Exercise when trying to loose weight?

Where do you see people saying that exercise doesn't help with weight loss? I see that exercise isn't required to lose weight and people can't depend only on exercise for weight loss.

The important part for weight loss is to create a calorie deficit. Whether that calorie deficit includes some exercise is up to the individual.

I see a lot of posts with people saying that they are doing bunches of exercise but not losing weight and wondering why. The "why" is that they are not creating a calorie deficit.

The science, in its simplest form, is calories in versus calories out. The more you exercise, the more calories you burn, meaning you can actually eat a little more while losing weight. Then there's the body composition aspect. If you strength train, you gain muscle. Muscle burns more calories while you do nothing than fat, meaning you lose more weight. Not to mention you'll look better after you lose weight.

I don't think that anyone would deny that exercise is of some assistance in the weight-loss adventure. Equally, for most people, the difficulty is on the kitchen, not at the gym. After all, there are recommended minimum levels of activity and recommended maximums when it comes to calorific intake.

Personally, I have found that walking (as opposed to running or weight training) was better for weight loss. I don't know whether it was the fact that walking is easy and I would go for an hour or two without a problem, that the intensity of running made me want to eat more, or simply that running mean that what I was losing in fat I was regaining in muscle mass. Either way, I found that the scales moved more quickly when I was doing regular long walks (5km or greater).

AnvilHead wrote: »

The fact is that a lot of people either: a) Make things more difficult than they have to be, and/or b) Are full of misinformation.

The science is that you need to be in a sustained/consistent caloric deficit for weight loss to occur. Whether that deficit is created entirely by eating less or aided by exercise is irrelevant (speaking purely in terms of weight loss). You don't have to eat "clean", low-carb, vegetarian/vegan, eliminate sugar, eliminate fat, avoid certain foods, drink shakes or anything else. You don't need to avoid eating after a certain hour (except for personal preference). You don't need to do intermittent fasting, eat 3 meals, six meals or one meal per day. You don't need to exercise 30 minutes/1 hour/2 hours/6 hours per day, run, walk, lift weights, do cardio classes, do yoga/pilates, etc.

Figure out how many calories you burn per day and eat less than that. If you're not losing weight it's because you're not in a deficit - you either overestimated your calorie burn or you're underestimating how many calories you're eating per day. Adjust accordingly and you're golden. Simple as that. If you want to exercise (it's a good idea for a lot of reasons), do it - if you don't, don't. Either way, you'll lose weight as long as you're consistently taking in less calories than you're expending.

^ Perfect.

Ways that exercise does not help my weight loss:

Certain kinds of exercise make me way hungrier than the actual calories I am burning. Swimming for example. This is not helpful since I either end up hungrier or I slow my weight loss by eating more.

Weight lifting causes me to retain water for a surprisingly long time when I start/restart. One time it was an entire month of working hard, eating appropriately, and seeing no scale results. Losing weight is 90% a mind game, and if I hadn't been logging and patient, I might have given up.

Of course, there are many ways that exercise does help my weight loss...helps keep me mindful, can't snack when working out (less idle time), and can't eat much before or after exercise or it makes my stomach upset.

The calories burned are a drop in the bucket most of the time (many people overestimate calories burned when exercising, so this part easily becomes a negative if you are eating them all back).

rhsdancer5 wrote: »

I know that loosing weight is mostly from food, not exercising. But I have a hard time believing that exercise doesn't help with weight loss. I keep seeing people say that. I feel like working out does help you loose weight because you're burning calories. But I could be wrong. What is your opinion? Or what facts are there?

Exercise absolutely helps with weight loss. Whoever says that is very uninformed, a liar, or just want an excuse to be lazy. Exercising burns calories, when you're trying to eat at a deficit burning calories is a great way to be able to eat more calories or give you leeway to screw up.

Secondly strength training, the best thing in the world. When you lose weight you lose it in two ways. You lose fat and you lose muscle. Strength training helps to maintain muscle. 1 lb of muscle burns more calories than 1 lb of fat. You will find the bigger your muscles the more calories you burn automatically (they call this metabolism). So by losing weight without strength training you're really just destroying your metabolism which makes it more likely you'll gain the weight back later or come to an impassible plateau.

MissusMoon wrote: »

Losing weight starts in the kitchen. You will see that commonly here, because it is true. Exercise increases your deficit and that is good. It's also great for your health.

The difference is a lot of people think because they are "eating clean" or "eating healthy" without counting their calories and exercising that they should be losing weight. That won't happen if they are eating more than they burn.

I wouldn't say it's correct to say that losing weight starts in the kitchen. It really depends on how much weight you have to lose and how much you normally eat. If you're only 10 lbs over weight you can probably very easily lose that by simply exercising more because you're probably not eating that big of a calorie surplus. However, I wouldn't say this is true for someone who is excessively overweight.

However it's 100 per cent completely accurate to say you can't out train a bad diet. So can exercise until you're passed out on the side of the road from exhaustion if you eat a ton of calories you will never be able to exercise enough to burn that energy and it will be stored as fat.