me_irl

The key is to not eat the quarter pounder after exercise, even if your body cries for 3.

Yup, that's the problem. If you run 5 miles you burn about 500 calories. Hardly enough to make up for even the fries in the meal. A lot of people overestimate calories burnt and underestimate calories consumed.
A bit of exercise every day is good for your heart, lungs, circulatory system etc. but it won't make up to overcome an otherwise sedentary lifestyle if you don't change your diet.
- Yep I've lost 30kg and by far the biggest thing that allowed me to achieve that was to start counting my calories. At first that's all I did, only later I started to introduce weight lifting and exercise to prevent losing too much muscle and to start making them stronger and more visible.
- Exactly this, like obviously you should exercise, but when it comes to losing weight it’s really the diet that matters most.
  I actually, within the span of about a year, went from 280 to 179 lbs through diet alone, I literally did no exercise. I’m 6’ btw.
  Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t exactly recommend that, without exercise you’ll also be losing tons of muscle. But my point is that diet is incredibly powerful.
Kilos in the kitchen,
Grams in the gym.
People should stop seeing food intake as transactional (ie, I'm doing extra cardio so I can eat a muffin later) and just focus on maintaining a calorie deficit.
Nah the key is to get rid of insanely calorie dense ultra processed garbage that digests in minutes and makes you feel like shit. Roast chicken breast with tons of herbs and it's delicious - you can quite literally eat as much of that as you can physically handle and you wont gain weight. Plenty of ways to cook veggies that make them delicious. Fruits arent that many cals and fill you up. Unsweetened yogurt is the same cals per protein as protein powder. Dont eat cereal or half the packaged garbage in the grocery store. Just eat real food and it's a million times easier to lose weight.

Well the issue here is that food companies have been pushing the calorie balance mantra, you can eat more as long as you exercise more, except studies have shown you cant, the mantra "you can't outrun your diet" exists for a reason.

Kurzgesagt has a good video on the workout paradox https://youtu.be/lPrjP4A_X4s?si=KQUibk9D3Cj8sYyi

Renesaince Periodization is a good youtube channel for science backed methods for losing weight if you are interested, but spoiler alert, it takes a long time and you need to eat less for periods of up to 3 months then stay at that weight for the same amount of time before continuing your weight loss to avoid bounce backs and excessively diet fatigue

Ah, good. Yes. I haven't been completely ignoring my weight loss goals and just managing to not get any fatter over the last several months.. I've been using SCIENCE. BITCHES. 😤🧪✨
- Well actually Dr Mike from RP does talk about that, sometimes you need time to reset and not to think about your diet to help to clear your mind and then you get back to weight loss when you can, when you are feeling like, you know what, I am feeling good, I want to eat healthier and lose weight.
Kurzgesagt vid goes into some specific and recent research about how our body uses calories, but the idea that exercise can't help much with weight loss seemed obvious to me just by looking at the numbers.
A brisk pace on a treadmill will burn 260 calories per hour. At a fast pace--which most people wouldn't be able to keep up for an hour when starting out--it's 680 calories. Meanwhile, a single 12oz can of Mountain Dew is 170 calories; simply cutting one can of soda out gets you more than halfway to a decent hour's workout.
As the vid also states (and is supposedly to be covered more in an upcoming part 2), there are other benefits to exercise, but burning more calories that way is a fool's errand.
- But I want that can of Mountain Dew...
I admit to not watching that video, at least not yet. But the idea that a person can't eat more while exercising seems to conflict with the first law of thermodynamics.
I cordially invite you or anyone else to sell the lazy among us on watching the video above. Dispel our concerns... if you dare.
Edit: I gotta say. At -22 currently (sure to increase after this), and with a ton of really great, informative responses below... What are we doing here?
I asked an open question encouraging discussion if anyone is interested in doing that. So why all the down votes? Was it the "if you dare"? Didn't think a /s would have been necessary but maybe it wasn't clear?
And look. This isn't about my imaginary comment score. It's about community. The comment section is for discussion. Feels like once a comment gets one or two down votes everyone else just adds to them without considering the content. Do we want Lemmy to be a place for interaction or not?
- The problem is that practical advice is often misinterpreted or misconstrued.
  "the idea that a person can't eat more while exercising"
  You can, of course, eat more while exercising.
  But you can't eat much more while exercising, because running while eating is a choking hazard.
  I'm kidding, but that is the nature of what I'm getting at.
  But really--you can't eat much more during the day because exercising just doesn't burn much more calories. And eating a lot more calories is relatively trivial.
- The gist of the video is that the brain is a really powerful regulator of how much energy you use. Do a ton of exercise and it'll find energy savings elsewhere.
- Core issue is that physical exercise might move the needle 5 or so percent in terms of your total energy consumption in short term, a tad more longer term if the exercise builds some nice energy hungry muscle mass.
  Though exercise helps on a lot of other fronts (insulin resistance, cardio vascular health, joint health, its not enough change in activity to counteract much extra food intake.
- I would posit if you are lazy, you aren't doing the kind of work that would be required to out eat a bad diet. There are plenty of skinny people who have organs that look more like force fed geese than human, and there are fat people than finish the Ironman.
  The people who can "out eat" a bad diet probably don't eat like you think they do, or even they say they do. Even when Michael Phelps said he ate 10,000 calories of junk food, he was getting likev maybe 2,000 of the 10,000 calories he ate a day from pizza at night.
  Most people won't out work out a bad diet cause they don't actually know how many calories they are taking in and they aren't training 8-12 hours a day 50-52 weeks of the year.
- I haven’t yet watched it either, but I’ll take a punt. It’s very hard to apply the first law to bodies, because we ingest, burn, store, and excrete in very complicated ways. It’s not as simple as calories in vs calories burned.
- The video says your immune systems and glands go into hyperdrive when you're not working out, and give you chronic inflammation and stress. When you work out, your body's other systems chill the fuck out and stop killing you, and in total you burn the same amount of energy.
- I thought the same thing, but turns out the body is really damn complicated. Worth skimming the papers they link in the video - basically your body adapts over the course of ~6 months or less if you become more active by saving energy elsewhere. Things like inflation and basic metabolic functions can burn way more energy than they need to.
- So I have not watched the video, but I have read the book Burn by herman pontzer. And it seems that the body makes up for it in other ways as described in other comments. But your body can and will burn more calories than your normal amount if you do lots of exercise.
  The example used in the book is a study the author did where he tracked the calorie usage of people running across the US. They were burning a ton of calories every day (and eating a bunch too). And somehow over the course of this ultra marathon thing, people actually started burn less calories as their body adjusted to the load.
  But yeah, do lots of exercise and you'll feel tired and conserve energy. Do a ton of exercise and your body will burn lots of fat.
- it likely doesnt violate thermodynamics since caloric intake isn't likely to be super representative of actual converted energy. Likewise, an individuals energy consumption is also likely to vary as well, even in the case of certain consumed foods. Wouldn't suprise me if there was data suggesting asian people consumed food in a marginally different manner to american people, for example. There are just certain things the body adapts to, and over time engages with biased selection for.

You are not immune to the basic laws of thermophysics. Weight loss is literally calories in < calories out.

No shit. That's not some great revelation and I'm kinda tired of seeing it posted as if it is.
You don't burn a great deal more calories exercising than you do just sitting on the couch. Your body is very good at conserving energy. Not to say exercise isn't beneficial, it is, it's just not a great weight loss tool. Not at last as good as common wisdom might suggest.
The caveman in your skull is also very persuasive, and wants you to eat far more than you need, because it thinks you might not be able to find food again for a while. The caveman really likes carbs, and foods high in sugar and fat, and will ask for more the second you have any.
Ignoring the caveman is hard, harder for some than others. It's also taxing and after a while the caveman will wear you down.
Effective weight loss isn't just about putting less food on your plate. Fucking anybody can do that and it's exceedingly obvious to those trying that that's what they need to do.
Losing weight is about beating back the caveman in your skull, convincing him that he's had enough, and feeding him in a way that also nourishes the body you both live in.
There's a reason most people fail, and fail repeatedly to lose weight. It's as simple as eating less but it turns out, eating less for people who eat a lot isn't actually that simple. There are psychological and physiological drivers causing them to keep going back for more, to lie to themselves about how they're doing, and to ignore the obvious cues that something isn't working.
- It really is the "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" or "just don't take any drugs, duh" of weight loss. Like, you can't just ignore all the social, systemic issues in our health and food industries, reduce it all to cals in vs cals out, and expect that to work. It's reductive and unproductive.
  People aren't having trouble with math or willpower, they're having trouble with the fact that most (emphasis on "most") readily available, cheap food is bad for you. Most people in poverty grew up with processed, heavily advertised junk and have literal addictions to this shit.
- You don’t burn a great deal more calories exercising than you do just sitting on the couch.
  Depends on how intense the exercise is, but it can easily be more than a factor of 3 times as much energy as sitting around (something like walking) to more than 10 times as much (things like vigorous cycling, running, etc). Would be really hard to maintain 20 times sitting output for any significant period of time though.
- Relevant Kurzgezagt
- A kind of 'side benefit' to muscle-building exercise, is that it increases the amount of calories your body burns 'by default', because by weight, muscle takes much more energy to maintain than fat.
  So on top of eating less (fewer calories going into your body), you can 'attack' it from the other side at the same time by increasing your body's 'consumption' of the calories/energy stored in it.
- Anecdotal, and I agree with you overall, but I hit the gym hard (2-3 hour jiu jitsu/MMA sessions) 4 times a week for 3 months and lost 18 lbs. I didn't change my diet at all, though I will admit it's possible I ended up eating less overall. But my point is I think exercise can definitely be a pretty good weight loss tool if you're working your ass off. Just depends on the amount of exercise and the intensity etc.
- Effective weight loss isn’t just about putting less food on your plate. Fucking anybody can do that
  Doesn't seem like it
- That’s not some great revelation and I’m kinda tired of seeing it posted as if it is.
  I wasn't posting it like some revelation, it's literally the most easy to understand concept ever. You cannot create mass from nothing. Stop taking in more mass than you expel. It's dead simple. The only counterpoint to this is examples of extreme medical anomalies.
Except that the human body is way more complicated than that. Whenever you try to increase calories out by exercise, your body just finds somewhere else it can economize, because it wants to operate on a fixed budget. This can include pulling calories from your immune system, or making you subconsciously move less throughout the day, or even sleep more. You can only overcome this for a limited time. Kurzgesagt has a good video on this phenomenon. What you actually want to do is reduce calorie intake.
Exercise is good for lots of reasons, but it isn't a good way of losing weight long term.
- What you actually want to do is reduce calorie intake.
  Is that not the exact sentiment when people bring up CICO, though?
- That doesn't discredit calories in calories out? They didn't even mention exercise or imply that you didn't need to reduce your food intake. It works. When I am on a cut I can estimate down to within a few days how long it will take me to get where I want to be just following CICO.
Human body is open system
"Depressed? Just cheer up, bro."

I assure you european peasants were not eating pizza and cheesecake multiple times a week

I'm European and I did pull a few potatoes out of the ground more than once, so I guess that counts as being a peasant.
And I certainly did eat pizza not so long ago!
They were eating shitloads of butter and lard.
- Also doing manual labour during summer and eating a lot less during winter

But why does excersize have to suck so much.

Like if I wanted my muscles to hurt I could just slap em with a belt or if I wanted to gasp for breath... I could also use a belt.

Like I have "slow-twitch" muscles which means I'm better running I guess, but then Jesus fuck that hurts my knees and feet, which I could probably use a belt to cause pain to as well.

... Do you want to be slapped with a belt? We can certainly accommodate that request
- No, but I do see how you might get that interpretation.
When I get out of shape it takes a good 2-4 weeks of consistent exercise for things to transition from feeling like premature death to actually feeling good. If you’ve never made it to the feeling good part, I would imagine it’s rather challenging to motivate yourself through the “feels like premature death” phase.
- I enjoy sore muscles, I know if I don't go the gym I will feel worse, I know if I go I will be sore but feel better, still it takes conscious effort to go, though I may have adhd and an issue with developing habits
Muscle soreness mostly goes away after a while when doing strength exercise. I kind of miss it, to be honest - it's a clear signal that you've accomplished something.
As for running, it is indeed quite hard on everything. I generally prefer biking, which I find a lot more fun and less straining on the body.
- As for running, it is indeed quite hard on everything. I generally prefer biking, which I find a lot more fun and less straining on the body.
  Until you crash, and then it takes you forever to heal as you get older. Swimming is good, but if you've spent your whole life in the water like I have, you wind up with burnt out rotator cuffs, etc.
  Basically, any repetitive exercise will destroy you over time. Best to mix it up as much as possible
Ever tried cycling? It's relatively easy on the knees and you can vary intensity and duration to your liking.
Yeah I hate almost any and all forms of exercise. I picked up running back in March because people say exercise improves your mental health.
No it fucking doesn't. I'm still doing it every few days and it does not at all improve my mental health. Also running fucking sucks. People who enjoy it are psychopaths.
Figured I'd keep at it for now though. I don't run super far or fast. I run a bit over 3 miles every few days. It still sucks every time.
- Running sucks ass, but cycling is fun. You just need to find something you enjoy
- 3 miles is not that much. Less than a 5k. I didn’t really start to enjoy running until I got up over 10k (about 7 miles).
  There’s a point you reach where instead of feeling like shit the whole time, you actually feel good and it seems like you can run forever. Then when you stop it’s because you’re tired, not because your body is screaming in pain.
  Also are you panting / breathing from your mouth really hard in the middle of your run? That’s a sign that you’re not pacing yourself correctly. You should be able to run smoothly while breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth. Pacing yourself incorrectly pushes you into the anaerobic zone which is only good for sprinting, not running long distances.
- Thank you for your honesty:)
- Maybe swimming or cycling is more your kind of sport?
Simple, because you never do it. All forms of cardio are unpleasant when you are completely out of shape. It gets better rather quickly if you keep at it and once you have some endurance it is actually fun.
- Athletic people tend to say that, but I really doubt it's true for everyone. I have never enjoyed sport - being out of shape it sucked more, but while maintaining a sensible training regime I really dislike it as well. For me it's about as enjoyable as doing housework. I do that too, but not for fun.
  The only thing that has helped me is to accept that evolution is a bitch and biology is unfair; I will probably never enjoy working out, but I can do it anyway and find a form of exercise that is kinda okay and allows me to listen to good music while I do it.
  For some people, "it will be fun one day" just sets a really unrealistic expectation.
- This is all true however it is also true a fitness journey never ends, as you get better you need to keep pushing yourself more to maintain the health benefits, if you're just relying on your progress to cruise you do not get the same calorie burning and other benefits after a while.
Because it does suck, but it's necessary since we structured our society so that we sit around 90% of the time rather than naturally exercising by walking around all day.
Go walk. Or if you want to burn a lot of energy, swim.
Because you're doing something you don't like doing? My main exercise these days is hiking but I used to go to the gym 2h a day 5 years ago and 10 years ago it was rock climbing... You wouldn't see me play hockey or soccer though.
Play a sport you enjoy or start rock climbing. It can be fun.
If your knees hurt, replace the insoles in your exercise shoes with some good ones. These are good, and not expensive:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01IELL7IU
It's a secret that most athletes replace their insoles. Also, skinny people who run a little might not do it because they don't weigh enough to hurt their knees.
Shhh, don't tell anyone.
Try climbing. I hated every sport I tried but climbing fixed it for me. It is strenght, endurance and stamina training all in one and you do it together with someone. It is also mentally challenging as you have to solve the routes you climb.
But why does excersize have to suck so much.
because exercise is the wrong way to do it IMO.
It's the clinical version of, just being fit instead.
go running, do cardio, ride a bike, do some heavy labor, you'll be equally as fit, with less muscle mass, and better equipped to do most things throughout life, plus you aren't doing test or some shit, because you don't care about the looks.
Also, as far as running goes, it really sucks when you're out of shape, but if you keep doing it, eventually you'll get in shape, and while it's still tiring and makes you sweaty, and generally hard on your body, you will eventually start to run without feeling like utter shit. (also you should do it daily, just don't overdo it on a daily basis and you'll be fine) i'm not subscribed to the idea of work hard, recover, and then do it all over again, i'm more a fan of constant
If you're essentially sedentary you should probably start with walking first, to build up some physical endurance in your legs. That's one of the nice things about running, you can do it for whatever, however you want, whenever you want. You can't run for 3 miles straight? Guess what, you don't have to. You can just walk half of it if you want.
granted i'm a bit of a masochist and enjoy uncomfortable shit like this, i think it's something you have to learn to enjoy. You just start to tune everything out and focus only on the running, it's a nice experience. Personally, once i got past being physically fucking tired, i started to be able to focus on breathing and movement, and once you have a good stride, it's generally very pleasant. Cycling is also good cardio, but it's a lot easier on the body, you can take it pretty casually as well.
- Says exercise is the wrong way to be healthy.
  Recommends exercise instead.
- When I first started running, I jogged, which was actually barely more than my walking speed, for 10m, than walked 10m. Eventually you start jogging longer and walking less. If you find a good distance for you, for me it was 5k, I just started trying to go faster. Speed up for 20m, back to jogging, speed up, etc, etc until you can sustain that new speed throughout the run. Went from dying after 50m to running 5k in sub 20 min and 10k in sub 50 in like 8 months and losing 20 kg in the process.
  I always hated the first 10 to 15 minutes of my runs, but once I got passed that I got into a flow state of sorts and it was meditative.

See it's a joke but that's actually what happens with exercise.

It only burns additional calories at first, but unless you keep overloading your body adjusts it's caloric budget to the new normal and you're not burning the excess anymore.

Ya gotta be eating right and upping your game through training past your limits, not until you're hurting, but until you've beaten your own records, even by a little bit. Don't spiral if ya just can't do it, but pushing the bar just a little higher has to always be the goal when trying to lose weight through exercise or else you're just gonna be the same weight but able to run that status quo distance you settled on.

Sauce: https://youtu.be/lPrjP4A_X4s?si=5HaVujaxP4xhYH3E

I love Kurzgesagt!
That was one of those videos that put my perspective on a 180. I was very much in the camp of "intake-expence= weight gain/loss", but the body is much more clever than I thought.
A big thing they hit on though is what exercise is good for. Exercise doesn't make you lose weight or live longer, but it does improve your quality of life. My parents are overall super happy people, and at 69 and 70, my parents were taking me on a 20 mile bike ride before they hit the pickleball court and then to the gym. My old folks can run me ragged, and knowing my grandparents and great grandparents lived until their 90s, I know they are doing everything they can to try and make sure the last 20 years of their lives aren't stuck inside.
For me, I was diagnosed bipolar after a manic episode at 20, and now at 30 I'm considered 8 years in remission. I owe that to meds, being soberish (It comes and goes like the tide), but most importantly is that I run a 5k 3 days a week, hit the climbing gym the other three, and yoga once a week for recovery and stretching my poor I.T band.
When I've been high and on the couch, I've been miserable. When I was high and at the gym, much less so. Studies show that exercise is as effective if not better than most SSRIs, at least according to every psych I've talked to.
My mentality to it is a) I love the happy chemicals and b) I'm curious of what my body can do.
So I have a very physical job and medication that makes me not like food.
I went to a weight loss clinic known locally for their fantastic results and uh... anyways now I have a minimum calorie limit.
There are exceptions to this advice, but if you're not absolutely working your entire ass off for your work, you're almost certainly not the exception.

Exercise doesn't lose weight. Weight is 99% controlled by diet. Exercise will make you not feel like shit so you don't use food as a dopamine hit. Which is why moderate exercise is better for weight loss. If your workout is making you feel like shit, that might be good for fitness and performance, but it still won't lose weight faster, and now you are eating more to support recovery.

So there are two pathways exercise can impact weight.

Exercise -> psychology -> diet -> weight
Exercise -> calorie consumption -> weight

The first one just happens to be more impact because the second one does almost nothing at all. Any useful pathway has to hit diet because that's 99% of weight (at least of the factors you have control over).

The best weight loss advice I ever got was when my doctor said "Based on your BMI you're eating about twice what you should."

Since I was extremely house-poor at the time, I thought "Sweet, I can cut my grocery bills in half."

That, combined with living alone and a lot of yardwork keeping the house presentable got me to my ideal weight in about six months.

I've since moved and am no longer at my ideal weight.

I’m part of a whole-foods plant-based potluck group. A number of people are eating that way to lose weight and maintain a healthy weight. Most people in the group are maintaining a healthy weight without any major exercise plan.

This is the way.
- Yes, having a support group of people eating the same way helps. Everyone seems to have stories about their own friends and family that don’t get it even when they are on statins or have other health or weight problems.
Damn I wish I had this group in my area
- I ran into the guy from the group this morning. He is in 60s and had just finished in the top 3 in his age group at a local 5k race.
  I came in maybe 4th in my age group but I ran an extra 5 miles to get to the race.
- They are all over. Search for the closest one here: https://plantpurecommunities.org/find-a-pod/

my body thinks I'm a generational athlete or something, I eat like a pig but it all goes into muscles and energy, so now I'm 52kg but hey if you need someone to run for an hour straight I'm your girl...

Try getting into biking. I burn 1500-2000 calories (I'm not a small dude) in like 2 hours of road cycling. It's relatively easy on the body compared to running as a bonus.

Bruh unless you’re like 900 lbs barefoot uphill in the snow both ways you are not burning 1000 kcal/hr on a bicycle. Make sure you’ve input all your vital stats onto your fitness tracker correctly, and consider comparing it to a few others.
Are you sure about that number?
According to my tracker, I burn about 1000kcal per 60km, and I'm an normal dude. You probably won't average 50km/h over 2h or something.
- Given weight and road grade plays a role, they don't need to average 50km/h necessarily. Still, 1kcal/hour seems quite intense for a regular exercise for me, but similarly large professional-level endurance athletes probably burn far more during serious training or competitions. 750kcal/hr seems manageable to me as a non-athletic person (supposedly I've burned 2340 calories over 2.7hours once... but I was totally wiped out afterwards IIRC). 1K/hr isn't something I could maintain for more than about 1.5 hours even on the best of days.
- The key here is elevation. I'm 183 cm and weigh 95 kilos, and I live in the Alps. For sure, I'm not always hitting those numbers, but throw a couple of big climbs in there and it starts to make sense.
Yes cycling is the absolute best endurance sport, and it’s fun. Swimming is also great but very few people can swim to work or swim to the bar or swim to the grocery store.
And fuck running. Your knees and ankles will thank you for cycling.
Oh also another thing to check is weather your fitness tracker is reporting active calories or total calories burned. If it is the second one it’s giving you a feel-good number that includes calories you would have burned just by sitting on the couch staying alive. If your fitness tracker isn’t calculating a BMR you can estimate your Base Metabolic Rate fairly accurately with a calculator like this one.
Those numbers seem to be a bit on the high end, but otherwise I generally agree about cycling being awesome.
This sounds great but what if you can't cycle at 55mph for 2h? These numbers are nutty.

The number doesn't matter - composition does. Workout a few times a week and eat like a human instead of a cow... Shockingly most people will end up fit.

But the real issue is that people are either too lazy, ignorant, or just plain stupid to figure out how to count calories and/or estimate their BMR.

It's also funny how many people seem to not realize that they have to change habits permanently if they want permanent change.

Or ya know. Actually be stupid. Just lower the portions. If it doesn't work, lower again. Do not starve yourself, but eat maybe half of what you eat normally if you are severly overweight - if not, drop 1/4th.
That and stop effing snacking.

Bet she doesn't lift. Lift heavy women.

Talk to your DNA, maybe you can convince it that the world has changed and there's no need to be an european peasant anymore.

Sames

*Dinnae fash yerself

Claims to be European

Oh! instead of Oi!

I'm not saying losing weight is easy, but it is a simple math problem.

You don't even have to exercise to lose weight. You just have to eat less food.
People are terrible at knowing how much food they've eaten. Thankfully, there are easy to use calorie trackers for your phone.
You're fat because you eat too much.
People eat literal garbage and are shocked that walking 500m to a McDonald's and back isn't enough.