Exercise

AnnPT77

miratps wrote: »

Kati9408 wrote: »

miratps wrote: »

Hi all,

So I've hit my goal weight (perhaps gone a bit lower just in case) but now want to maintain. I exercised like an animal, to me at least, as well as calorie counting. I was cycling for hours and even started doing the odd but of running every day without fail -pain or no pain. I am a male, mid to late twenties, currently weigh 61kg and am 5 ft 7.

But now I am thinking this is not all that sustainable especially as the weather turns and the fear of not exercising so much is all consuming.

My question is, is it possible to maintain easily without having to exercise as much. Can I go a few days of no exercise and eat under whatever MFP/Fitbit say I have burnt or am allowed?

May sound daft, but I just need to know from people who went aggressive with their weight loss and now managed to take their foot off the peddle and still maintain.

What is the reason to not exercise ?

I was/am obsessed. Not that I love exercise but that if I stop I will be back to my old self in a matter of weeks. The fear of not exercising is a big factor rather than actually enjoying it. I don't want to completely stop but I'd like to get into a healthy mindset that 2 or 3 days missed a week of just relaxing won't hurt - but then again, I don't know if that's correct

OK, I'll say that right out, then: 2 or 3 days missed per week, or a week of relaxing on a rare basis, won't hurt, IMO - assuming the question is how your body will respond, not the psychology of the thing.

Basis for opinion: I'm a rower. Rowing on a machine is much, much less fun than rowing on the water. So, in winter, when our river gets crunchy, I row less. Much less. Furthermore, I pretty much always go through a period of denial that I really, truly have to get back in a rowing machine routine, so I slack off for a few weeks, only going to spin class (which I do 2 times/week all year long) and maybe doing a bit of other desultory stuff. But it's a big decrease in volume.

Last year I did this in the last phases of losing weight. I kept eating at my goal calories, eating back exercise, but doing way less exercise. I kept losing weight at the same rate, no problem.

I even had surgery while losing, had to stop exercising pretty much entirely for a couple of weeks, and - after I lost some healing-related water weight - my loss rate through that period was pretty consistent with before & after. (And gee-heck, I'm a li'l ol' lady - 60 y/o, 120 pounds - so my metabolism should be much more predisposed to slow-down than a 20-something male's!)

If you go back to total, constant inactivity, that could have an effect . . . but you sound like you don't intend that. But if your experience is like mine, reducing exercise should not have a huge effect, as long as you eat compensatorily less. If you give yourself a maintenance weight range, or a particular "action weight" a few pounds above goal, you should be able to do any fine-tuning that's necessary as you go along.

Just my opinion. But another thought: If you try this out for 2-3 months, and see negative effects, you can always ramp the exercise back up again, right? It's not a permanent change unless you want it to be. So try the experiment! I'm cheering for you.