General Weight Loss Advice Beyond Calories In and Calories Out

Iwishyouwell

SLLRunner wrote: »

However, keep in mind that hubby doesn't gain weight because he eats at maintenance level. If he didn't, he would either lose or gain weight. Also, he could be one of those normal folks, for lack of a better phrase, who intuitively knows when to stop eating, therefore to the rest of the world it look like he can eat however much he wants a not gain. But, if he ate over his TDEE, he would gain weight like anyone else.

This.

Also important to mention is that those "naturally slim" people who seem to "eat all they want" and "never gain weight", actually often times do. It's just that two - five pounds on a lean person, especially a man, is often going to go unnoticed, sometimes even by the person themselves. Especially if they're genetically predisposed to gaining weight more evenly throughout their bodies.

And the notion was just reiterated to me yesterday. One of my best friends is a very lean man of 22 (just turned 5 days ago). Everyone always talks about how he eats so much food, yet is lucky to never gain weight. Yet while at rehearsal with his wife recently, she mentioned that he's formed a little bit of pudge on his stomach that he's complaining about. Now his idea of pudge is significantly lesser than a person who has dealt with more serious weight gain; anything that remotely gets in the way of his visible six pack is an issue for him. He visually doesn't look to have gained any weight from the outsider's perspective, and probably even with his shirt off most people wouldn't be able to tell. But still, he notices weight there.

I've got a few friends like that. Lean people, who've never had a weight problem before, who do gain weight here and there, but most people would never be able to tell. They just bounce back in forth in a range that leaves the appearance that even when they over consume, the calories just magically burn off without affecting weight.

And I've also seen that seriously catch up with some of those same kinds of people when, eventually, their consumption just started regularly overtaking their TDEE. And, with all people, major fat gain ensued.

lemurcat12

Helen71017 wrote: »

Some painful numbers:
- My TDEE is about 1780, and his TDEE is about 2740 calories.
- If I go on a 30minute jog with my husband I burn about 255 calories, and he burns 433 calories for the same effort.

Yep, it's sometimes painful to have to be realistic about this.

I never thought I ate all that much (although sometimes I did, and thinking about my diet at its worst there were plenty of places where I ended up with far more calories than satisfaction), but these are some key numbers for me:

2000-2200 (my estimated TDEE at my current weight and around the time I started gaining, when I'm as active as I like to be)

1550 (my estimated TDEE at the same weight and body fat percentage when I'm completely sedentary)

1875 (my estimated TDEE when sedentary at my fattest)

For various reasons around 5-6 years ago I went from being quite active to being sedentary, and--hardly shocking--started gaining weight pretty rapidly. I didn't think I was eating all that much. Looking at these numbers (and this should have been pretty obvious) I probably wasn't. Except, of course, compared to the key thing--my own maintenance.

Thus, although I agree with the conventional wisdom that it's easier to deal with losing weight from a dietary perspective, this is why activity and making sure it's a natural part of my life is a huge part of it for me. And if for some reason it can't be, I absolutely cannot eat as if it is.