Diet vs exercise percentage

duddysdad

I always read a post where someone says weight loss is 80 percent diet, and 20 percent exercise. I've never seen someone say that weight loss is 100% diet. For me, it is all diet. I don't exercise, other than daily activities. I don't work, so I mostly stay at home.

The reason I ask is because any time I've lost weight, I focus strictly on diet until I hit my goal weight. I know that exercise is important for a healthy body, but what if a person physically cannot exercise? Is losing weight from a deficit, without exercise, still ok to do?

Is the 20% exercise for creating a larger deficit? Because I am a tall male, who has a high TDEE, and I can have a big deficit all the way through to my goal. Even at my goal, I can lose 2 pounds per week easily.

selina884

You cannot outdo a poor diet.

From personal experience, I've gone from being extremely active to sedentary and I'm losing on a calorie controlled diet.

kommodevaran

It's just a rule of thumb, to take the pressure off people - a way to say that exercise isn't crucial to weight loss and that diet is the most important thing for most people. (I don't really exercise either, I just walk, but I walk more.) It's a version of the Pareto principle, and has a number of applications in diet/fitness, we often say that 80% real food and 20% treats is fine - and yes, there have been questions as to how to make that fit into one's personal diet. So any general guideline meant to be a rough guide, can be misunderstood and obsessed over.

RoxieDawn

You find that many think 100% both in this thread from just last week and some are mixed how they feel based on their experiences.

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10459848/weight-loss-is-90-food-10-exercise/p1

and here is another thread on 80/20

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10460695/80-20

And losing weight from just from a deficit is perfectly fine. There are many many folks out there with medical conditions or severe limitations that prevent them from exercise and still lose weight. I see it everyday.

So you can't exercise? Try to increase your NEAT (non exercise activity) every day. MFP uses NEAT and the EAT (exercise activity) is extra and not required.. But can enhance weight loss.

cityruss

The removal of bodyfat is 100% energy balance.

trigden1991

cityruss wrote: »

The removal of bodyfat is 100% energy balance.

100% this

elisa123gal

It is what you make it.. the rules are silly.. move more.. eat less.. move way more... eat way less.. do one.. do the other.do a combination. Just don't look for excuses not to pick a path.

Sued0nim

cityruss wrote: »

The removal of bodyfat is 100% energy balance.

This

And everybody can physically exercise in some way (coma and complete paralysis aside)

EttaMaeMartin

Sued0nim wrote: »

cityruss wrote: »

The removal of bodyfat is 100% energy balance.

This

And everybody can physically exercise in some way (coma and complete paralysis aside)

true!

Seffell

duddysdad wrote: »

Is the 20% exercise for creating a larger deficit?

Either that or to eat more. My only exercise is walking. I try to walk more so that I could eat more.

ilex70

Exercise is helpful because it allows you to keep losing without cutting intake so much as you body weight decreases and it helps people to maintain, maybe by allowing more flexibility.

For some of us the right exercise can also help curb appetite.

Most people that keep their weight off exercise at least an hour a day. Walking absolutely counts.

tamyena

I can only tell you from personal experience. Since I now do weight strengthening and at least a hour of cardio every day, my body has transformed drastically! I have muscles I didn't know I still had and they are firm and formed!! It increases my metabolism and melts the fat faster, too. Imagine a pound of marshmallows to a pound of bricks, or you get the picture. Big difference!! Besides, I know how much better I feel physically and mentally when I exercise. Changed my life!!

blueeyetea

The thing about exercise is that it does things to your body that, while not helping you lose weight necessarily, are beneficial for your health. For example, strength training will help you build muscles, which burn more calories. Cardio will strengthen your heart, increase lung capacity and help with blood pressure. I was reading recently that exercise will help with insulin resistance. I'm not an expert, and these are just off the top of my head.

That's the way I look at it now. I exercise to make myself healthier.

lemurcat12

There's no percentage. It's a saying not really based on anything.

If one can exercise I think exercise is extremely important (for health, among other things), but obviously you can lose weight without it.

CoffeeNCardio

While it is obviously possible to lose weight completely independent of exercise, the exercise portion isn't just about losing weight. Most people use it because they know that they need a full lifestyle make-over or they will just put the weight right back on. They need to alter their daily habits to include activity because they don't get much. That is a way that makes sense for me, because I'm a stay at home mom, and while my kid can be a handful, he's certainly not exercise. But my husband works a very heavy labor job in construction so it wouldn't really make sense for him to make an effort to work out when his job is essentially an 8-10 hour work out.

I see you said whenever you need to lose weight. Does that mean you keep gaining it back? Or you go for a few lbs, stop, then go for a few more? Cause if it's the former, a lifestyle-change like making a habit of exercise is kind of exactly what people in your situation (same as mine) need.

ETA: Exercise also has the added benefit of being able to do what weight loss alone cannot: body shape alteration. Losing weight by diet alone just loses your weight. It takes lifting and yoga or whatnot to get the lean look for most people. Some are lucky and just have a nice shape and easy skin-tightening on their own, but for myself and many others, there's work still to be done even once we hit goal weight. I usually hate this bumper-stick crap but you ever hear people say "you diet to look good in clothes, you exercise to look good naked?" it's kind of true for some people.

Azdak

1. There is an emphasis on diet because, esp in the past, too many people thought that if they exercised regularly, weight loss would automatically occur without paying attention to calorie intake. There have been a number of studies in the last 10 years that suggest that, if calorie intake is not controlled, exercise has little effect on weight loss (which seems pretty obvious). People are trying the emphasize the importance of diet and minimize the influence of exercise to communicate this idea. I think that is a little shortsighted, as I explain in point #3.

2. Exercise plays two important roles in weight loss: a) can help in creating and maintaining a calorie deficit; b) esp in the case of strength training, can help conserve muscle mass. That's the reasoning behind the "20%" figure. A recent study also proposed that there might be a small benefit to achieving a calorie deficit via increased exercise as opposed to creating the same deficit through diet alone.

3. While weight can intitially be lost by creating a calorie deficit alone, data suggests that maintaining that weight loss long-term is extremely difficult without exercise. A study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (Am J Clin Nutr 2008;88:906 –12) showed that there is an extended decrease in non-resting energy expenditure following weight loss. In this study, the effect persisted for one year--researchers cannot say if it ever resolves. The National Weight Loss Registry shows that one of the behavior patterns associated with long-term maintenance of weight loss is continuing to follow a vigorous exercise program (e.g. 60 min/day, 5 days/wk). Basically, the exercise workouts help make up for the reduced energy expenditure.

So it would appear that, while exercise plays more of a supportive role during intitial weight loss, it plays a crucial role in long-term maintenance of weight loss. I agree that initially, greater emphasis needs to be placed on diet/calorie deficit, but I also think it is shortsighted and even misleading to downplay the importance of exercise in the process. It may be 80/20 during the initial loss, but it's at least 50/50 for long-term maintenance.