Do I have to workout harder and harder?

Question

About a year and a half ago (and having quit smoking six months prior) I decided to lose weight because my bathroom scale told me that I was on the lower end of the "obese" category. Since then, through a mild but strictly-kept diet (cut off sugar completely, kept bread and similar products to a vanishingly small amount) and a less sedentary life style (doing things like taking the stairs instead of the elevator, taking frequent hour-long walks, occasional cycling or jogging, and occasional light body-weight workouts) I managed to reach the lower end of the "overweight" category.

Although the weight loss was consistent, it was also quite slow. So I started working out more seriously in the past two months or so. I do a light home workout 2-3 times a week, mostly body-weight like lunges, push-ups etc. but I also use a pair of dumbbells for the muscles that are hard to target with such exercises. I also run 5-6 kilometers once or twice a week. I've been quite persistent and I'm seeing a nice improvement: I've lost 6 kg in the past six weeks or so. I'm now very close to my recommended normal weight and feel quite healthy.

Both of my workout methods (home exercise and running) takes about 30-40 minutes per session. That's about the most I want to spend. But I'm near the point where it feels almost too easy. I don't want to increase reps or the distance because I don't want to put more time in it. I know I can, for instance, try harder variants of pushups, increase weights, or run faster but my question is precisely that: Do I have to?

The main reason I workout is to have better health. Appearance is a secondary consideration for me. What if I kept my current training schedule ad infinitum even if becomes easier and easier to do? To be honest, I don't like working out very much. But 30 to 40 minutes per day is something I can do forever, especially if it doesn't exhaust me. Is it still beneficial? Or how much less beneficial will it become in time?

Answer 1

Congratulations on what sounds like a successful integration of healthy lifestyle activities.

If you're talking about maintaining your current physique, then no you don't need to do anything different. You'll still be keeping an eye on what you eat and participating in your normal workout, but your body will adapt to these workouts and diet as you've seen already. From here, for maintenance, you can start to get creative with what counts as a workout. Maybe it's time to try some other activities that will challenge your body and mind to adapt again and become altogether more fit, or just mix it up so you don't get bored. Things like rowing crew (actual rowing, not a machine), bouldering, swimming, entering obstacle races, racketball (or other sport), etc. etc. are relatively inexpensive areas to try.

Many of these things might have once fallen in the category of things you can't do when at the entry-level of obese (whether you wanted to or not). Now that you're down where you feel you're supposed to be, you don't have to, but you get to.