Diet vs. exercise
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When I lost weight back in my late 20s/early 30s, I only exercised. I HATED the idea of dieting (because I had a wrong understanding about what that meant). I went from about 250 pounds to 189 pounds, stalled, and gave up. Fast forward to age 50. I had put back on all the weight (and then some) and was having health issues. My doctor put me on a diet and told me to use MFP. Through primarily diet, I am down to 174 (with health issues gone). I need to exercise more for heart health and body composition, and have started experimenting with how to make that more consistent. You have to experiment and figure out what combination of diet and exercise works best for you (but I lost more weight at an older age using diet). Most of all, I'm thankful to MFP and its veteran posters (several have commented in this thread) for teaching me the real science behind weight loss and maintenance so I know how and where to make meaningful changes in this lifetime journey to health.4
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stevencloser wrote: »WillingtoLose1001984 wrote: »mrsnattybulking wrote: »I think we are all arguing semantics at this point. I think it's just easier to control your diet than it is to burn 500 calories through exercise. I can just skip breakfast and my deficit for the day is done vs running a 5K every single day. Neither is better, one is just more conveniently controlled by the individual. Both are great ideally (which is what I do)
I think it's easier to exercise to burn , create a deficit of, 500 calories than cut back 500 calories!
It takes a lot of work to burn 500 calories.
Disagree, that's a really big generalisation - that would be a gentle, or unusually short, cycling training session for me. As I actually enjoy my exercise (and the positive results from my exercise) it's far easier for me to burn more than it is to just eat less.
I also find it far easier to sustain a sensible deficit on a high calorie allowance that has been boosted by exercise rather than be sedentary and just cut my intake. That would be two things I dislike rather than two things I like!
Pretty sure two similar people sustaining the same (sensible) deficit would have different fitness, health and body composition outcomes depending on their exercise levels.
YMMV or course but I'm sure I'm not the only person who enjoys both exercise and food.4 -
Here is where I assume this sentiment comes from.
You lose weight by establishing a calorie deficit. One can establish a calorie deficit by either decreasing ones food intake or increasing ones activity level with any mix of the two.
Thing is 100% of people can eat less, not 100% of people are capable of strenous exercise, therefore the advice tends to be to eat less rather than to exercise more because people like to give simple advice that applies to everyone.
That said if you are capable of strenous exercise then losing weight through increasing your activity level rather than changing your intake is an excellent way to improve your health. That said you still have to carefully track your calories because if you aren't paying attention chances are you will just naturally eat more when you exercise more.3 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »Here is where I assume this sentiment comes from.
You lose weight by establishing a calorie deficit. One can establish a calorie deficit by either decreasing ones food intake or increasing ones activity level with any mix of the two.
Thing is 100% of people can eat less, not 100% of people are capable of strenous exercise, therefore the advice tends to be to eat less rather than to exercise more because people like to give simple advice that applies to everyone.
That said if you are capable of strenous exercise then losing weight through increasing your activity level rather than changing your intake is an excellent way to improve your health. That said you still have to carefully track your calories because if you aren't paying attention chances are you will just naturally eat more when you exercise more.
Honestly, I'd say the vast majority of people I know who are exercising and trying to lose weight simply do not understand this. They started exercising and they're like, "nothing is happening...I added exercise and my diet's the same but I'm not losing weight." Whether consciously or unconsciously, they are eating more...and really it's not like you have to eat a ton more...eating a few hundred calories more and canceling out your exercise isn't particularly hard to do and may not be noticeable, particularly if you're not paying close attention.
There are loads of people in my gym who have been in there religiously for months and even years, and they look exactly the same as the day I met them...they have the exercise part down, but they're not really paying much, if any attention to their diets.6 -
stevencloser wrote: »WillingtoLose1001984 wrote: »mrsnattybulking wrote: »I think we are all arguing semantics at this point. I think it's just easier to control your diet than it is to burn 500 calories through exercise. I can just skip breakfast and my deficit for the day is done vs running a 5K every single day. Neither is better, one is just more conveniently controlled by the individual. Both are great ideally (which is what I do)
I think it's easier to exercise to burn , create a deficit of, 500 calories than cut back 500 calories!
It takes a lot of work to burn 500 calories.
Disagree, that's a really big generalisation - that would be a gentle, or unusually short, cycling training session for me. As I actually enjoy my exercise (and the positive results from my exercise) it's far easier for me to burn more than it is to just eat less.
I also find it far easier to sustain a sensible deficit on a high calorie allowance that has been boosted by exercise rather than be sedentary and just cut my intake. That would be two things I dislike rather than two things I like!
Pretty sure two similar people sustaining the same (sensible) deficit would have different fitness, health and body composition outcomes depending on their exercise levels.
YMMV or course but I'm sure I'm not the only person who enjoys both exercise and food.
Count me as one. I do both. Excercise has some great benefits other than boosting weight loss.
Excercise: Increases endorphins and lifts your mood, adds some muscle, boosts metabolism even after you work out, and may lead to more social activity.
Excercise can lead to a feeling of acheivement, a feeling of "Did I really do that?" *Diet also can lead to a feeling of acheivement.
A person that only loses significant weight with just diet alone, often does not look fit after they reach goal weight.
Some people are unable to workout so diet alone is better than doing nothing at all because it creates a calorie deficit.
But for those who can excercise along with diet (even if only able to do small amounts at a time, broken into multiple short sessions) excercise is worth doing.
"A body in motion stays in motion" and the old "use it or lose it" seems to work for many people. Don't discount activity as something not really needed, it very much helps your body to get and stay healthier. Jmo
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RossiCristina wrote: »First time I've ever posted on here (looooong time lurker - it's amazing how much this forum keeps me going!) but this is the first time I feel I could chip in a little...
I've done a mixture of both with various results.. Last year I followed MFP religiously but I was in the gym EVERY day for month - my boyfriend was a PT at the time and so I did all his spin classes as well as walking there to and from home (2miles each way) and did a multitude of lifting.
After 3/4mths of this I was exhausted and permanently hungry. I'd gone from 69.5kg to 66.9kg and had deficits of calories that were extremely unhealthy. I then relaxed on food, gym etc - still going to the gym but I'd lost my zest for logging and ended up putting on the weight and then some up to 70.3kg... so 5 weeks ago I decided to relax my gym approach and instead focus on my diet using MFP and again weighing everything to nth degree.
For the first time in years I wasn't doing 10 spin classes a week and huge amounts of cardio and instead I'd walk to the gym after work and then do some lifting with my boyfriend for around 60-90mins 3/4 times a week. In those 5 weeks I've gone down to 65.6kg and down a dress size.
This was a huge shock to me as I was obsessively weighing everything last year when I was going hell for leather at the gym and didn't have the same results. In these last 5 weeks I've also been able to have some chocolate each day, a few takeaways and still enjoy food! My target is 62kg but to see the results of not going crazy at the gym appear more swiftly has changed my outlook on it all.
I appreciate it's completely personal but I would say not to beat yourself up if you aren't going to the gym or exercising constantly - you'd be surprised what you can achieve with diet alone :-)
Great first post! I think your experience illustrates an important point that I didn't see addressed elsewhere, namely that if your primary goal is losing weight, you want to aim for that sweet spot between "helpful amounts of exercise" and "harmful amounts of exercise" - in other words, more is not always better! If you exhaust yourself with 90 minutes hard cardio every day and are so tired that you barely move for the other 14.5 hours that you're awake, you're likely to take a hit in overall calories burned. Likewise, if you're constantly hungry from working out, it's going to be very hard to maintain your deficit or keep up that level of exercise.
Personally, I consider exercise to be complementary but not key to weight loss. No matter what you change in your life to create a deficit, if you don't have a solid grasp on the number of calories you're eating, you put yourself in a tricky position. Will you notice if the exercise increases your hunger and you start eating more? Will you start rewarding yourself for working out with treats? There's nothing inherently wrong with either of those things, but can easily wipe out a deficit if you aren't at least watching what you eat. And what happens if you get hurt or your circumstances change such that you can't work out at all or as much - will you know how to maintain your loss through diet alone? I lost my first twenty pounds or so just logging and reducing calories, and I'm glad that I did. It turns out that I love exercise, but I feel a lot more confident about being able to continue losing and ultimately to keep the weight off knowing that the exercise isn't required.
ETA: I see @cwolfman13 got to my second point while I was fiddling around. As usual, agreed.3 -
Exercise is very important to me. I would never have lost the weight without it, because I just CAN'T be satisfied on 1400 calories - it's NEVER going to happen.
Although by 'exercise', I guess I should say activity. I can burn 300 extra calories just walking my dog and walking the kids to school, for example. Being able to eat 1700 calories and still lose is much better than only having a 1400 calories budget.
Obviously we're all different, but I love food and I have a big appetite, and the activity part is easier for me than the food part, so I definitely depend on it to keep a deficit.
Obviously it's important to track your food though... a lot of people assume that I can eat whatever I want because I walk so much but that's SO FAR from the truth, lol.5 -
Since I lost weight to regain my health, I very much prefer to exercise. The direct benefits are increased cardiovascular capacity, vitality, and strength.
I lost weight by taking in fewer calories than I burned, and that fight was primarily in the kitchen. How long does it take to eat a muffin? How long would it take to burn it off? There are not enough hours in a day to burn off a bloated diet.
Diet to lose weight? Yes!
Exercise to keep in fighting shape? Yes!3 -
stevencloser wrote: »WillingtoLose1001984 wrote: »mrsnattybulking wrote: »I think we are all arguing semantics at this point. I think it's just easier to control your diet than it is to burn 500 calories through exercise. I can just skip breakfast and my deficit for the day is done vs running a 5K every single day. Neither is better, one is just more conveniently controlled by the individual. Both are great ideally (which is what I do)
I think it's easier to exercise to burn , create a deficit of, 500 calories than cut back 500 calories!
It takes a lot of work to burn 500 calories.
Disagree, that's a really big generalisation - that would be a gentle, or unusually short, cycling training session for me. As I actually enjoy my exercise (and the positive results from my exercise) it's far easier for me to burn more than it is to just eat less.
I also find it far easier to sustain a sensible deficit on a high calorie allowance that has been boosted by exercise rather than be sedentary and just cut my intake. That would be two things I dislike rather than two things I like!
Pretty sure two similar people sustaining the same (sensible) deficit would have different fitness, health and body composition outcomes depending on their exercise levels.
YMMV or course but I'm sure I'm not the only person who enjoys both exercise and food.
Agreeded. If I were able to commute to school and from by bike (which should I strive to do this Spring term) I would very likely be creating that deficit quite easily and enjoyably (and saving on gas and the stress of driving). As it stands now most of the cycling workouts I do right now on TrainerRoad (I just finished their Sweet Spot Base 1 plan) with my current FTP involve burning at least 600 calories in the span of an hour and the easiest of them (which is on a rest week) is nearly 600.
And I mean, it's not like the workouts are particularly easy, but they aren't arduous for the most part and they are making me a stronger cyclist.1 -
I have had more success in the past with changing my eating habits, verses changing my exercise habits. BUT. I will say when I had a good thing going with both of them, I was pretty steady losing weight. Really want to get back into that again...ugh.1
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For me, exercise benefits me in the following ways (disclaimer: personal experience only, ymmv, etc etc):
- My hunger decreases when I exercise. Now, I do eat back about half my exercise calories and I don't have to force myself to do it. But a couple of months ago, I had bladder surgery. For five days, I had a catheter bag in and, even though I felt fine apart from that—more on this in a moment!—I wasn't exactly going to go outside and walk. Plus, for two weeks, I was ordered not to lift anything more than 3lbs. I'd been running a 500-calorie deficit until then. I reduced it to 250. And I was ravenous. I took a maintenance break. Still hungry, but at least I could stick to my calories. It wasn't until I got back to walking that my appetite got back under control.
- The surgery. They'd been planning to keep me overnight. But apparently, I came out of the operating room in better shape than expected, because they sent me home a couple of hours later. Oh, and the abs work I'd been doing? Let me sit up effortlessly and painlessly in recovery. Apparently, that's not always a thing, at least the nurse told me I had some great trunk muscles.
- My PMS cramping has been greatly reduced. Some months, it's non-existent.
- I tend to eat when stressed. Exercise relieves stress.
- I tend to eat when bored. Since I don't work out 'hard', I work out 'long'. 2-hour walks. A full body strength-training workout three days a week that uses dumbbells up to 17.5lbs (starting to phase in 20s on seated lat rows this Sunday), let's just say I've got less time to get bored.
COULD I adhere to a weight-loss plan based on diet alone? In the earlier stages, absolutely. I've done it before and I didn't start out with 2-hour walks and strength-training. But I've also generally lost motivation right when I've been closing on goal and I suspect that not exercising (and not experiencing the hunger reduction in my first point) could be a factor. I mean, I'm sure there's a mental component too. Most of my previous weight-loss attempts did involve eliminating 'demonized' foods and then being afraid to add them back in. At some point—generally during those last 15 lbs that come off so s-l-o-w-l-y—I'm sure I up and thought something like, "So all this deprivation and I'm still on a plateau. Kitten this. I want that two-scoop brownie sundae and it doesn't look like it'll do too much damage." (And it probably didn't. The guilt over eating it that triggered my stress eating? THAT did damage.
The thing is, after sixteen months, I know that I feel a lot better, health-wise, mood-wise, and hunger-wise when I include exercise. There's no 'versus'. It's all connected.3 -
Only MFP can take 4 pages to discuss such a simple concept.2
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Aaron_K123 wrote: »
Do you have any peer-reviewed studies to support that?4 -
cwolfman13 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »Here is where I assume this sentiment comes from.
You lose weight by establishing a calorie deficit. One can establish a calorie deficit by either decreasing ones food intake or increasing ones activity level with any mix of the two.
Thing is 100% of people can eat less, not 100% of people are capable of strenous exercise, therefore the advice tends to be to eat less rather than to exercise more because people like to give simple advice that applies to everyone.
That said if you are capable of strenous exercise then losing weight through increasing your activity level rather than changing your intake is an excellent way to improve your health. That said you still have to carefully track your calories because if you aren't paying attention chances are you will just naturally eat more when you exercise more.
Honestly, I'd say the vast majority of people I know who are exercising and trying to lose weight simply do not understand this. They started exercising and they're like, "nothing is happening...I added exercise and my diet's the same but I'm not losing weight." Whether consciously or unconsciously, they are eating more...and really it's not like you have to eat a ton more...eating a few hundred calories more and canceling out your exercise isn't particularly hard to do and may not be noticeable, particularly if you're not paying close attention.
There are loads of people in my gym who have been in there religiously for months and even years, and they look exactly the same as the day I met them...they have the exercise part down, but they're not really paying much, if any attention to their diets.
this. especially considering how often group cycling & runs end in the pub.
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cwolfman13 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »Here is where I assume this sentiment comes from.
You lose weight by establishing a calorie deficit. One can establish a calorie deficit by either decreasing ones food intake or increasing ones activity level with any mix of the two.
Thing is 100% of people can eat less, not 100% of people are capable of strenous exercise, therefore the advice tends to be to eat less rather than to exercise more because people like to give simple advice that applies to everyone.
That said if you are capable of strenous exercise then losing weight through increasing your activity level rather than changing your intake is an excellent way to improve your health. That said you still have to carefully track your calories because if you aren't paying attention chances are you will just naturally eat more when you exercise more.
Honestly, I'd say the vast majority of people I know who are exercising and trying to lose weight simply do not understand this. They started exercising and they're like, "nothing is happening...I added exercise and my diet's the same but I'm not losing weight." Whether consciously or unconsciously, they are eating more...and really it's not like you have to eat a ton more...eating a few hundred calories more and canceling out your exercise isn't particularly hard to do and may not be noticeable, particularly if you're not paying close attention.
There are loads of people in my gym who have been in there religiously for months and even years, and they look exactly the same as the day I met them...they have the exercise part down, but they're not really paying much, if any attention to their diets.
this. especially considering how often group cycling & runs end in the pub.
or Rebel Donuts...1 -
stevencloser wrote: »
It takes a lot of work to burn 500 calories.
It takes a lot of discipline to cut 500 cals from a diet.
I look at this and all I can think is it's not that hard to burn 250 calories and cut 250 calories from my diet.3 -
debbievelle wrote: »Anyone doing IF here? I'm considering it but it's a little daunting...
supposedly it's the best of both worlds.
It's not. Do a search - there are a ton of IF threads. Probably a couple right on the first page of threads in the Getting Started and/or General Health, Diet and Fitness forums.
It's not "daunting"? Or it's not "the best of both worlds"? Lol, genuine question here 0 -
Exercise makes me hungry. I wish I could be like you.estherdragonbat wrote: »My hunger decreases when I exercise.
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debbievelle wrote: »Anyone doing IF here? I'm considering it but it's a little daunting... supposedly it's the best of both worlds.
It's not. Do a search - there are a ton of IF threads. Probably a couple right on the first page of threads in the Getting Started and/or General Health, Diet and Fitness forums.
It's not "daunting"? Or it's not "the best of both worlds"? Lol, genuine question here
It's not the best of both worlds.0
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