'Exercise doesn't matter for weight loss'

sofiachohdary

Wouldn't it be weird if I was speaking about you! I tried yoga & walking with a good diet when I had a couple of stone to lose and it had no effect at all.

My friend is pretty similar to you, she eats a really healthy diet most of the time anyway. but her yoga and cycling would allow her more treats than I would be able to have, if that makes sense? I just can't comprehend how yoga can do so much for her, whilst it just makes me more flexible. When she does it, she looks really buff and toned.

It just goes to show how different we all are. I need intense circuit training type exercise to keep my metabolism up and to burn off fat. I also need to really restrict simple carbs and up my protein. Complex carbs like quinoa and legumes are cool though. Anything white and carby piles on pounds straight away.

That would be weird, only I'm still 28 years old, not 35. Actually, it depends on the type of yoga, whether you do Iron Yoga (which includes doing dumbbell / weight lifting exercices while holding yoga poses), or how much time you are holding the poses and if you are making the advanced level of the pose . I try to include Iron Yoga when I feel I am up to it (so hard to stand on one leg while moving your arms around that hold 3 kg dumbbells lol), and Yoga Meltdown from Jillian Michaels combines strength training too (like pushups, elbow planks etc).

Power yoga is really nice, it tones my arms and legs, and with cycling, I try to be at 25-27 kph speed and my stationary bike also has intensity levels from 1 to 8, I have it on 3 for the time being. Minimum cycling time is 30 minutes, although 60 minutes is what I usually aim for if I have the time. Same time I try to allocate for yoga as well.

Yeah, white stuff full of carbs make me feel bloated. I avoid rice as much, pasta I love so I don't cut it out completely (once a week or every 2 weeks), cheese I avoid like the plague (unless I am having pizza once in a while), and I switched from white sliced bread to wholewheat bread. And no mayo on my tuna sandwiches, greek yoghurt instead.

But yeah, I noticed that starving myself without being active is only just a torture for me, and I'm not pleasant if I'm hungry! I can eat people alive lol! That's why daily exercise is as good as oxygen for me. And all the other health benefits that exercise offers me (toning, eliminating depression, etc), I'm just simply addicted to it now, and I just want to keep moving lol.

catcalledjinx

correct, but you dont HAVE to exercise, you just need a calorie deficit for weight loss.

See Tavi, I knew we understood each other! Lol

chadya07

what i have seen said is " exersize is for fitness, diet is for weight loss"

to me... it tells me to look at them as separate goals. which really is what it is.

UNLESS you are using exersize to put you at an extreme defecit which is not a great idea.

otherwise it is pretty much goal number one, lose weight. bam. diet. goal number 2 look and feel great, and be ready to conquer the world. boom. exersize.

the two go together, because exersize affects your calorie intake goals, but you can have weight loss without exersize but you cant have weight loss without a proper diet.

fin.

silentKayak

I know that for me, exercise doesn't cause weight loss. It makes me very hungry and very miserable, because I hate exercise of almost all kinds. So if I'm exercising a lot, I eat WAY more than normal, and end up neither gaining nor losing weight. Two years ago I decided to get serious about weight loss. I went to the gym like clockwork, 4 times/week for 90 minutes and ate "healthy" (but without counting calories). The results after 8 months - increased strength and endurance, but not a single pound lost. I had a similar result when I trained for a 10k and also when I spent a summer in a foreign country pretty much walking all day every day for 6-8 hours. No weight lost AT ALL. Very discouraging.

This is my first time trying an extreme low-calorie diet with no additional exercise, and I feel like it's something I could stick with for a good long time.

My ability (and willingness) to exercise is completely dependent on what else is going on in my life: job, childcare, travel, family responsibilities, illness/injury, etc. But as long as I'm tracking calories, the only time I should have trouble staying below 1500 cals/day as a rule is when I travel and have no choice but to eat out, so less control over what goes in the food. Or if I get discouraged and stop tracking.

We'll see how well it works out (not really losing weight now despite being at about 1400 cals/day - but maybe I'm just being impatient). But honestly, for right now I feel like I'd rather keep dropping the calories than try to add in an hour of cardio a day, which I simply don't have time for.

SeptemberLondon

Bump for later

martinel2099

I see a lot of people saying that diet is more important than exercise for weight loss, but why? If I'm on a stationary bike for 30 minutes I burn between 250-300 calories, so over 7 days that's between 1750-2100 calories burned by exercise, which combined with a calorie controlled diet, wouldn't that mean I would be losing an extra 1/2lb a week? (Theoretically)

"Exercise doesn't matter for weight loss"- True

This is a true statement, one's diet trumps exercise any day of the week. You could exercise all you want, if you don't watch your calories it's all for nothing. When I was younger this was something I didn't understand, I've worked out for a long time but I never tracked my food up until I started using Weight Watchers and now Fitness pal.

That being said however, the reason people here say exercise doesn't matter for weight loss is people often develop an unhealthy relationship between exercise and food. If I have a bad day calorie wise I need to pay for it at the gym later. That's an unhealthy relationship because gym time is a punishment for bad behavior. Nobody likes to be punished, I know I don't.

A better mentality towards exercise is that it is good for your body and you need it. By being an active person you will be able to consume more calories. That's the better way to look at it. That's why some people do not eat back their exercise calories, but allow themselves more calories per day because they are more active.

Mr_Knight

I see a lot of people saying that diet is more important than exercise for weight loss, but why?

Because for every complex problem there is a simple solution that is wrong.

TeaBea

And the 250-300 calories burned in thirty minutes can be undone in a matter of SECONDS depending on food choices. The meme is, "You can't out-exercise a bad diet", and it's true.

Burger King Whopper meal with medium soda and fries takes all of ten minutes to eat and over two HOURS of riding at your numbers to burn off.

Yep! Ridiculously easy.

Several articles......"Exercise Makes You Fat"......basically it's people assuming huge calorie burns and eating too much.

http://www.womenshealthmag.com/weight-loss/gym-weight-gain-1

Does exercise matter for maintenance?......I say YES