The key is to not eat the quarter pounder after exercise, even if your body cries for 3.
me_irl
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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.
Weight training also helps considerably, as while it doesn't directly burn as many calories as intense cardio, bigger muscles require more calories to maintain, so by building muscle you're increasing your resting calorie consumption
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. 😤🧪✨
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.
It's almost identical to saying "just stop taking drugs." Or "just stop drinking."
The reasons people turn to drugs and alcohol are not entirely different from the reasons people turn to food, but you have to keep eating something, and changing your diet from a very unhealthy one to a healthy one is a lot of work. You can keep going to the drive through, but a, they're literally designed to get you to buy more than you want, and b, would you tell an alcoholic to go in to a liquor store for soda on day 1 of recovery?
Also my outlook changed a lot when I saw the stats on how many people with supermorbid obesity were chronically molested as children, as in over an extended period of time. It usually stems from wanting to become undesirable to the abuser, then snowballs into a literal addiction (opiate blockers have even proven successful with some patients). To be clear, I'm also not talking about people with a little extra fluff, I'm talking TLC "My 600lb Life" obesity to the extent they can't even walk.
There have been many times that I justified gaining weight via alcoholism because I thought maybe if I was disgusting no one would assault me again. Turns that that's not only not true, I've become disgusted with and hate my own body. So now I have a crippling alcohol addiction in addition to hating myself, and being afraid of interacting with certain people.
I've done a lot of therapy. And I will continue to do a lot of therapy. I almost graduated from therapy this spring, and had curbed my alcohol intake. But, then I had to get a restraining order and my brain fell right back into it's old habits. It shouldn't be this hard to feel safe as a middle aged adult lol
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.
That's serious athlete level of performance, though. And a result of that rigorous of exercise is an increased appetite, for obvious reasons.
Yes, freakish athletes like Micheal Phelps do exist, and intaking enough calories to fuel their workout is actually difficult. But for the regular humans just trying to lose weight, it's far more effective to focus on calories than to focus on heavy exercise for 3+ hours a day.
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?
Not exactly, as it implies more exercise will get the same result as eating less, but thats not guaranteed, for a variety of reasons
I assure you european peasants were not eating pizza and cheesecake multiple times a week
Yeah, that's what the tweet said. That's why the fact that the epigenetics haven't reset yet is a big problem in some family lineages. Some entire families just have broken hunger reflexes / hormones that make the psychological aspect of dieting almost impossible.
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
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.
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.
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
Cycling and swimming as well sucks less than both. Significantly better for your joints and exercises pretty much all muscles. Downside is that not everyone has access to a pool regularly.
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.
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.
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.