Which Exercise is Best for Weight Loss?

A decades old debate that appears to have taught us nothing in the having. It's always seemed to me like asking which food is best for weight gain. The correct answer is that they'll all get you there if you're determined enough. Naturally, one chooses using a simple algorithm involving questions like: what is most pleasant/ least unpleasant and: what am I best at/ least rubbish at, and: what's most convenient/ least inconvenient. The answers to each of which depends on the individual.

On the small chance that you have been hoodwinked into believing there is substance behind the idea that there is a best choice of exercise for weight loss, your intuitions were correct from the start. It's a nonsensical question. Weight loss and maintenance isn't hard because you're doing the wrong type of exercise. It's hard because our bodies change and so do we (as people).

Here's an interesting and perhaps useful way of looking at the challenge. What would you expect if, rather than weight loss, your goal was to complete a big event or acquire a new, specialised set of exercise or sporting skills, e.g. to complete a cycle tour or to take up a new sport and do well. With these types of goals, we accept that we will need new skills, lots of practise and hardwork, and plenty of time. We get that the kind of change needed is profound in the same way any kind of learning is. We expect to have to change at the level of our personness. 

Why then do we expect less or different for weight loss? Why do we believe weight loss is just a matter of subtracting mass from our body’s? The evidence of the difficulty of the challenge would suggest that it is much more than that. Perhaps we can borrow from ourselves by comparing it to something else in our lives. Some other kind of challenge that we have undertaken that we accepted would change us as a person or require a more comprehensive, more patient kind of investment*.

*a small albeit important qualification at this point - positive psychology is far more effective than negative psychology for long-term change. Weight loss might be more achievable when it isn’t driven by self-loathing but by the excitement of a new experience or as a new chapter in our lives.