"The most important thing you can do to lose weight"

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  • biosciencegal
    biosciencegal Posts: 16 Member
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    bump
  • audiovisual1980
    audiovisual1980 Posts: 2 Member
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    Is it true that youre body will start slowing down in losing weight after losing the water weight? and also losing weight is it solely based on counting calories,6mi jogging, should amp up how long you jog or how many miles you jog or is it just calorie counting and the fact youre just plain doing something that will help you lose weight lol
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 27,922 Member
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    blues4miles wrote: »
    HappyCampr1 wrote: »
    I was reading in another thread about a study which showed that people actually aren't eating much more than they did 50 years ago. It's just that we're so much more sedentary than we used to be that our bodies can't use all the energy we're supplying them with. The Gov't has done studies on the overall consumption rate and food production. We're just not as active and we haven't lowered consumption to match.

    I agree with this. Prior to WWII my family were a bunch of farmers. You could eat a lot when you were keeping a whole farm going with just your growing kids. Probably didn't have access to as much convenience food or candy as I did, probably the bread they ate might not be as nutritious and calorie dense as the bread I get, but still they could eat a fair amount with all the work they were doing. 1941 sent their sons and daughters to war and to work. It enabled them and their children to choose non-farming occupations post-war. It enabled many of their grandkids to be the first in their families to go to college.

    I suspect many families could tell the same story. Maybe 3 to 4 generations ago, people had to work HARD, physically, to survive. And when they sat down to ate, the food just wasn't as nutritious and high calorie as it is now. Look at WWII soldiers and how scrawny they are in comparison to the modern soldier. What we've done for food has been amazing. People were starving and working hard just to get by and feed themselves a couple generations ago. Now the food is so much higher quality and cheaper. I wouldn't trade my walks or my running for going back on the family farm just to be thinner. We should be amazed with the advancements in industrialization and food quality. We just need to be careful. Maybe in 50 years from now they'll be devising food that is high volume and low calorie in order to deal with our new modern problems. But the food we have now was fixing an amazing survival issue from 50+ years ago.

    I gardened for 5 hours over the weekend. I was exhausted and my hamstrings are sore. I can only imagine how much I could eat if I did this 10-12 hours per day. During the height of the season, it's not unusual for my mom to put in 8 hours per day gardening and her weight always hovers around Under Weight.
  • upoffthemat
    upoffthemat Posts: 679 Member
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    audiovisual1980 wrote: »
    Is it true that youre body will start slowing down in losing weight after losing the water weight? and also losing weight is it solely based on counting calories,6mi jogging, should amp up how long you jog or how many miles you jog or is it just calorie counting and the fact youre just plain doing something that will help you lose weight lol

    Many people have really good numbers when they begin losing weight due to losing water weight and weight doesn't come off as easy as you go along. The thing to remember is something you will hear here often, weight loss isn't linear. You will have weeks you don't lose as much and weeks you may even gain. From your picture I am guessing you are female. You will have the added frustration of your period and water retention one week a month at least. This is a long term process and you have to take a long view and not react to every up and down. Stay to a plan.

    As far as calorie counting, the point of calorie counting is to maintain a calorie deficit. Eat less calories than you burn. Burning more calories will allow you to eat more, but exercise isn't needed to lose weight. There are many people here who lost weight without exercising at all or never exercised for many months. That isn't to say exercise doesn't have a place, it helps make your body perform better, it can help you feel better about yourself, it can be a social activity, it can allow you to eat more, it can greatly increase your quality of life.


    There are some great threads and tips to help you if you are new here in the getting started section:

    http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/categories/getting-started

    Read the threads here and if people sometimes seem to have a nasty tone ignore it. A lot of highly successful people don't waste a lot of time on sugar coating what works, but they give awesome advice. Sometimes a good shock to the system is what people need.
  • WendyLaubach
    WendyLaubach Posts: 518 Member
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    The poor woman--she sometimes eats 3 cream cakes all by herself, but she's convinced herself that she routinely eats 1400 calories a day.
  • auddii
    auddii Posts: 15,357 Member
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    diannethegeek wrote: »
    This thread could use a bump.

    Gg6wa3S.gif?noredirect

    Best bump gif ever.
  • worsthorse
    worsthorse Posts: 73 Member
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    bump.
  • Zella_11
    Zella_11 Posts: 161 Member
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    Bump. B)
  • b3achy
    b3achy Posts: 2,028 Member
    edited May 2016
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    Thanks for bumping the thread. Interesting stuff even if the original video is no longer available.

    From the article -- "You need to keep this forefront in your mind and err on the high side with how many calories you believe you ate and drank, and the low side with what you think is your caloric burn."

    Funny, I had just posted something similar on my profile feed about this is what I try to do when I can't really control the calories of how the food is prepared when I go out to eat (since this past holiday weekend I was at a number of different venues (festival, football game, restaurant)), and I'm sure I eat a bit more due to the social aspect of eating at these venues with friends.

    I also posted that comment because I have seen quite a few people here WAY over estimate their calorie burn...giving themselves a calorie burn for "driving in traffic" and logging every little move they make around the house, and then wondering why they aren't losing weight. I basically estimate my cardio workouts (paddleboarding, walking, treadmill) and activity out of the norm for me (ex: walking 2 miles at a festival, taking 8 flights of stairs at the arena). I figure if I burn some calories while getting the mail, or taking out the trash, or walking to/from my car carrying my boards and equipment at my workout locations, or walking around the arena at a game, then good, I've got a bit more of a calorie deficit than I logged.

    I figure if I can overestimate my calorie intake a bit because I couldn't measure things properly or possibly overate some portion sizes, and I underestimate my calorie burn activities, I'm probably just breaking even, and should still be able to lose weight even if I'm a bit off. Kind of a no brainer to me...but I'm guessing from what I've seen posted (and in this article) that this could be an epiphany to others.
  • Orphia
    Orphia Posts: 7,097 Member
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    b3achy wrote: »
    Thanks for bumping the thread. Interesting stuff even if the original video is no longer available.

    From the article -- "You need to keep this forefront in your mind and err on the high side with how many calories you believe you ate and drank, and the low side with what you think is your caloric burn."

    Funny, I had just posted something similar on my profile feed about this is what I try to do when I can't really control the calories of how the food is prepared when I go out to eat (since this past holiday weekend I was at a number of different venues (festival, football game, restaurant)), and I'm sure I eat a bit more due to the social aspect of eating at these venues with friends.

    I also posted that comment because I have seen quite a few people here WAY over estimate their calorie burn...giving themselves a calorie burn for "driving in traffic" and logging every little move they make around the house, and then wondering why they aren't losing weight. I basically estimate my cardio workouts (paddleboarding, walking, treadmill) and activity out of the norm for me (ex: walking 2 miles at a festival, taking 8 flights of stairs at the arena). I figure if I burn some calories while getting the mail, or taking out the trash, or walking to/from my car carrying my boards and equipment at my workout locations, or walking around the arena at a game, then good, I've got a bit more of a calorie deficit than I logged.

    I figure if I can overestimate my calorie intake a bit because I couldn't measure things properly or possibly overate some portion sizes, and I underestimate my calorie burn activities, I'm probably just breaking even, and should still be able to lose weight even if I'm a bit off. Kind of a no brainer to me...but I'm guessing from what I've seen posted (and in this article) that this could be an epiphany to others.

    Yep, overestimating your calorie intake is always a good idea because it seems (as we've seen here) that we congenitally underestimate it.

    Therefore, underestimating our calorie burn is good insurance in case of errors in the above equations.

    (Also keeping an eye on our rate of loss so it's not too high or low.)

    I'm sure there are people who give themselves a lightly active Activity Level then add in things like shopping for an hour. Oh dear.
  • Ob30470z
    Ob30470z Posts: 10 Member
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    How is she so delusional?!
  • diannethegeek
    diannethegeek Posts: 14,776 Member
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    Back to the top, you go. Bump.
  • Orphia
    Orphia Posts: 7,097 Member
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    BillMcKay1 wrote: »
    For those still looking for that original video. I found it on another site.

    http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/10-things-you-need-to-know-about-losing-weight/

    @BillMcKay1 Thank you very much!
  • Nikion901
    Nikion901 Posts: 2,467 Member
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    Thanks BillMcKay1 for the video ... I found it very informative and interesting. I tried the soup test on myself and found that I was not hungry for much longer when I blended my lunch into a soup than when I had it as a 'solid' ... Good trick!
  • Maxematics
    Maxematics Posts: 2,287 Member
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    b3achy wrote: »
    I also posted that comment because I have seen quite a few people here WAY over estimate their calorie burn...giving themselves a calorie burn for "driving in traffic" and logging every little move they make around the house, and then wondering why they aren't losing weight.

    Agreed. I had a friend on this site who would eat under 1200 calories every day, all in calorie dense food that lacked in nutrients. She'd lose a bit of weight then she was obviously getting hungry, so she'd stay low calorie but log things like "cooking/food prep, 30 minutes, 150 calories burned" and also logged sex as exercise. Then she'd eat those calories back. Every time she'd stall and make several posts about it daily, binge horribly, or stop logging on for a while; she last came back saying she regained 20 pounds. It was at that point I had to remove her because I couldn't take it anymore and knew any advice would be unwelcomed.

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