Exercise is good: But it won't help you lose weight

[Mark1978]

Of course all that makes sense. You start an exercise regime and in the beginning it's hard because you're unfit and you burn loads of calories, but you keep doing the same thing and you're fitness improves, but all that means is that you're then able to do the same work for less energy. So then you keep to the same diet and instead of being on a calorie deficit your on a calorie surplus!

I guess for most people it means you have to diet even more or excercise even harder - given that most can't simply increase the durations.

[SpannerGeek]

I lost most my weight (from 15st 7lb to 13st 4lbs) over a 12 WK period last year on a calorie reduction diet designed for me by a nutritionist. I started off at 1300 cals a day and gradually increased this to 1480 cals a day. This study competely resonates with me. In the first few weeks it seemed easy (and heartening) to lose 3-4 lbs a week but as I got fitter, faster and leaner it became quite difficult to lose even 1lb a week, sometimes less than half of that. At the end of regime I was cycling about 300 miles a week and most of that at 15mph+ in the company of some pretty quick cyclists.

As soon as I stopped dieting weight loss stopped almost straight away. I actually put on 4lbs in a month but I'm hoping that was all muscle mass After another 6 week diet regime at the end of the summer I was able to get down to 12st 10lbs (roughly the weight I was at university 25 years ago) and have kept with 1-2 lbs of that ever since. Shredding that last half a stone was the hardest of all and I had to really shave away the calories. I really got the impression my body 'knew what I was up to' and fought to retain the last bit of fat.

For me cycling is a lot more than weight maintenance, but it's been very effective in that respect. But I can hand on heart say that I'd never have lost the weight without a committed and often times uncomfortable diet regime.

As has been said before in this forum 'you can't out exercise a bad diet'...

[Vorpal]

Maybe the difference is between people who begin weight loss with an unhealthy diet, and those who begin weight loss with a healthy diet, but maybe a few more calories than they strictly need. I am vegetarian, and get most of my calories from vegetables, whole grains, nuts and seeds, eggs, and dairy. Following a weight loss diet just meant (more or less) reducing my calorie intake somewhat. I lost a little, but it wan't much more than natural daily fluctuations; hardly noticeable. And I was already meeting recommended weekly exercise. Which is why I tried other things.

[PH]

I lost most my weight (from 15st 7lb to 13st 4lbs) over a 12 WK period last year on a calorie reduction diet designed for me by a nutritionist. I started off at 1300 cals a day and gradually increased this to 1480 cals a day. This study competely resonates with me. In the first few weeks it seemed easy (and heartening) to lose 3-4 lbs a week but as I got fitter, faster and leaner it became quite difficult to lose even 1lb a week, sometimes less than half of that. At the end of regime I was cycling about 300 miles a week and most of that at 15mph+ in the company of some pretty quick cyclists.

As soon as I stopped dieting weight loss stopped almost straight away. I actually put on 4lbs in a month but I'm hoping that was all muscle mass After another 6 week diet regime at the end of the summer I was able to get down to 12st 10lbs (roughly the weight I was at university 25 years ago) and have kept with 1-2 lbs of that ever since. Shredding that last half a stone was the hardest of all and I had to really shave away the calories. I really got the impression my body 'knew what I was up to' and fought to retain the last bit of fat.

For me cycling is a lot more than weight maintenance, but it's been very effective in that respect. But I can hand on heart say that I'd never have lost the weight without a committed and often times uncomfortable diet regime.

That's great, a real success story, the problem is you take your experience and think that because it worked so well for you it must work for everyone else. My experience is very different, but it'd be daft to tell you you couldn't loose weight by doing the above.
Simply the way to loose weight is find a plan that works for you, give it a chance, and if it starts to work stick to it! I struggle with reducing my calorie intake by the amount you did, it makes me feel lethargic after a few days. What I find easier to do is reduce it to 2000 for 5 days a week and 1000 for the other two and at the same time increase steady exercise by a couple of hours every day. It works at least as well for me as yours does for you.

As has been said before in this forum 'you can't out exercise a bad diet'...

Yet I know a couple of people who eat and drink junk all day every day, go the the gym nearly every day and play semi pro football at the weekend, I don't know how healthy they are but they're certainly not unfit or overweight.

[PH]

Rather than watching apps and package labels, we could just act empirically, slicing our diets until the input was seen to be lower than the output by a sustained reduction in the average readings on the scales.

This is OK for those who already have a decent understanding of what each food item contains. I eat a lot of vegetarian stuff and only recently noticed that those frozen nut burgers that I'll happily scoff 4 of are 295 calories each! Whereas a veg sausage I like just as much and would have considered similar is just 90. OK this information might not be perfectly accurate, but it's close enough to inform a decision.

[Colin63]

You might be interested to hear my experiences this month. I'm 5' 9" tall and at the beginning of the month I weighed 14st 5lbs. I started following the '8 Week Blood Sugar Diet' which can be found in the book by Michael Moseley currently being hyped like crazy. The point of the diet is that you only eat 800ish calories per day and there are virtually no carbohydrates. So no bread, pasta, rice and potatoes. It sounded ludicrous to me, but I've gone for it and followed the menu plan (which is a Mediterranean diet), allowing it to slip when the real world intervenes (it's not a set of laws from on high). It's now the end of January and I'm 13st 7lbs.

But... the interesting thing is that my energy levels have increased. I'm eating loads of foods, often new and always tasty, I'm never hungry. I'm exercising more and not suffering at all. All on 800 cal a day. I'm concluding that it's all rather simple. Don't eat food with simple sugars which are stored as fats, but get a great intake of nutrients and vitamins. The most surprising thing has been that I really thought I couldn't do without toast in the morning or lovely pasta dishes at night, instead I'm excited about what I'm going to eat, feel full and the next day have lost weight!

Back to the initial post and I'm wearing an activity monitor and it's driving me to do more exercise than ever, but I'm not getting at all tired. But I have noticed that my weight stabilises (even with just 800 cal a day) if I don't exercise, and drops rapidly when I hit my targets. My goal is to be 12st by 18th April.

[SpannerGeek]

I think there's a lot of merit in these low calorie low carb regimes. It's sugar and processed carbs that make me tired and lethargic, when I cut them out I can see a real difference in my energy levels and mood within 24hrs. And you're right about long, extended diet regimes. You're more likely to such to a diet if it's relatively short and the weight comes off quickly. My brother lost 4.5kg in two weeks on a low calorie regime and this really boosted his desire to see it through. Also it doesn't give the body much chance or time to adapt to the metabolic change. Which is where the study in the OP comes in.

[Manc33]

Getting bang for buck out of what you eat (where "buck" means calories) is what its was all about (had to be) for me losing weight. In other words piles of green veg. It works. You can't get more nutrition than that if you throw some eggs in. I was losing weight having 2 meals that were mostly green veg (like green beans) then the third meal as per normal so, sausages, fried eggs or whatever.

It isn't even about the amount of calories, it is about junk food and eating something that gives you no energy, meaning you have to eat more (usually, of that).

I remember a girl working in Aldi that was overweight and she threw a massive bag of those knock-off Dorito's and a 1L bottle of fizzy drink on the conveyor belt at the checkout and the other woman on the checkout said "Are you getting your dinner". A tear nearly came to my eye but what can you do, interfere? I'm not the type to say anything.

[SpannerGeek]

Unfortunately for a lot of mostly young people, a meal replacement with crisps/fizzy drinks is the new norm. It's not unusual to find school age kids regularly consuming 3-4000 calories a day, with little or no exercise. Nearly 75% of the kids I teach are overweight. 25% of those are clinically obese. Ten years ago it would be one in ten. Parents often encourage their kids to eat badly and from what I've seen they mostly lead by example.

[Manc33]

100 years ago it wouldn't be possible to eat "junk" food.

If any food was "junk" back then, it was because it had gone rotten, but then even an animal wouldn't eat it and this sort of thing regulates itself in reality, or does it...

I have heard people in their 50s and 60s claim that even things you'd think were unchangeable like tomatoes and eggs just don't taste of anything these days, compared to back when they were a child. Then again children don't smoke and the adult that said that does, lol.

Here's one... several years ago I had a dog that was half-sheepdog (it was intelligent compared to other dogs I have had) and I tried to give it a bit of "Fat free" mayonnaise (got knows what they put in that since mayonnaise is fat, or that is 86% of it is) and the dog wouldn't eat it.

Humans are eating things that even animals "know" isn't edible, in other words my dog sniffed it and it didn't register as food, now that is scary. I tried a bit of it and it tasted bitter, wasn't anywhere near its use by date either.

[Vorpal]

I have heard people in their 50s and 60s claim that even things you'd think were unchangeable like tomatoes and eggs just don't taste of anything these days, compared to back when they were a child. Then again children don't smoke and the adult that said that does, lol.

Grow your own tomatoes. Get your eggs out of an actual chicken nest 15 minutes before you cook it. You will know these things for truth.

[Heltor Chasca]

I have heard people in their 50s and 60s claim that even things you'd think were unchangeable like tomatoes and eggs just don't taste of anything these days, compared to back when they were a child. Then again children don't smoke and the adult that said that does, lol.

Grow your own tomatoes. Get your eggs out of an actual chicken nest 15 minutes before you cook it. You will know these things for truth.

Yes 100% spot on. I grow my own and have chickens. Older eggs are easier to peel when hard boiled [emoji6]

If anyone's interested I'm incubating a few eggs from breeds originating from places I've cycled through. Or at least near. Lakenvelders, Vorwerks, Welsummers and Barnevelders. A couple of other breeds but as I haven't cycled through Derbyshire or the States they don't count...b

[munroad]

It all depends what bugs you have in your colon
Read 'The Diet Myth' by Tim Spector (Professor of Genetics, London.)

[AJ101]

It all depends what bugs you have in your colon
Read 'The Diet Myth' by Tim Spector (Professor of Genetics, London.)

Aren't these 'bugs' there dependent on what you eat on the first place rather than the amount of exercise you do?

[Vorpal]

It all depends what bugs you have in your colon
Read 'The Diet Myth' by Tim Spector (Professor of Genetics, London.)

Aren't these 'bugs' there dependent on what you eat on the first place rather than the amount of exercise you do?

The food we eat can impact them, but so can antibiotics, illness, and other things.