Weight Loss Thread

You don't need to be in a 5300 calorie deficit to lose weight/get fit (i'd imagine most people who want to lose weight want to be more fit and not simply turn into an elliot page body double, even if it took them a little time to realize that can happen even if the number on the scale doesn't go down by a ton).

BrutulTM said:

Just in terms of calories eaten being offset by exercise it's not that much. If you're riding in the Tour de France you're burning a lot of calories. 20 minutes on an exercise bike is like one cookie worth of calories burned so you're going to make a lot more progress by eating less, especially since a lot of people tend to reward themselves for working out by having some ice cream that's 3x the calories you burned off exercising.

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Obviously eating a bunch of extra calories doesn't equate to "you don't burn any calories by exercising"... If you do not exercise, and you begin to exercise while maintaining a steady diet, you will see weight loss (unless you were in a high enough surplus already that you were gaining more weight than the exercise you are doing is burning).

moonarchia said:

If you aren't working out for multiple hours every single day for the rest of your life you will never make a dent on your calories.

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Burren said:

Yeah. If you're working out and lifting a lot you're going to gain weight, not lose it. However, the type of weight in your body usually shifts away from fat and towards muscle. So, a weight number by itself isn't usually relevant. Sizes (chest, gut, legs, neck, etc.) and percentages of muscle/fat matter more.

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Do you guys actually think most people who don't really exercise and are a bit obese are eating anywhere near the same calories as incredibly fit high level athletes do or...? Most people doing intense multi-hour workouts every day are consuming well over 3k calories and they look like athletes. I think when I was watching a bunch of strongman stuff (weightlifters who aren't as aesthetic/shredded for the most part) most of them are well into the 5k+ range. The people who don't exercise that are in those calorie ranges are the 800lb people getting forklifted out of their house to get to the doctors office, not Jack from the office who is a bit chubby.

If a person is somehow not burning any calories then that would be "exercising" and not actually exercising (and no, it doesn't have to be 3 hours a day/7 days a week to be real exercise either).

Cutlery said:

Most people have absolutely no idea how many calories they burn in a day, and are completely incapable of estimating it.

As a result, most people have no idea how many calories they consume in a day. There was a study recently that showed that your metabolism actually doesn't change that much as you age, the only thing that changes is your activity level. When I was in my 20s I was pulling 2000lb pallets around grocery stores all day. Now I manage people who do similar work. It's kind of a no brainer that I started putting on weight. I lost muscle mass and I lost a fuckload of activity.

When I started lifting 2 months ago, my expenditure went from 2400 calories a day to 2550. That's a difference of 2 eggs. That's what people mean when they say you can't out exercise your mouth.

The ONLY way you lose weight is eating less. Ideally, you just eat more of higher quality foods which require you to eat less.

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But good luck trying to get people to buy whole foods and make their own meals. Laziness, convenience, and ignorance have created our obesity, cardiac, and diabetic crisis (and marketing by dozens of industries that lie to sell).

Haus said:

I've done calorie counting before. It worked, but you have to lock in and be serious about it. 500 calorie deficit per day off below your burn rate and you'll drop almost exactly a pound a week. At least that is how it was for me.
I used my watch at the time to get an idea of my daily burn rate, the literally a spreadsheet to keep track of my intake.

But also I know part of eating is hunger, part of eating is compulsion. I have a lot more trouble controlling my caloric intake now that I work from home and rarely get out. Here snacks and food are always readily available, and I will from time to time succumb to eating because basically, I'm bored.

As mentioned, working out does burn calories, but it honestly doesn't burn that many. Working out should be to add lean muscle mass. Because your lean body mass determines your base daily caloric burn rate. Workouts give you bursts of calorie burn, increasing lean mass gives you a smaller hourly burn, but it burns all day, all night, continuously.

Now adding lean muscle mass is a whole different equation, exercise alone works when you're young, but starts to lose efficacy as you age. There's a whole world of things to do to try to get your body building mass like you did in your 20's when you're in your 40's or 50's. I know. I'm going down a lot of those rabbit holes right now. (peptides, NAD+ boosters, Creatine to boost ATP uptake, all that jazz)

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Why not just stop buying the crappy snacks?

Haus said:

There you go with your fancy schmancy attitude and tricked up systems... sheesh.... If I had that kind of willpower do you think I'd be posting daily on an elf pixel boob simulator message board?

And to be honest though, a lot of the snacks I eat aren't "crappy", a lot of fruit in the mix, lean jerky and such, cheese, my real downfall is, of all things, saltine crackers (which I admit are a carb failure on my part, heh). Don't know why, but I can and will compulsively snack on them. It's just that I graze through the kitchen too much when I'm bored. When I had a job with an office caloric control was pretty easy. I'm about to start a new gig that will have me out in front of customers and not at home nearly as much, so hoping that also bends the "availability" issue.

Also, for me more than losing weight my focus I'm hoping to re-shift into for the next 2-3 years will be adding and maintaining muscle mass as I'm in my 50's and I know what happens to lean muscle mass as you age.

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All things considered, those are real good snacks.

Cutlery said:

Most people have absolutely no idea how many calories they burn in a day, and are completely incapable of estimating it.

As a result, most people have no idea how many calories they consume in a day.

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This is the biggest thing. That and as Haus said, convenience/access to be able to eat out of boredom/habit/etc. result in people consuming way more calories than they think they do.

Cutlery said:

When I started lifting 2 months ago, my expenditure went from 2400 calories a day to 2550. That's a difference of 2 eggs. That's what people mean when they say you can't out exercise your mouth.

The ONLY way you lose weight is eating less. Ideally, you just eat more of higher quality foods which require you to eat less.

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150 calories/day deficit is enough to slowly lose weight, combine that with some recomp from fat to muscle and over a couple months you can start to look noticeably different (most people probably want to lose weight to look better, at least partially), even if you only drop a few lbs. If you throw in a bit of extra activity on top of just the lifting, that 150 can become 300-500 at least a few days out of the week, too. You don't have to eat less on top of that, unless like I said before, you were/are in a huge surplus, in which case you'd be gaining weight every week already, and on your way to the 500lb+ club, when going into the exercising and would need to add a diet.

If you want to lose weight faster, sure, you gotta eat less. Rate of loss and ability to lose at all are two different things, though. And if you're very fat (40+ lbs overweight is pretty fat) then yes, you'll want to add diet on top of exercise to speed the process up. This is not what people were claiming, though...

Ok I give up, you win. Exercising does not burn calories unless you do it for 30 hours a week at an extremely high intensity.