Exercise doesn't help you lose weight...say what?
cdahl383
Posts: 726 Member
Got into a discussion with some friends the other day regarding diet and exercise and losing weight, etc. One of my friends said that exercise does not help you lose weight, it's 100% diet. I disagreed and said that whether you take in less calories (diet) or burn more calories (exercise), if you're in a deficit you'll lose weight, therefore exercise does in fact help you lose weight. She disagreed with me still.
Your thoughts?
Your thoughts?
2
Replies
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From what I have learned here, your friends are correct.15
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I look at losing weight as 80% diet and 20% exercise. Sure, you can only focus on what you eat, and you'll lose weight, but it might not give you the results you want. Same thing if you only focus on exercise. I believe it takes a healthy combination of the two working together.27
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You can't out run a bad diet, so if you're exercising, but eating like crap then it won't help. If you're eating well and in a deficit, but do not exercise, you will still lose weight. Using exercise to create a deficit is fine, but you still have to eat well.27
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You can't out exercise a bad diet. I believe what you hear here is going to be it's about 80% diet. Exercise is unnecessary for weight loss. It's all about CICO. Exercise is for health and to help the deficit.9
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Exercise is for fitness and it gives you more calories to play around with, but weight management is all about diet.15
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It can be 100% diet. It doesn't have to be. I lost more quickly than I otherwise would have because I exercised.7
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I agree that diet plays a HUGE roll! If you eat a high sugar/fat/processed food diet then I would agree that its 100% diet. No amount of exercise will help you.
However, if you have a so-so diet that is mostly healthy with a bit of "too many cheat days".. then I would agree with metcastillon that it's about 80% diet/20% exercise.
Changing your diet alone to eliminate processed food, sugars, saturated fats and supplement with clean nutrient filled veggies and lean meats will do wonders - exercise will accelerate the weight loss and help you look better (naked). Having a higher lean body mass percentage will make you look leaner versus just being "skinny fat" or a bit "soft".
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It's way easier creating your deficit by eating less than by exercising more, if you had to choose one or the other.10
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If you have a sufficient deficit you'll lose weight. But it's easier to measure what's going in than what you are burning, so I'd have to say it's in the food! I logged exercising this morning and it wanted to give me 700 calories for 45 minutes worth of work on the "circuit training, general" entry. On the "Curves, circuit training" entry, it gave me 450. That's WAY more likely, even though the first would be the more correct phrase.
Now if I go have a whopper meal, I'll be over my deficit for the day, even though I technically could have "logged" those calories. But I can safely have a small ice cream bar, and be totally in the green.
Previously, I was doing 5 day a week boot camp. But not paying attention to anything I was eating. I was getting smaller and tighter, but no weight loss. Since I was likely over eating, it may have been some muscle gain, but truthfully, I was just eating more than a workout could burn.0 -
I think the argument is more about the wording.
Overall deficit matters, not how you get there.21 -
I imagine it can be 100% diet but not 100% exercise.
Say your maintaining your weight and start walking 50 mins a day, would you not lose weight with no change to your diet.
Depending on your fitness that's could be 250-500 calories burned.4 -
I agree that it's 80/20, and I can lose weight through diet alone, but I've found that doing both together keeps me more motivated. If I exercise regularly I tend to make better food choices, because I don't want all of that exercise to be for nothing.8
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I think it's because most people naturally eat more to compensate for the exercise they do.
If you increase exercise without increasing calories, you would absolutely create a caloric deficit (or reduce a surplus, depending on your baseline). As you said, it's all about the deficit.6 -
Losing weight is a combination of exercise and diet.
It is all about CICO
Calories in ... what you eat
Calories out ... what you burn through daily living + exercise
I have successfully lost weight by:
-- increasing my activity level significantly while eating a lot (eg. 2000-5000 calories/day ... and consuming whatever I wanted). I was my slimmest and most fit when I was doing this, and I maintained my light weight and fitness level for almost 2 decades.
-- reducing the amount I eat, and not doing much activity ... this was marginally successful. I lost the weight, but put it back on again about 6 months later.
-- both reducing the amount I eat and increasing my activity level ... that's what I'm doing now.10 -
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Its the deficit that matters and thats made up from eating less than your body needs to maintain. It can be 100% diet as above, but you can make that deficit larger by burning calories. It takes a lot of exercise to burn calories, so in the first instance its easier to reduce consumption, but its still possible to burn 250+ calories a day, which you can eat or leave to increase the deficit. That can be significant.
Its only 100% diet if you do no exercise.
That % can change depending how much exercise you do.
Unless you have soemthing to compare with then a % such as 80% is just notional. It cna be more concrete if its expressed as a % of the deficit.1 -
I agree with what everyone has said here so far. My argument to her was then, if I ate 500 calories less per day, or I exercised 1-2 hours more a day and burned 500 calories more a day while eating the same calories as before, I would lose weight in the same fashion. My body does not know if I ate less calories or if I burned more calories to get the same net result. That was essentially my point.
To me if you're looking to get fit and in shape, you should diet and exercise together. But technically speaking you can lose lots of weight just by adjusting your diet and lowering your calorie intake without adding any exercise into your day. It just seemed to be an odd statement to me that "exercise does not make you lose weight". It's more of a matter of wording I suppose.3 -
ashleypetrie4 wrote: »You can't out run a bad diet
Not sure i agree with this cliche. Many have lost weight while eating foods perceived as "bad", simply by increasing their calorie output.
"Most studies indicate that .. when combined with dietary restriction, exercise has a synergistic effect and enhances weight loss beyond the effect of diet alone."
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23174547
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Your friend is correct.0
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I agree with what everyone has said here so far. My argument to her was then, if I ate 500 calories less per day, or I exercised 1-2 hours more a day and burned 500 calories more a day while eating the same calories as before, I would lose weight in the same fashion. My body does not know if I ate less calories or if I burned more calories to get the same net result. That was essentially my point.
To me if you're looking to get fit and in shape, you should diet and exercise together. But technically speaking you can lose lots of weight just by adjusting your diet and lowering your calorie intake without adding any exercise into your day. It just seemed to be an odd statement to me that "exercise does not make you lose weight". It's more of a matter of wording I suppose.
True, as long as you were in a deficit.1
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