So exercising and eating right to lose weight is a hoax?

Supern0va81

Doesn't everyone have their own interpretation of what "healthy" or what a "diet" is???

jonnythan

This is what a hoax looks like I guess:

Where is this from?

That's my past month. It's a little screwy in the beginning because I was pretty dehydrated, but the trend is clear.

rml_16

You can eat only the healthiest foods and still eat too many calories. It isn't about cutting out all junk. It's about a calorie deficit. Unless there is something physically wrong with you (thyroid or something else), it will work.

araes2102

I have felt the same way, getting frustarted and depressed because I was not losing what I thought I should (or what all the calculators say I should based on calories vs. calories out...) but I have come to realize one thing: I want to be healthy! I feel better when I am "eating right" (which for me means staying in my calories range and controllling my carb intake) and I feel better when I am exercising! And if the weight is coming off slowly, so be it. I will be fat but I will be the healthiest fat person I know!

KenosFeoh

There is so much conflicting information out there; not all of it can be right. The program I'm working with now (Jamie Eason on BodyBuilding.com) teaches that you need muscle mass to burn fat, so the first stage is muscle building. When I talked about that here, the naysayers attacked.

Good luck to them and to me. The primary directive here on MFP (calories in/calories out) wasn't working for me.

WinnerVictorious

2. You aren't exercising vigorously enough. Unless you spend some time really working it (intervals of 30-60 seconds going as hard as you can) the rest of the time spent walking on the treadmill is going to do nada.

i just wanted to comment on this point. you may be correct in so far as cardiovascular fitness and the amount of calories burned (i.e., exercise at a faster pace to improve both), but walking at a slower pace will still burn plenty of calories. just moving your muscles requires energy, so you'll burn calories even if you walk at a fixed pace for any length of time. i walk 6 miles at a 3mph pace as my cardio. i don't ever break a sweat and i still burn a lot of calories (currently it's about 850 calories each time i walk). i've proven my cardio calculations to be correct over a several month period by tracking everything on a spreadsheet. predicted weight loss matches actual weight loss within a small error margin.

periods of vigorous exercise are certainly better for your overall cardiovascular health and endurance (thus the popularity of HIIT right now), but less vigorous levels of exercise work too.

i just wanted to point that out for anyone reading this who might think they have to "kill themselves" at an unsustainable pace to have any effect.

ILiftHeavyAcrylics

There is so much conflicting information out there; not all of it can be right. The program I'm working with now (Jamie Eason on BodyBuilding.com) teaches that you need muscle mass to burn fat, so the first stage is muscle building. When I talked about that here, the naysayers attacked.

Good luck to them and to me. The primary directive here on MFP (calories in/calories out) wasn't working for me.

How are muscle building and calories in/calories out conflicting?

Francl27

What I meant is that it's nowhere as easy as people say. Spend more calories than you eat, for example... it's not accurate.

I'm eating 1300-1400ish calories a day (maybe a bit more if I underestimate some stuff), exercise for 40 minutes 6 times a week (and I sweat and I constantly have sore muscles), I'm 196lb for 5'5". If it was just eating right and exercising, I should lose consistently. But I'm not. Yes I lost a lot since I started, but I'm guessing cutting junk suddenly and starting to work out suddenly had something to do with it. I haven't lost anything in 2 weeks, if anything I've gained 1 lb.

But it's more complicated than that. Which is what my point was. Eating right (by that I mean cutting down processed foods, high fat and sugar foods pretty much) and exercising isn't always enough... Hence the 'hoax' thing.

jonnythan

What I meant is that it's nowhere as easy as people say. Spend more calories than you eat, for example... it's not accurate.

I'm eating 1300ish calories a day, exercise for 40 minutes 6 times a week (and I sweat and I constantly have sore muscles), I'm 196lb for 5'5". If it was just eating right and exercising, I should lose consistently. But I'm not. Yes I lost a lot since I started, but I'm guessing cutting junk suddenly and starting to work out suddenly had something to do with it. I haven't lost anything in 2 weeks, if anything I've gained 1 lb.

But it's more complicated than that. Which is what my point was. Eating right (by that I mean cutting down processed foods, high fat and sugar foods pretty much) and exercising isn't always enough... Hence the 'hoax' thing.

It's not easy, but it is simple. It really is simple.

Your BMR is about 1653, making your sedentary TDEE around 1983. So you should net about 1500 calories per day. Before exercise. If you're burning 500 calories a day exercising, then you should be eating around 2000 calories on those days.

You say you're eating 1300 calories a day, which means your calorie deficit on all those exercise days is more like 1200 than 500. That's huge. Maintaining a 1000+ calorie deficit for months when you're not that obese is quite sub-optimal, and I've seen many people who do that report plateaus.

Long story short: eat more.

BeachGingerOnTheRocks

Weight loss is simple. Not easy.

Weight loss isn't linear. Nobody ever claimed that it was. You're going to gain a pound here, lose 2 there.....but it will keep going down if you keep it up.

It took years to put the weight on. It isn't going to fall off immediately and in some neat little straight line down a graph. Hormones, etc. will impact how quickly you shed the pounds, and how you retain water will impact the scale.

Stop weighing yourself for a month and just keep going. It's not a race to some finish line. It's a lifetime thing. Don't let two tiny weeks ruin what has been working so far.

KenosFeoh

There is so much conflicting information out there; not all of it can be right. The program I'm working with now (Jamie Eason on BodyBuilding.com) teaches that you need muscle mass to burn fat, so the first stage is muscle building. When I talked about that here, the naysayers attacked.

Good luck to them and to me. The primary directive here on MFP (calories in/calories out) wasn't working for me.

How are muscle building and calories in/calories out conflicting?

The naysayers said (basically) that muscle building being necessary for fat burning is B.S. That's one conflict. Also Eason teaches that the quality of calories is of paramount importance because two items - example a slice of cheesecake vs a steak - can have the exact same calories but be metabolized very differently. So there's another conflict.

WinnerVictorious

What I meant is that it's nowhere as easy as people say. Spend more calories than you eat, for example... it's not accurate.

I'm eating 1300-1400ish calories a day (maybe a bit more if I underestimate some stuff), exercise for 40 minutes 6 times a week (and I sweat and I constantly have sore muscles), I'm 196lb for 5'5". If it was just eating right and exercising, I should lose consistently. But I'm not. Yes I lost a lot since I started, but I'm guessing cutting junk suddenly and starting to work out suddenly had something to do with it. I haven't lost anything in 2 weeks, if anything I've gained 1 lb.

But it's more complicated than that. Which is what my point was. Eating right (by that I mean cutting down processed foods, high fat and sugar foods pretty much) and exercising isn't always enough... Hence the 'hoax' thing.

i would say "Eating right (by that I mean cutting down processed foods, high fat and sugar foods pretty much)" is the part that is a hoax. i don't do that and won't do that and i'm down close to 90lbs so far.

weight loss is not always linear. you will have short periods where your scale doesn't move much, but that's not because your body is behaving different from everyone else. it's because water is used by a number of metabolic processes. you can be losing fat and gaining water weight, so that when you step on the scale, you don't see any change. when your body is ready to shed that water, it will and then in a short period of time, you'll see your weight drop those couple or few pounds that reflect the fact that stored fat has been burned.

the math may be simple, but your body's processes are not. so what you think you should be seeing reflected on the scale every day will not be. it's happening below the surface, but other processes are occurring as well, which affect your overall weight at any given time. stick with it... even if you're not seeing it right now, it's working.

WinnerVictorious

There is so much conflicting information out there; not all of it can be right. The program I'm working with now (Jamie Eason on BodyBuilding.com) teaches that you need muscle mass to burn fat, so the first stage is muscle building. When I talked about that here, the naysayers attacked.

Good luck to them and to me. The primary directive here on MFP (calories in/calories out) wasn't working for me.

How are muscle building and calories in/calories out conflicting?

The naysayers said (basically) that muscle building being necessary for fat burning is B.S. That's one conflict. Also Eason teaches that the quality of calories is of paramount importance because two items - example a slice of cheesecake vs a steak - can have the exact same calories but be metabolized very differently. So there's another conflict.

so do i have to regain the 90lbs or so that i've lost now, simply because i haven't been doing strength training to build muscle first, nor worrying one bit about the "quality" of the calories i've been eating?

i'd really not rather put on all that weight again and then restart in a different way just because this Eason fellow says so. :frown:

jonnythan

There is so much conflicting information out there; not all of it can be right. The program I'm working with now (Jamie Eason on BodyBuilding.com) teaches that you need muscle mass to burn fat, so the first stage is muscle building. When I talked about that here, the naysayers attacked.

Good luck to them and to me. The primary directive here on MFP (calories in/calories out) wasn't working for me.

How are muscle building and calories in/calories out conflicting?

The naysayers said (basically) that muscle building being necessary for fat burning is B.S. That's one conflict. Also Eason teaches that the quality of calories is of paramount importance because two items - example a slice of cheesecake vs a steak - can have the exact same calories but be metabolized very differently. So there's another conflict.

It is, really. A pound of muscle burns like 6-10 more calories per day than a pound of fat.

The cheesecake vs steak will be metabolised differently not because of calorie content, but because of macronutrient content. The steak is mostly protein while the cheesecake is mostly fat and carbs.

ihad

This is what a hoax looks like I guess:

Math rocks!

taiyola

My weight is up, but I'm down 1.5" the last month.

Do I care? No. Inches are better than weight.

rml_16

Yes I lost a lot since I started, but I'm guessing cutting junk suddenly and starting to work out suddenly had something to do with it. I haven't lost anything in 2 weeks, if anything I've gained 1 lb.

It's not a plateau until your weight doesn't change for 6 weeks. And if you haven't dropped your calories as you've lost weight, you're going to stop losing.

Two weeks is nothing. It's a hiccup. If you've lost "a lot" and it's only two weeks you're complaining about, you're never going to reach your goal because your expectations are too high.

Sqeekyjojo

I opened my diary. If all these "processed and fast foods are super unhealthy and the reason you aren't losing weight" people looked at it, they'd think I was on the verge of death and couldn't possibly lose weight that way. That's obviously nonsense.

You and me both.

Adding exercise and reducing the calorie dense stuff like carbs just makes it a bit easier and a bit more pleasant to obtain a deficit than existing purely on salt, fat, carb, sugar, meat, dairy, gluten and flavour free air pie and runaway greens.

It doesn't make you a better person or better equipped to deal with real life where there is takeout everywhere and constant adverts for really refined processed gear, either.


I figure that, if you've got to climb a mountain, it makes sense to get rid of the dead weight first, rather than try and cope with all of it. But you don't drop everything and try and climb barehanded. You go as far as you can with what you've got left and only discard the medipac and tents when you're nearly there.

kennethmgreen

I've always been told that you need to eat right (ie, no junk) and exercise to lose weight and be healthy.

But the more I read about it, the more I realize it just really doesn't seem accurate. It's no wonder it's so hard to diet for some people. You take the right steps, cut all junk, start to exercise... and you still don't lose weight. 'Oh you don't eat enough calories' (I'm not hungry!). 'Oh you might be underestimating what you're eating' (possible but that's why I don't eat my exercise back and I try and stay 100 under my goal).

Sorta depressing.

You've been posting about a plateau for a few days. You say your started your diet two months ago. Dropping from 205 to 194 is a lot of weight very quickly. Unless you are needing to lose 100+ pounds, that's not a healthy weight loss rate.

I know how frustrating it is to be stuck at a certain weight after losing some. I am there myself. It helps to look at your progress over longer periods of time. What have you lost over those two months? You are going to experience some ups and downs. It's normal. Are you weighing yourself every day? Sometimes too much focus on the scale can have a negative affect on your outlook.

Your previous posts indicate you have been overweight for much of your life. Resist the temptation to become impatient and frustrated. Getting healthy doesn't happen in a few quick weeks. You are changing your lifestyle, reshaping your body. Thinking of that way, it doesn't make sense to rush, does it?

You got some good advice in the thread your started Friday about stagnating. Were those suggestions not helpful?

MaryPoppinsIAint

I think the problem with the "eat healthy" mythos lies in a misinterpretation.. the idea that if you eat 80-90% of your diet in foods that can be grown, killed, or made by you, you'll lose weight because it's "healthier". The benefit of eating a more natural diet isn't necessarily DIRECTLY related to weight loss, because as others have pointed out, you can eat "healthy" and still gain weight if you're overeating. The benefit of a healthier, balanced, more natural diet lies in the nutrients consumed.

Yes, you CAN lose weight netting a calorie deficit whether you eat it in salad, free range eggs and local meat or you eat it in ice cream and quarter-pounders with cheese.

But it's a lot a LOT harder to stick to those calorie and nutrient goals eating crap. I know for myself if I go much past 200 calories before about 11am, I WILL go over by the end of the day. I have to eat lightly in morning, because I eat heavy at night regardless of what I ate before noon. So if breakfast is healthy stuff (for example, this morning was a yoplait and a cheese stick with a big mug of hot tea), when I'm not super hungry, I have more calories to spend on lunch (when I am hungry) and dinner (when I'm really hungry). If lunch and dinner also consist of healthier options (salad is my very best friend), I get to eat more VOLUME of food, so I feel full and I'm not craving food again an hour after dinner.

Food is fuel. My body runs better when the fuel it gets is mostly healthy stuff. That doesn't mean it directly translates into weight loss. It means I feel better when I eat more salad and less processed crap.