Tennis and Weight Loss

With the Holidays upon us, and New Year's resolutions days away, it seemed fitting to blog about tennis and weight loss.  Rather than mince words, I will make this very brief.

Playing more tennis will not make you skinnier, will not burn off the fat you currently have on your body, and won't make you eat less.  In fact, the exact wrong approach to weight loss is to talk about exercising MORE.

It is a case of math.  Let's say you are 20lbs overweight.  In order to lose that 20lbs, you will need to have a caloric deficit of 70,000 calories over time.  Now consider that a game of doubles burns off a maximum of around 300 calories a match, provided that match is physically demanding.  If you don't move much on the court you will be burning less.  A match of singles burns approximately 450 calories, providing once again you are moving quite a bit.  The caloric burns are assuming a vigorous match with high physical intensity.

So, how many additional doubles matches do we need to play to burn off that 20lbs? 70,000 calories/300 calories per match = 233.3 matches!!!  If you are a singles fiend, you need to play 155.55 additional matches!  Remember this is IN ADDITION to what you already play.  There are only 52 weeks in a year, so as a doubles player that means playing almost 4.5 additional matches a week.  A singles player needs to play 3 additional matches a week.  This is what would need to happen if your goal was to lose 20lbs this YEAR.  It also assumes your daily caloric intake is not exceeding the intake necessary to maintain your current weight.  Now, imagine the insanity if your goal was 6 months!

The point is you don't have this kind of time, which is why resolutions based on exercise always fail in regards to weight loss.  It's great for the fitness industry, but it makes very little common sense.

Most of us don't have the time to play tennis every single day.  Imagine if you are one of the few who can and still want to lose 20lbs.  You'd never leave the tennis court to meet your goals!

The only sure fire way to lose the weight you are looking for this year is to REDUCE the number of calories you intake.  Every caloric deficit of 3500 calories means you lose 1lb.  Eating is something we do every day.  Therefore reducing what we intake is the BEST way to lose weight.  Again the math works.  If we have a caloric deficit of 500 calories every day, it would take 70,000 calories/500 calories per day = 140 days for us to achieve our goal of losing 20 lbs.  That's roughly 4.5 months.  If you increase the caloric deficit to 800 calories a day, then it will take you 87.5 days to reach your 20lb weight loss goal, which is approximately 3 months.

So clearly DIET is how best to approach weight loss.  The first thing you need to know is how many calories you need to intake in order to MAINTAIN your current weight.  There are numerous sites online where you can plug your information in.  Once you have this number, start calorie counting.  It may be as simple as eliminating processed sugars, beer, and soda.  Fruits and vegetable have very low caloric numbers so keep that in mind.  Determine the minimum number of calories you feel comfortable eating per day and stick to it.  Exercise your will power.  You will find your weight loss goal within reach.

In summary, exercise is not an effective method to induce weight loss.  Reducing dietary calories is the best way to make a dent in that additional poundage you desperately want to shed.