, was made on 27 obese women. The women were spilt into three groups: Group number 1 did jogging five days a week. Group 2 did high-intensity sprints three time a week, and Group 3 was the control group and was instructed to skip any types of exercise. The study took 16 weeks, and the results were quit surprising. Group 2 with the sprinter had lost a large amount of belly and thigh fat, but the body fat levels of the women from Group 1 with the joggers didn’t budge more than Group 3 on the sofa.

Burn the same calories by walking

There are many benefits of walking. For instance, you can burn the same amount of calories as if you were running. Let’s say you run 5K four times a week. This will burn around 1500 calories a week. If you go for a daily 45 minutes walk, you will burn the same amount of calories a week. Moreover, walking won’t make you more hungry, nor will  you get injured or tired, and you don’t have to shower when finshed.