Yes!
I’m William (Bill) Anderson, the psychotherapist who discovered Therapeutic Psychogenics, the successful method in behavioral medicine to lose weight permanently. I was s0 happy when I learned that I could solve my weight problem without having to exercise. In my prior “fat” life, I was over 300 lbs. and everything I did was painful. I hated exercise my whole life, since I was a kid in gym class. The idea that I needed to exercise to lose and control my weight, which was something that all the “experts” said I needed to do, was so discouraging. So, it was a great relief when I found that exercise didn’t really do much to help with weight, and I could lose weight and control it even if I couldn’t exercise.
Here’s the facts: to lose weight, you need to have habits where you undereat, eating an average of fewer calories than you burn. Say you burn 2000 calories a day, you’d need to average less than that. To avoid gaining weight, you need to have habits where you don’t average over 2000. To lose a pound a week, the cumulative deficit has to add up to 3500 calories. Here’s the deal with exercise: If you go out and bust your butt with an hour walk, you only burn an extra 300 calories or so. That’s less than a donut or bagel’s worth of calories! No wonder I used to gain weight when I exercised! I’d exercise, think I should be able to have a donut now, eat one and cancel out the exercise, then have another and gain! Lots of people gain weight when they exercise because they feel like they deserve to eat and then they have thousands more a day! If you look at the calories in the stuff you eat, you’ll see. Exercise is of no value in weight control if your eating is out of control, which is the real problem for most of us.
Getting the eating right, so that it becomes easy and automatic is no easy trick. That’s where behavioral medicine comes in. Change won’t happen by accident, and most of the so-called “experts” have no clue how its done. It’s not done with “will power”. Neither will diet pills or weight loss products help you succeed. Its done with Therapeutic Psychogenics, a method in behavioral medicine, and that’s what my program and my book, The Anderson Method, is about. It’s not a trick and there’s work involved, but the objective is to make it so weight control becomes habitual, second nature. Many clients do say it’s become easy.
So, exercise doesn’t do any good for weight control if the eating is out of control; and exercise is not necessary by any means to lose weight and keep it off. That being said, exercise is important and necessary for good health. But for weight loss, no.
For all the details on how to succeed at permanent weight loss, read my book, The Anderson Method, or call one of my therapists. I’m training therapists now all over the country to provide my counseling and therapy, in places like Atlanta and North Carolina, not just here in Sarasota. Follow us and change your life for the better and for good.
