Whoa whoa whoa!! You can't burn fat via exercise????

dad106

For all you people arguing that exercise burns fat.. Think about this.

If exercise burns fat, then why is MFP set up so that people can lose weight(and fat) on a calorie deficit without any exercise what-so-ever?

I suggest all of you chew on that for a while before you keep arguing.

I don't see anyone arguing this, though. I see people arguing that exercise facilitates the production of a deficit?

(Maybe I've missed some isolated post, but this certainly seems to me the thrust of both this thread and the previous one.)

What does the thread title say?

"You can't burn fat via exercise"? Which leads me to believe that OP believes that exercise alone can burn fat.. the calorie deficit has nothing to do with it.

Then there were people chiming in that you can burn fat via exercise... and calling me names because I stated otherwise.

Plus in the other post, OP stated that was she doing was cardio.. and doesn't cardio burn fat? which again, brings me back the exercise burns fat point.

Nope, I don't believe that you can burn fat only through exercise, but I always was led to believe that exercise burns fat. Take for example the cardio machines at the gym: there are usually charts that state that you should get your heart rate in a certain range to burn fat. That's why I was puzzled when you stated that exercise didn't burn fat.

Two more things:
(1) I didn't "steal" your answer. I quoted it and made it obvious that the statement was not mine. I could have said your name, but I didn't really care who said it. I just wanted some clarification and to find out whether it was true or not.

(2) It is unfortunate that people are calling you names. However, I didn't ask this question to poke fun at anyone, and I cannot be held responsible for what any other user types.

You are talking about the fat burning zone... Which has been addressed numerous times in this post, and in other post. I suggest you dig through and read the responses.

It all reality, yes exercise burns some fat.. but not as much as people think(as another poster here put it). When people ask a question like that, I believe the answer should be yes it does, but it's the deficit created by said exercise that buns the fat.. the exercise it's self really does not burn that much fat.

Make more sense now?

bpotts44

For all you people arguing that exercise burns fat.. Think about this.

If exercise burns fat, then why is MFP set up so that people can lose weight(and fat) on a calorie deficit without any exercise what-so-ever?

I suggest all of you chew on that for a while before you keep arguing.

Your body metabolizes fat during exercise along with glycogen. The lower your intensity the higher percentage of calories burned will be from fat, but you will burn less calories overall. When you are in calorie deficit your body will pull from your fat stores to restore the glycogen in your liver and muscles. So exercise burns fat, but you will not lose weight unless you are in calorie deficit. So you are wrong and you are right.

What is not helpful is when you tell someone that cardio is not helpful to lose weight and exercise is just for looks. It is typically much easier for people to maintain a calorie deficit when they do cardio exercise and maintain once they achieve their goal weight. Moreover the health benefits of cardio certainly can't be denied by anyone.

dixiewhiskey

Can't we all agree that working out burns more calories than sitting on the couch watching TV?

DavPul

Can't we all agree that working out burns more calories than sitting on the couch watching TV?

Whoa! Easy there tiger! That would be reasonable, and reasonableness is NOT what we logged in for. Please keep your outrageous suggestions to yourself.

dad106

What is not helpful is when you tell someone that cardio is not helpful to lose weight and exercise is just for looks. It is typically much easier for people to maintain a calorie deficit when they do cardio exercise and maintain once they achieve their goal weight. Moreover the health benefits of cardio certainly can't be denied by anyone.

Apparently you've never heard the phrase " Diet to lose weight, but exercise to look good naked"(or something along those lines.. can't remember the exact words at the moment!) A lot of people exercise not only for the health benefits, but so they can look good too.

Exercise is primarily for looks because you don't need it to lose weight.. but it does help... as these last 3 pages have proven.

cally69

Can't we all agree that working out burns more calories than sitting on the couch watching TV?

Ahh, bless you for your optimism. I can't recall any thread on here about weight loss where all have agreed on anything,lol.

RaquelLynnPalomino

What I have always heard was when you start exercising the body uses glycogen, and after about 20-30 mins we start burning fat.

tvanhooser

All I can say is what I have personally experienced. It recently dawned on me in a perspective changing moment of illumination that from fall 2010 to May 2012 (about 18 months) I lost about 23 pounds just by not snacking randomly, not taking seconds, portion control, and so on but no particular attention to exact calories or nutrients, ingredients, etc. Just generally trying to NOT overeat. All fine and good but it was only getting me so far and I was all down last week because I wasn't meeting my weekly or monthly goals I have in mind UNTIL I realized that I had lost an equal amount in ONLY 2.5 months since I started exercising and paying attention to careful food tracking using the recipe calculator, and keeping my daily calories generally between 1200 to 1400; as well as looking specifically for whole wheat, low-fat, low-sodium ingredients when I go shopping and choosing them whenever they are available. I'm down another 1.5 pounds since that epiphany too so I have to say that exercise is making a difference to me....which makes me keep going even as much as I hate it because I know the results are there even when they don't always come in the form I want at the moment. But doubling my weight loss in a fraction of the time.....that HAS to count for something and say that exercise DOES make a difference!

wolfpack77

So Joe Schmoe is on low carb, high protein diet. Hes running on a 500 kcal/day deficit. Pretty safe to say Joe's glycogen stores are very low.

Then Joe goes into the gym completely fasted (16 hours with no calories) and does an intense weight training session. i.e deadlifts or squats. Despite being low on energy, he meets or beats his last workout. What energy source is Joe burning?

FAT.

And this is how Joe's cut his six pack.

btw, I am not Joe. lol

chrisdavey

Exercise burns calories. A calorie deficit burns fat. If you exercise, but overeat, you won't lose fat.

/thread

(except I'd say that a cal deficit will produce weight loss, types of exercise & macro nutrients consumed will determine the ratio of fat/LBM loss, but I'm sure you knew that )

meshashesha2012

So who wants to do an experiment? Exercise plenty, in particular cardio, but eat in a calorie surplus. See if you lose fat.

i already did this experiment. i lifted heavy weights, ran 5ks and 10k, played capoeira, kickboxed and generally worked out 60-90 minutes a day 5-6 days a week but i still gained a lot of weight because i was eating 5-7K calories a day :laugh:

i ended up gaining 80 pounds total. granted it might have been 100-160 pounds i;d have gained had i not been working out, but the fact still remains that i worked out like a boss and still got fat

tvanhooser

Well I don't know about all the smart alecks ) who have replied to this....but I would have to say, yes, I can totally agree with that one! I don't necessarily watch alot of TV but as a writer, I DO do alot of couch sitting, being equally sedentary, trying to spin out the next "great" idea. ha ha And I can tell you for sure and certain that my weight loss was kind of hit and miss, up and down until medical issues (knees and ankles and related meds) made me get up OFF the couch and start moving my butt before I start the rest of my sedentary day. DEFINITELY losing more and faster this way than the other way -- much as I am definitively more of a mental action rather than physical action oriented person and a lifelong avoider of anything resembling sweat and exercise! No smiley because I am SO NOT kidding about that!!

My_Own_Hero

You are talking about the fat burning zone... Which has been addressed numerous times in this post, and in other post. I suggest you dig through and read the responses.

It all reality, yes exercise burns some fat.. but not as much as people think(as another poster here put it). When people ask a question like that, I believe the answer should be yes it does, but it's the deficit created by said exercise that buns the fat.. the exercise it's self really does not burn that much fat.

Make more sense now?

Thanks for giving some clarification; your original post seemed to imply that exercise didn't burn any fat. This makes more sense.

bpotts44

What is not helpful is when you tell someone that cardio is not helpful to lose weight and exercise is just for looks. It is typically much easier for people to maintain a calorie deficit when they do cardio exercise and maintain once they achieve their goal weight. Moreover the health benefits of cardio certainly can't be denied by anyone.

Apparently you've never heard the phrase " Diet to lose weight, but exercise to look good naked"(or something along those lines.. can't remember the exact words at the moment!) A lot of people exercise not only for the health benefits, but so they can look good too.

Exercise is primarily for looks because you don't need it to lose weight.. but it does help... as these last 3 pages have proven.

Maybe weight lifting is for good looks as the metabolic increases especially over the short term are negligible, but cardio is primarily for weight loss and the vast other health benefits that come with it. I agree you don't need it for weight loss, but if you read many of the testimonies here cardiovascular exercise DOES in fact help people loose weight, because practically many people struggle eating 1200-1500 calories per day and the cardio offsets that.

Further, the comment that initiated this whole thread was intellectually lazy like the rest of your comments. Fat is in fact metabolized during exercise but weight loss will not occur without caloric deficit over a period of time. And why would you ever recommend against someone doing cardio, not just to lose weight, but for all the other health benefits that come with it? It is poor advice which is exactly what I said originally. We're here to encourage each other to work out and control our diet your advice, if it can be called that, should encourage someone. To recommend against cardio because MFP could potentially overestimate your exercise calories is bad advice and intellectually lazy.

drgndancer

For all you people arguing that exercise burns fat.. Think about this.

If exercise burns fat, then why is MFP set up so that people can lose weight(and fat) on a calorie deficit without any exercise what-so-ever?

I suggest all of you chew on that for a while before you keep arguing.

I don't see anyone arguing this, though. I see people arguing that exercise facilitates the production of a deficit?

(Maybe I've missed some isolated post, but this certainly seems to me the thrust of both this thread and the previous one.)

What does the thread title say?

"You can't burn fat via exercise"? Which leads me to believe that OP believes that exercise alone can burn fat.. the calorie deficit has nothing to do with it.

Then there were people chiming in that you can burn fat via exercise... and calling me names because I stated otherwise.

Plus in the other post, OP stated that was she doing was cardio.. and doesn't cardio burn fat? which again, brings me back the exercise burns fat point.

Exercise alone can burn fat, assuming a calorie neutral diet to begin with. If you are eating a calorie neutral diet, you will neither gain nor lose fat. You exercise and viola, fat loss. You seem to be assuming some situation in which a person is eating a calorie surplus and expecting exercise to counteract that. Obviously it won't, but MFP is designed to prevent that if you follow the program. Exercise contributes to calorie deficit, so under normal circumstances for anyone following an MFP weight loss plan, exercise burns fat. If you're in a calorie surplus, exercise contributes to weight gains being focused in muscle mass rather than fat. So exercise also prevents fat, even in calorie surplus situations.

I also take some issue with the math involved in "exercise burns fewer calories than you think". There's an awful lot of variables to consider. Sure for a normal, healthy adult a walk only burns 150 calories or so. I don't even count walks as exercise any more. When I run 6 or 8 8.5 minute miles though, that burns plenty of calories. The half hour walk also burns a lot more calories for a 400 pound person than it does for that "normal, healthy adult". It's not uncommon on MFP to encounter people who can and do burn calories through long duration high intensity exercise. It's also not uncommon to encounter ver heavy people for whom a short walk *is* long duration high intensity exercise. Making blanket statements that exercise doesn't burn very many calories is difficult here.

IronPlayground

Exercise burns calories. A calorie deficit burns fat. If you exercise, but overeat, you won't lose fat.

/thread

(except I'd say that a cal deficit will produce weight loss, types of exercise & macro nutrients consumed will determine the ratio of fat/LBM loss, but I'm sure you knew that )

There are a lot of wasted words in this thread. ^^These two posts sum up things nicely. Exercise and caloric surplus lead to weight gain. Exercise and caloric deficit lead to weight loss. Caloric deficit alone leads to weight loss. Easy to understand, right?

mom2dms

When you exercise you burn fat and calories...depending on where you are working in your aerobic state. The lower levels (heart rate) is where you burn fat, the higher cardio is where you burn more calories.

Hezzietiger1

ridiculous. Diet matters, a lot. Cardio burns fat. Weights burn fat, too.

l_beakley

One quote that sticks with me is "Lose weight in the kitchen. Get fit in the gym". I know it doesn't answer your question but to me it proves that BOTH are equally important.

Peta22

So many exercise facts get twisted and turned around partly because none of them are 100% proven.

Exercise absolutely can burn fat. Most likely what got twisted is that we used to think that exercise would burn tons of extra calories even once we were done performing it and that doesn't seem to be true. Of course I'm sure someone will argue with me on that.

Excessive cardio can mess with women's hormones and cause them to store fat. It's individual though - I've never had that issue.

Dammit! I've always cherished the claim that you continue to burn higher calories for a while after exersizing!!! I HATE exersizing and I want to gleen every last bit of benefit from it! :sad: