Losing weight with a sedentary life style?

I have a sedentary activity level and have lost 50 pounds so far. It's more about your caloric intake and staying in a deficit. I also like fresh vegetables and cook most of my own food, but I definitely don't follow a clean eating problem.
I did increase my activity, but not to the point where I'd change my activity level. Get up and walk every hour or two - use a restroom on a different floor, run up a few flights of stairs, refill your water bottle. Set a phone or email reminder if you get really engrossed in what you're doing. I walk 20-30 minutes during my lunch too. (I just feel better when I get up and move instead of sitting for hours on end.) I also feel more like being active after work if I move around more doing the day.

I work remotely from home and do a job that keeps me from being able to work effectively from a standing desk (draw/sketch a lot that requires precision stability)...so I have to improvise, which means literally taking laps in my home while on conference calls, doing floor tours for the bathroom (never the same floor twice in row), etc. It can be tedious as all hell but every step really does count.

Accountant. On a average day I get 5k steps.

I don't eat clean as far as I'm aware.
I eat pizza, subway, sushi etc so I doubt they are clean.

I eat the calories mfp gave me and so far I have lost... A fairly large number.

Exercise wise I walk on a treadmill for 10-30 mins most days, this is normally while I'm cooking, in between stirs.

I also do kick boxing twice a week, and lift weights.

But ultimately my weightloss wouldn't be impacted much at all if I did none of the kick boxing or weights.

It's mostly about the diet.

I have a standing job, but even when I try hard to walk as much as possible I'm lucky if I can get close to 1500 steps by the end of the work day. I only take as long of a lunch break as it takes to eat my food so I can't do a 30 min walk at lunch.
So to make it to 10,000+ steps a day I have to do almost all of them after work. When I was training for my half marathon length obstacle course run that was easy to do. Getting less than 20,000 steps a day was unusual. Now that I have completed that run I'm easing back on the cardio. Today I got in my 10,000 steps just from the few steps I get from work, the few steps I take when getting my horse ready to ride (I remove my fitbit for the ride as I feel it's inaccurate then just log riding as exercise after), then the steps I take on my 'rests' during my weight lifting, then about 25 min on the treadmill (only 5 of those running because my body didn't 'agree' with running today, well, I should really say that my mind told my body to not 'agree' with running today)

Losing weight is about cals in and out so no matter how active you are (or aren't) as long as you eat below your TDEE with will lose weight.

I have an office job and mostly work from home. My morning commute is about 5 steps. A lot of my exercise comes from swimming--no steps earned.

I still average about 12,000 steps/day. There is no reason why desk job has to equal sedentary. Even if you walk a mile on each of three 15-minute breaks, you could easily hit about 7000 steps.

Weight loss aside, sitting too much and being sedentary are horrible for your long-term health.

You don't need to be active to lose weight. You only need to eat at a deficit.

On the other hand a sedentary lifestyle, coupled with obesity, is a prescription for a shortened life.

you lose weight in the kitchen and gain fitness in the gym

that said, i bet most of us have sedentary jobs. I spend anywhere from an hour to an hour and a half in the gym 5-6 days a week. its not an option for me- its a priority. 1- it gives me more calories to pay with and 2- its good for my overall health (which has improved TREMENDOUSLY in the past 9 months!)

FWIW, even if you have a desk job and don't really do formal exercise, you can still be simply more active overall and burn more calories than before. I'd have a hard time understanding the difference between my more active life days and my less active life days without my FitBit. Just grocery shopping and taking the stairs at work burns calories.

I don't work, I am disabled so I am pretty sedentary. I've lost 152 pounds in 8 months without exercise eating whatever I want as long as it fits in my calories. I did try to eat lots of protein though.

kristen6350 wrote: »

Since weight loss is 80% food, 20% exercise, losing weight while having a desk job (I lose 50lbs with one) really isn't about how active you are, it's learning how much food you should be eating.

I like your rule of thumb for weight *loss*, less so for maintenance.

It is a matter of perception:
A diet that takes over a year for substantial results is a long time;
Substantial weight gain over 5 years happened pretty quick. 5 years of 100 Cal a day excess is worth 52 pounds. That weight gain could have been avoided by very moderate exercise or a little less sedentary lifestyle.

I work from home and am VERY lazy. I got a Fitbit and just walk and walk and walk... As much as I can. Sometimes it's a spin around the block, sometimes it's an hour-plus, but I try to get to 10,000 every day. Sometimes I fail! But I'm losing with no real additional workouts. Just focusing on being more active than lazy