Why Moving Matters

Jim Hill: Welcome to “Weight Loss And…”, where we delve into the world of weight loss. I'm Jim Hill.

Holly Wyatt: And I'm Holly Wyatt. We're both dedicated to helping you lose weight, keep it off, and live your best life while you're doing it.

Jim Hill: Indeed, we now realize successful weight loss combines the science and art of medicine, knowing what to do and why you will do it.

Holly Wyatt: Yes, the “And” allows us to talk about all the other stuff that makes your journey so much bigger, better, and exciting.

Jim Hill: Ready for the “And” factor?

Holly Wyatt: Let's dive in!

Jim Hill: Here we go. Welcome to another episode of Weight Loss and Holly. We've done a few episodes now on food and food is very important for weight management. We know that. Today, we will talk about something different that is just as important, if not more, important than what you eat, and exercise.

Holly Wyatt: Oh, no, Jim, not the E word. Can you feel, I think, about half of our listeners probably just rolled their eyes? That's not what they want to hear.

Jim Hill: What we set out to do in this podcast is sell people really what it takes to lose weight and keep it off. And there's no way around exercise. However, Holly, what we're going to talk about today is why it's important to exercise.

And there are reasons that you may not think about. Okay. And what you and I have talked about is let's do this podcast on why exercise is important. Then we're going to follow this up with how you incorporate exercise in a way that enriches your life. So here's what I would say to the listener.

Trust us. Go through this episode. If you're not convinced about the importance of exercise by the end of the episode, you can skip the exercise guidelines. But if we have, if we've convinced you that it's important, then we're going to come back and walk you through how you do this. And we have learned this from so many people who have gone from no exercise to incorporating regular exercise into their lives.

Holly Wyatt: So I agree, Jim. I think the key is don't turn us off. I think this episode could truly help you see what exercise can be and maybe explain a little bit that it's more than you think. There's a lot more to it. And I think if you understand that, you're more likely to prioritize it. You're more likely to get excited about it. So just trust us.

Jim Hill: Our job is to translate the science of exercise into a simple way to show you how it can help you lose weight and keep it off.

Holly Wyatt: I agree. So, Jim, I want to start by saying I find it fascinating that some, and I'm going to say weight loss experts, and I'm going to use that term loosely. So anybody who exercises thinks they're a weight loss expert. But weight loss experts tell you that you don't need to exercise for long-term weight loss success.

There are a lot of programs out there that promise. You don't need to do a lot of exercise. It's not required. You can have a lot of success without exercise. And what I want to know is does the science support that? I mean, to me, there's a lot of science about that exercise is really important. I don't think it's that unclear, I guess.

Jim Hill: Holly, you're exactly right. It isn't unclear. And we're going to tell you a little bit about what the science says. But here's the thing, and we've talked about it before about the difference between losing weight and keeping weight off. If you're losing weight, you always tell me diets in the driver's seat and exercises in the back seat. It helps a little bit.

But let's be realistic. You aren't going to lose that much more weight by exercising. When you maintain your weight, the focus shifts from dieting to physical activity or exercise. If you only care about losing weight, it doesn't matter whether you exercise or not. And people don't like to exercise.

So it's easy enough to say, hey, you know what? Lose weight on our program without exercise. You absolutely can do it. We find very few people can keep it off without exercise.

Holly Wyatt: That's why I think the science is more consistent. Sometimes we say things that are not consistent or that we don't know. We may also talk about different points of view. In this area, Jim, many studies, including ours, consistently show that exercise is important for maintaining weight loss.

Jim Hill: It amazes me how consistent the data is about exercise. And yet people still say, oh, well, it doesn't matter that much. But Holly, before we get going into the tips here and what we know about exercise and weight, let's talk about some terms. A lot of people say, oh, don't call it exercise.

Call it physical activity. You know what? I don't care. It's movement. If you want to call it physical activity, call it physical activity. If you want to call it exercise, call it exercise. It's moving your body. So we will probably use those terms interchangeably.

Holly Wyatt: Right. And to me, it's just not a big deal. But some people, they are very specific. But for me, it's all the same for what, for these purposes, at least.

Jim Hill: It's movement, Holly. And what I've learned in my career, your body is made to move. And when it stops moving, a lot of bad things happen. And I think we're not going to talk about it in this episode. But I think the decline in physical activity was one of the things that allowed the obesity epidemic to occur. But we're going to talk about exercise and weight loss in this episode.

Holly Wyatt: And I think I found that it is the very rare person who struggles with their weight. There are those people who don't struggle with their weight. And they're rare, there's less and less of them. Losing weight and maintaining it in the long term requires paying attention to your activity level, especially if you struggle with your weight.

Jim Hill: You always talk about odds. The odds of keeping weight off without physical activity are very, very low. You wouldn't bet on them in Vegas.

Holly Wyatt: Right. And that's facts, lots of facts. And that's what I want to hammer home. This isn't just as guessing or there's a lot of data to support this.

Jim Hill: So Holly, I've studied exercise my whole career and I give a lot of lectures on that. Before we discuss the details, I want to encourage people to consider exercising differently.

Right. I think about being active as the normal or optimum state and being sedentary as the abnormal state. So your body was meant to move. So it's not as if, oh, should we add exercise to our normal lives? Your body, your optimum situation is exercising. It's an abnormal situation when you stop exercising. And when you stop exercising, it affects muscles. It affects fat. It affects your hormones. It affects your brain. And, I've always been struck by, if you look at athletes, people that are doing a lot of physical activity, first, they have a lot of flexibility in their diet. They're not necessarily eating a great diet but burning so many calories and having almost no chronic disease.

Holly Wyatt: Unless, unless Jim, they stop. I see the ones that stop. That's the ones. And when they stop, that's when we see the chronic diseases develop, the weight gain.

Jim Hill: Absolutely. And the good news is you don't have to exercise like an elite athlete to have an impact. So if you're sedentary and overweight, that's an abnormal condition. What we want to do is put exercise back into your life to normalize your body, your physiology, and your metabolism. That's what we're going to talk about.

Holly Wyatt: Jim, something that truly exhilarates me about this episode is the fact that many individuals believe exercise revolves around burning a certain number of calories. Let's say you walk three miles and you burn 300 calories. And the only benefit is you burn 300 calories. And, you can eat a little bit more, but when they see how much more, 300 calories - isn't that much food? They think it's not a big deal. But I think you're going to show us that it's way more than just burning 300 calories.

Jim Hill: That's only a tiny part of what exercise does. So think about your muscles. Everybody knows this. If you stop using your muscles, say, for a year, what happens? They don't work very well.

You can't move around. It's the same thing for your metabolism. If you're not exercising your metabolism, and you exercise your metabolism through movement, bad things happen. You become less sensitive to insulin and risk of developing diabetes. Your metabolism becomes inflexible.

We will talk about that because that's something people need to understand. Your mood changes. You're more likely to have mood disorders and depression. You don't sleep as well. You don't deal with stress and you don't regulate your appetite. All these things are things that happen when you take exercise out of your life.

Holly Wyatt: So, Jim, tell people now what happens when you add the exercise or when you add more movement in your life. Does it help with those things? Can you reverse it so you're sedentary? We know all those things you just talked about are happening. Now you add some activity and what happens?

Jim Hill: Well, this is where the science is incredibly clear. Exercise may not be a magic bullet, but it does a lot of things. Your insulin works better. So, your risk of diabetes goes down. Insulin helps glucose go into your cells, so you're less likely to become diabetic. Your metabolism becomes flexible.

We're going to talk about that. It gives you some extra leeway when you might overindulge from time to time. Your mood improves. You think clearer. There's even data on improvements in memory. Movement increases how you handle stress.

So, you're able to deal with what you call the curveballs that life throws out you. I can cite 10 papers on each of those. So, again, the science says it's way more than burning calories. So, all these things can impact your weight as well. So, think of exercise as correcting some of the negative effects that have happened because you're sedentary. We want to get you back to the way your body was meant to operate.

Holly Wyatt: I believe that the key lies in addressing all the factors you mentioned - mood, insulin, sleep, curveballs, and stress. Each of these elements has the power to influence your weight independently, and by improving your ability to manage them, you can truly make a significant impact. And here you have an exercise that's coming in and affecting all of them in a direction that can help you maintain your weight. It is more than just burning 300 calories. It's great to burn the 300 calories, but people I think get stuck there and don't understand it’s the “And”.

Jim Hill: We've said it over and over on this podcast. It's the “and” that's the most interesting part of this. So, Holly, I want to get into the meat of this in just a second. But one thing to point out is if you're looking for exercise to lead to a lot of weight loss when you're on a diet, it isn't going to do that. Diet, you can reduce your diet by hundreds, thousands of calories a day. You can't exercise that much. So people say, well, the study over here, they exercised and this and had a diet. This study just had a diet.

It was the same. That's not where you see the impact of exercise. You see it in weight loss maintenance. I advise starting to exercise while losing weight not to lose more weight, but to be able to maintain the weight loss through regular exercise.

Holly Wyatt: Right. So it's going to stop that yo-yo, that weight loss, weight regain, that people go over and over and over and over again. Does weight loss affect the second phase where people typically regain the weight after losing it, even if they were successful during the first phase?

Jim Hill: All right. You're ready to jump in, and we're going to talk about six or seven big things that exercise does.

Holly Wyatt: So these are the reasons why exercise is important for loss maintenance, right? We're going to stick to weight loss maintenance.

Jim Hill: Absolutely. So Holly, let's talk about the energy gap.

Holly Wyatt: Oh, what is the energy gap? That's one of my favorite topics.

Jim Hill: So this is a term you and I sort of coined for weight loss maintenance. And let me give you an example to explain what it is. Okay. Let's take Susan.

Okay. Susan weighs 200 pounds. She's five-seventh. So her BMI is 32, right? She wants to lose weight. And let's say she's eating 2,500 calories a day, which would be maybe typical. And if she's weight stable, she's expending 2,500 calories a day.

So her metabolism is 2,500 calories a day. Okay. Now let's say she loses 30 pounds and that's eminently doable, especially with some of these new weight loss medications.

Okay. Now her BMI is 26.6. She's still a little overweight, but a lot better. But her body goes down, and her metabolic rate goes down.

Okay. Metabolic rate is tied to your body size. So we would predict, and I'm not going to go into how we would do this. So trust me on this: we would predict that her metabolic rate might go down about 400 calories a day. So now, rather than expending 2,500 calories a day, she's expending 2,100. Difference of 400 calories.

That's the energy gap. So what does she have to do? She has to eat 400 calories less every day. So to keep her weight off, now she's spending 2,100 to not gain weight. She has to eat 2,100, right? Another way would be if she added exercise, let's say she added 400 calories of exercise, then theoretically she could eat the same amount as she did before, and she's now maintaining her weight on 2,500 calories in, 2,500 calories out with exercise.

And then there's the mix and match. So you could do a few things on the diet side. If you can cut 100 calories from your intake, then you'd only need to do 300 calories of exercise.

Holly Wyatt: And I think this is a really important concept and I think people can understand it. You have to understand that when you lose weight, that energy expenditure is going to go down. You're going to create this gap. And then you have to understand that you get to choose. You can choose what you want to do to make up the gap, but you've got to do something.

Right? You either have got to eat fewer calories forever, which we've found is pretty difficult for most people. It's hard. You can restrict your calories for a short period, and lose weight. But when we look at months and years, it's very hard to maintain that restriction. Or you can choose to fill that gap with some physical activity. When you replace the gap left by weight loss with increased physical activity, your chances of success are significantly higher. What I tell people, is because the more weight you lose, Jim, and this is what some people kind of, it gets them a little bit worried. The more weight you lose, the bigger the gap. 10 pounds is a small gap. 100 pounds is a big gap.

And you've got to deal with that. And I think, though, we've known that filling the gap mostly with exercise is a social success. I think you can do a little bit with food. Do you agree? A little bit with food?

Jim Hill: Centuries of evidence demonstrate that people have always tried to lose weight and maintain it through diet. And doesn't work. Repeatedly, we have discovered that the most significant factor in maintaining weight loss is the ability to integrate exercise into your daily routine. So it fills that energy gap in a better way than food restriction.

Holly Wyatt: We believe we know the reason, but we may not fully understand it. However, we see that pattern repeatedly. And I believe the more, the more you fill that gap with activity, the better. I think for a lot of people, sometimes I say, if you want to do 80% of the gap with physical activity and try to do 20% with food, so just some low-hanging fruit like don't drink your calories. If you're drinking a lot of soda or just some easy things that maybe you can pull out and restrict a few calories for a longer period, you can try that. But the more you can fill that gap, if you can get up to filling the gap with 100%, I think that's the very best. And then, as I said, if you do a little bit with diet, that to me is your number two option.

Jim Hill: Agree. And one thing to make clear, your metabolic rate, isn't reduced temporarily, and it comes back to normal. It's reduced forever as long as your body size is down. It's a normal response to a lower body. People who weigh less have lower metabolic rates. So this is all normal. So the takeaway here is the more you can fill that gap with physical activity, the more likely you are to keep it off. You cannot do it or let's say that it's the rare person who can fill that energy gap by eating less.

Holly Wyatt: I agree. I see that over and over. And like I said, science and data would support that.

Jim Hill: So the second thing I want to talk about, people say, oh, you exercise, you just eat more. In the long run, it didn't do anything. You go out and exercise, you just make up those calories, so you're getting nowhere. Boy, this is where there's some wonderful research there. And I have to do a call-out to one of the researchers that I admire. He's a good friend and colleague. His name is John Blundell. He's in the UK and his group has done so much wonderful research on physical activity and appetite. And if you're interested in reading some scientific stuff, he's a great writer; read some of this stuff.

But here's the interesting thing, Holly. What physical activity seems to do is analyze your appetite. If you think about it, if you're sedentary, you're eating more than you need to maintain your energy expenditure. Exercise helps you regulate that. So in a way, exercise gets your body back to regulating intake the way it was. It's the sedentary state where you have abnormal food regulation. This is critically important.

Holly Wyatt: Achieving balance is crucial for your body to naturally reach its desired state of homeostasis. It's a state of perfect equilibrium where you neither gain nor lose, but remain harmoniously balanced. And so really, that exercise helps that balance occur, and you have the right amount of hunger for the right amount you're moving and expanding, right? Intake in expenditure is balanced or matched.

Jim Hill: So again, don't say, oh, if I eat more, if I exercise, I'm just going to eat more. No, exercise in the long term will help you regulate your intake even better. All right, Holly, we're getting to a good one now, metabolic flexibility.

Holly Wyatt: We talk about this all the time.

Jim Hill: You may not have heard about this. This is an important concept. And I'm going to try to explain it. It's not simple, but here's what it is. Metabolic flexibility is the ability to seamlessly transition between utilizing fat and carbohydrates as a source of fuel throughout the day.

Okay. When you eat a meal, boom, your metabolism starts using carbohydrates as an energy source. The farther away from that meal you get, the more you start using fat as a source. People who are highly metabolically flexible can switch very quickly between those sources of calories. Metabolically inflexible people don't switch as fast. And over time, this contributes to insulin resistance and accumulation of positive energy balance and weight gain.

Holly Wyatt: So, Jim, why do you think it's important that you can switch from one fuel source to another? Why is that an advantage?

Jim Hill: It's an advantage. It's almost like, think of a thermostat. If the thermostat is working well, you crank it up to 70, boom, it gets to 70. A slower one, it gets there, but it takes a while. And there's an advantage to that quicker switch because it allows you to use fuels more efficiently. In the slower switch, you may get there, but when you get there, it's like the rounding of the corners. You've had a little bit of positive energy balance along the way. And over time, this can add up. It's not hundreds of calories in a day, but over a day, it's a few extra calories.

Holly Wyatt: So, if you can't switch, then you have some extra calories, your body stores them. If you can switch quickly, it can burn them. Now, that makes sense to me. Sometimes when I hear the word efficient, then I'm like, well, I don't want to be efficient with my calories, but in this case, you do. You do want to be efficient because if you're not, you'll store those extra calories instead of burning them.

Jim Hill: I think about metabolic flexibility as your metabolism's fitness. You don't see it when nothing's happening. If two people in one state there, you're going to measure them, nothing's different. Metabolically flexible people have an advantage when it comes to processing fuels during meals and overnight fasts.

Holly Wyatt: And, Jim, I think it's like if you go out, you kind of have a huge meal and you kind of overeating, that's when this metabolic flexibility comes in.

Jim Hill: Exactly. You're likely going to burn a few more of those extra calories than someone who's not metabolically flexible. So, Holly, how do you increase metabolic flexibility?

Holly Wyatt: You move more.

Jim Hill: So, several things contribute to metabolic flexibility. Exercising is the most effective way to increase your metabolic flexibility, even though weight loss can also help a bit.

Holly Wyatt: You just talked about the energy gap and these two really kind of go together. So, when you fill that energy gap, what are you doing? You're increasing your activity, and I believe you're reaching a point where metabolic flexibility becomes more achievable for individuals. So, filling the energy gap and this metabolic flexibility go hand in hand.

Jim Hill: Let's reconsider exercise as not just an optional extra, but rather as the key to optimizing your metabolism.

Holly Wyatt: I agree. I agree. What else? What's next?

Jim Hill: Oh, I got lots more. You talk a lot about mindset, and mindset is sort of your view of the world, and how you think about things. We know that exercise, again, there's science here.

I can cite you three or four, probably more papers for each one. It increases resiliency. That means you bounce back quicker when stressful things happen to you, right? It improves your mood. It reduces your anxiety. Here's one I like a lot of evidence that will increase your self-confidence. So, exercises have more self-confidence.

Holly Wyatt: And a lot of people say that's what they want. I want to boost my self-confidence, but I don't think about exercising as part of the solution.

Jim Hill: One of the things I think about, it provides a great outlet for managing life's daily challenges. I mean, come on, we all have challenges in a day, some more than others. Exercise is a great outlet for that. So, it's going to help your mindset. We think mindset is critically important in management. It's in that “and” category.

Holly Wyatt: I agree. I believe that exercise is crucial for cognitive orientation. You want to be more positive. You want to be more optimistic. And people are saying, how can I do that? Exercise can help with that.

Jim Hill: Number five, Holly, better sleep. Well, it's amazing how many Americans don't sleep well. And again, exercise can help do that. Exercise can help you sleep longer, and can help you increase your quality of sleep. And more and more, we're seeing that sleep disruptions can contribute to weight gain and obesity. So, a big positive impact is better sleep. And that's going to tie back and help you manage your weight.

Holly Wyatt: Yes, lots of good data on that. Sometimes you have to plan when you're going to exercise for some people. Sometimes, exercising right before you go to sleep might not be the best time.

Increasing physical activity is linked to improved sleep patterns and increased sleep duration for individuals who are experiencing insufficient sleep. Furthermore, numerous studies indicate that being more physically active not only benefits one's overall health but also assists in weight management. These findings are supported by an increasing amount of data.

Jim Hill: A couple more things to highlight, Holly. Better cognitive function. It increases your memory. It increases your executive function. Executive function is your ability to make logical decisions. As you go through life, making decisions and plans, that's your brain's executive function at work. That's helped by exercise. I just read a scientific article this week that people who exercise have larger brains overall.

Holly Wyatt: I have not heard that. What difference does your brain make? I'm going to push you on this one.

Jim Hill: Well, I'll get you the article. Again, it's not huge differences. So, it's not going to be your exercise and your brain gets twice as big. But I think what it says is it can strengthen areas in the brain that actually can be measured as a volume increase. But the long and short of it is it's good for your metabolism. It's good for your brain. It's good for your social relationships and your mindset. And the last one, over and over, is shown to increase your quality of life. That's the big one.

That's what people want. A big reason people want to lose weight is because it's going to increase their quality of life. Exercise can help. Weight loss can help. Exercise combined with weight loss, wow, it doesn't get any better than that. So, that's like seven reasons to exercise. And none of them relate to just burning a few more calories. That's not the big impact of exercise.

Holly Wyatt: And I think that's the big message here. And if I could get it out is wouldn't just look at the calories burned. It is so much bigger than that.

Jim Hill: Yes, yes. We got through all those seven, Holly.

Holly Wyatt: I know. That was good. So, what time it is?

Jim Hill: Oh, no, the personal vulnerability.

Holly Wyatt: Yes. These are my favorite questions. So, I've got one for you. I was thinking about this all night. I was thinking about what question am I going to ask Jim. This is something that people, scientists have said to you for a long time and I want you to be able to respond to it.

Scientists often emphasize the importance of exercise and point out that it is a key factor contributing to the problem. However, they also argue that poor nutrition plays a significant role in driving the obesity epidemic. Some people believe that you focus too much on the lack of movement and neglect the role of diet in this issue. What would you say?

Jim Hill: What do you say about that? First, it's interesting. I probably publish this much more about nutrition than exercise. But here's the thing that's frustrated me my whole career. It isn't an either-or. It isn't diet or exercise. How in the world can you think about one with the other? The analogy I often use, Holly, is your net worth more due to your income or your spending.

Holly Wyatt: Right, right. That's a good one. Oh, I like that. Yes, I'm using that one.

Jim Hill: I strongly believe in the importance of physical activity. Given how inactive we are as a nation, relying solely on diet is simply not enough to achieve our goals. We can't fill this energy gap with diet. That does not mean that diet isn't important. It means that we have to elevate physical activity a little bit. There's so much we can do on the diet side. So when people talk about is diet or physical activity is more important, the answer is yes, they both are.

You cannot separate them. And I get so frustrated that the nutrition people say to the exercise people, oh, you're all about exercise. And the exercise people will say to the nutrition people, you're all about diet. You've got to do both. And if you're not doing both, you're missing the boat.

Holly Wyatt: So that is a true “and” situation. When studying this issue, people tend to focus solely on nutrition or solely on physical activity, which is part of the problem. And you're right. You have to think about both of them and how they interact, or we're not going to move the needle. So a great answer, Jim.

Jim Hill: And people know a lot of this, some of it at least. Why do people still resist moving?

Holly Wyatt: That is a question I thought a lot about. And I experience it. I know all this well. Like I can talk about this. I write about this. I study this. And there are days when I'm like, I don't want to move you know?

So I get it. I believe that one reason why some of us lack the motivation to move is because we don't naturally have a drive for it. However, to overcome this, we need to make a conscious effort to plan and push ourselves out of our comfort zone. This way, we can become more efficient and productive. If there was a famine, we would be the ones that would survive, and we don't necessarily have that internal drive to move. But I think we can move.

And I have a trick. I'm not going to give it this episode. I'm going to give it our next episode, where we talk about how to get moving, and how you can start moving. A trick I use when I'm sitting there, and I feel like I don't want to exercise when I'm resisting it.

And yet I know all these good things that could come if I would just get out there and move my body. So a trick, it's coming. Listen to the next episode.

Jim Hill: Something to look forward to. All right, Holly, it's time for the pie on the plate. Is exercise truly the secret sauce?

Holly Wyatt: What do you think, Jim? Is it the secret sauce?

Jim Hill: Well, I don't want to say there's one secret sauce. When people always ask me, what's the one thing that you would tell people to do? That's the problem. There's no one thing. One thing is not going to solve this. Exercise does so much.

It's one of the best things for your buck. And again, if you only want to lose weight temporarily, you don't have to exercise. But if you want to lose weight and keep it off, your success is going to be much higher if you exercise. We rarely see anyone who's able to keep off significant amounts of weight that doesn't exercise.

Holly Wyatt: And so what I would tell people is, set yourself up for success. Don't try to be the 2% that might succeed without it. You're not probably going to be that person. So figure out how we can start to get more movement. And that's our next episode. But make that a priority in addition to watching what you're eating and using the nutrition piece. But, they start trying to lose weight and they just don't want to pay attention and put some effort and time into this activity piece.

Jim Hill: Let's reiterate what we've learned about why to exercise. One, it does burn more calories, but it's filling the synergy gap after weight loss that's critical. Two, it increases your metabolic flexibility - your ability to switch between fuels.

This gives you just a little bit of leeway on your diet. It improves how insulin and other hormones work. It improves satiety. It helps you regulate food better, better sleep, better mood and outlook, lowering stress levels, and more resiliency. You bounce back quicker after stress, and it improves your quality of life. You feel better. And you know what, Holly? Probably a bunch of things that we don't yet understand. Every system in the body is improved by exercise.

Holly Wyatt: I love it. It's a huge list, a huge list.

Jim Hill: So the bottom line is we were meant to move. When we don't move, things don't work as they were meant to work. We want to fix that. So it's not as if we're super adding something. We're correcting something that not moving has done to your body. The good news is we can correct that, and people can get their metabolism back to working the way it was meant to work.

Holly Wyatt: So I kind of think there is a little bit of a secret sauce. It does so many things.

Jim Hill: I can live with secret sauce, but it shouldn't be a secret.

Holly Wyatt: That's true.

Jim Hill: Let's bottle it. Some people have said if you could put exercise in a pill, it'd be the most effective pill ever.

Holly Wyatt: Put the secret sauce on a lot of things, right? It does a lot of things, and that's what a good secret sauce is. So next up, Jim, what are we going to be talking about next episode?

Jim Hill: Well, hopefully, people are still with us and haven't tuned out. And if you are still with us, and you're buying it, you're buying what we're selling, that exercise is critical, what we're going to do in the next episode is roll up our sleeves and say, how do you go from not getting off the couch for 20 years to becoming an exerciser? And we're going to walk you through the how, the why, the setting goals, and all that.

Exercise greatly enriches people's lives, as many have experienced repeatedly. So don't look at this as, oh my God, this is something I'm going to hate to do. We're going to help you do something that at the end of the day when you achieve it, you're going to be so happy you did it.

Holly Wyatt: And I'm going to give you my secret tip or strategy. It works well when I don't want to go to the gym, when I don't want to move, I pull this out and I would say it works 90% of the time.

Jim Hill: Wow. All right. Well, that does it for this episode. Remember to send us your questions at [weightlossand.com](http://weightlossand.com/), and we'll look through them and make sure that we answer some of them on the air. So tune into the next episode to learn how to become an exerciser. Thanks, everybody. Bye.

Holly Wyatt: All right, guys. Bye. Thank you.

Jim Hill: And that's a wrap for today's episode of “Weight Loss And…”, we hope you enjoy diving into the world of weight loss with us.

Holly Wyatt: If you want to stay connected and continue exploring the “Ands” of weight loss, be sure to follow our podcast on your favorite platform.

Jim Hill: We'd also love to hear from you. Share your thoughts, questions, or topic suggestions by reaching out at weightlossand.com. Your feedback helps us tailor future episodes to your needs.

Holly Wyatt: And remember, the journey doesn't end here. Keep applying the knowledge and strategies you've learned and embrace the power of the “And” in your own weight loss journey.