Is it okay not to exercise if you're in a calorie deficit?

LynnArellano

Is it okay not to exercise if you're in a calorie deficit?

nossmf

Absolutely! Losing weight is 100% a function of calories in compared to calories out, so even a couch potato who never stands up burns calories simply from breathing, and if your calories are in a deficit, you will lose weight.

That said, exercise is excellent for overall general health, so even a little bit is helpful. But for losing weight, it is perfectly okay to not exercise.

AnnPT77

Sure, it's OK.

Also OK, and proven by some pranksters to be effective at both weight loss and improvement of health markers, as long as in a calorie deficit: Eating only food from McDonald's, eating mostly foods from convenience stores (Twinkies were involved), and more.

Are any of those ideal? No.

If a person can't exercise, they can still lose weight. If they don't want to exercise, they can still lose weight.

But if the person is pursuing robust health improvement, and able to exercise, exercise is part of the most effective formula.

Personally - and rather weirdly - I became very active while remaining class 1 obese, even competing as an athlete (not always unsuccessfully, either), and stayed obese for around a dozen years while training pretty hard 6 days most weeks. My health improved, my daily life functioning improved, even my happiness improved: Big quality of life benefits. My body got smaller (from a little more muscle and a little less fat, at constant body weight). I was the semi-mythical pretty-fit fat person: Strong, good endurance, low resting heart rate, etc.

I'm fairly certain that level of exercise wasn't necessary to begin to see benefits along those same lines. Too many people think exercise has to be some miserable, punitively intense gym-y thing done for hours every day. That's definitely not true.

Weight loss is great for health, probably the biggest single health improvement a lot of people can make. (I lied to myself about that for those dozen years, admittedly.) But exercise independently is potentially a major health improvement. There's even evidence that high-exercise somewhat fat people have better health and mortality outcomes than inactive slim ones.

Either one of weight loss and exercise, taken alone, is helpful and OK. But both is better, when feasible.

q64zszbg8f

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/comment/48743503#Comment_48743503

Spot on. Being able to eat bigger portions and not worrying about gaining weight is my personal motivation for working out ^^ 1900kcal is just not a lot of food if your cantene lunch is aroung 1000kcal usually ^^

All jokes aside: as mentioned above: deficite is the driver for weightloss.

The body is just generally a *kitten* generally burning muscles bevore fat, especially when you've had a higher bodyfat percentage for longer times.

In these cases the metabolism usually "thinks" that this deficite is a temporary state and thus muscles, which are easier to rebuild if excess energy is available, are burnt for energy.

if you exercise while in deficite the body gets the message that muscles are still required and thus fat reserves are targeted.

nossmf

Correction: muscle is a LOT harder to build than fat, that's not why it goes first. It goes because it is metabolically far more active than fat, which means even at rest it burns more calories than fat does. So the body, if it thinks it's in a possible starvation scenario, will choose the order of what goes first, between muscle, fat and organs. The organs will always be last, so usually it's a choice between muscle and fat. A person who is idle isn't using the muscle they have, so from a pure math standpoint, the body figures it's ok to let it go, since with less muscle the body needs less calories, thus it will survive longer. But a person who is active, the body will realize it needs to keep the muscle to fend off those hungry saber-tooth tigers, so will lose the fat first. (The brain may realize we're living in the 21st century, but the body is still stuck in the caveman days.)

AnnPT77

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/comment/48744325#Comment_48744325

Fat stores are easier to rebuild than muscles. Anyone who's overweight has proven how easy fat stores are to build; anyone who's pursued hypertrophy recognizes that muscle mass gain is slow and requires substantial effort and solid nutrition, among other things.

Generally, fat stores will preferentially be used to make up for a calorie deficit. That's pretty much what they're there for. But researchers believe that there's a limit to how much fat we can metabolize per day per pound of body fat we have, so if we lose weight aggressively fast we're more likely to lose unnecessarily much lean tissue alongside body fat.

Further, people with high bodyfat are less likely to lose lean tissue in a calorie deficit than people with lower bodyfat. That's partly because of the body's preference to burn fat in that scenario, but also because carrying all that fat around is exercise-like. Obese people tend to have more muscle mass than lean people of similar activity level, even . . . though the muscle quality may be lower.

Noss is right, too, that reminding our body - via exercise - that we want and need that muscle helps mitigate muscle loss, but even that won't prevent muscle loss in a too-aggressive calorie deficit.

I know a lot of people exercise in order to eat more, or lose weight faster, but I'm not a fan. YMMV, but to me that's a suboptimal - somewhat dysfunctional - relationship with exercise. (The farthest extreme of that, exercise bulimia, is generally regarded as a dimension of eating disorder.)

Exercise is really probably mostly for physical health, but I'm too weak a character to do it for that reason. I do it because it's fun. That's not ideal psychologically, either, probably. 😉😆🤷‍♀️

dietrich0816251312

If it were me, I would take light walks simply to get a little circulation going and lift my mood. Being sedentary isn't good for anyone, calorie deficit or otherwise, and being in a calorie deficit can become quite oppressive due to the low blood sugar, among other things.

paperpudding

weight loss aside, I think almost everybody benifits from excercise - with their capabilities.

even chair exercises if you cant walk, short walks if you cant go far and so on

BBIPAD

healthy food dietitian

michalsladek6095

…depends. If you do not exercsise you will loose not just fat, but partly (even much less in comparison to fat) also muscles, which is not good at all.

MINIWHEAT70

As I start my weight loss journey yet again there is more scientific evidence that what you eat is more important than how much in terms of overall metabolic health. You can be skinny and unhealthy - size doesn't necessarily dictate healthiness. Don't believe it check this out - https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/stop-counting-calories. That being said I'm trying to be as healthy as can. Happy weight loss everyone.

Jthanmyfitnesspal

Lot's of good discussion above. My answer to the OP's question is: "Yes, but why?"

Exercise is such a totally broad word that it can mean anything that is not lying on the couch. Are you saying you want to lose weight while lying on a couch all day? Why?