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Beyond a calorie deficit - exercise is good for weight loss?

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  • VividVegan
    VividVegan Posts: 200 Member
    OP, those are some good points and I can relate. I learned the hard way when I lost over 50 pounds with CICO but no exercise and so I became skinny-fat fat. A DEXA scan confirmed my body fat was still on the high side despite being nearly underweight. It wasn't until I was resistance training when my body fat made a dramatic decrease despite my weight barely budging (because I don't need to lose anymore). Exercise is important!
  • extra_medium
    extra_medium Posts: 1,525 Member
    seska422 wrote: »
    CollieFit wrote: »
    seska422 wrote: »
    You can't outrun a calorie surplus.

    That kind of depends how far you can run. ;)

    If you eat more than you burn, you could run to the opposite side of the world and you still wouldn't lose weight. :p

    Of course you can then go burn off the surplus calories.
  • JustMissTracy
    JustMissTracy Posts: 6,338 Member
    Exercise is good for fitness, emotional and physical well being, sexual health, cardiovascular health, and as a deficit maker during weight loss. I couldn't have lost all my weight without working out (while eating less......)
  • Packerjohn
    Packerjohn Posts: 4,855 Member
    BoomstickChik wrote: »
    Nikki10129 wrote: »
    Just a couple of comments on your post:
    600 calories daily can be attributed to exercise? What kind of exercise are you doing to burn 600 calories? I do a hardcore kickboxing class for 90 minutes and I'm not burning 600 calories doing that, even though I exercise regularly the rest of the week.

    Also the comment on building/maintaining LBM while exercising isn't 100% true. That's going to depend on the exercises you do. You aren't going to be building muscle while eating at a deficit anyways, except for potentially a little bit at the beginning of a resistance program, and the idea that any form of exercise is going to maintain LBM more than doing no exercise isn't correct. If you're going to be doing a lot of steady state cardio exercises with no resistance training incorporated in (which is something a lot of people do) then you'll probably start losing more muscle than if you decided to just eat at a deficit. Muscle is a lot easier for the body to metabolize than fat, so it's the first thing the body is going to go for when working out if it's not regularly using those muscles.

    I don't argue that I agree exercise is good for overall fitness, but I honestly don't think it helps with weight loss that much. I'm exercising 4-5 times a week, and it isn't speeding up my weight loss because I'm eating in a similar deficit as I would be if I weren't exercising.
    I personally don't exercise for weight loss, I exercise for performance in my sport, and for the positive mental benefits it gives me. If I were exercising for weight loss I wouldn't be motivated to exercise because it really isn't helping with that.

    I burned 582 in a cardio kickboxing class lasting an hour last night.     Then lifted weights, then swam. I burned much more than 600, even if my fancy HRM was off...

    I burn over 500 each time I go to that class.

    Not to pick on you, but just a general comment. No device an individual can buy can measure to the calorie burn of an activity to the calorie.

    We have to realize there is a fairly large range these thing work in.
  • Packerjohn
    Packerjohn Posts: 4,855 Member
    edited June 2016
    I think that the more people exercise and get in shape, the more they will reduce junk foods from their diet. They realize that these foods do little to fuel their bodies and excess can negate the exercise they are doing.

    If someone is working out and wants 6 pack abs, they know the extra chips, pop, cake etc, won't help them reach that goal.
  • pkw58
    pkw58 Posts: 2,038 Member
    I have found that getting my 10000 steps a day goal is what allows me to sleep more than 6 hours a night. Sleep + eating right # of right calories + getting minimum exercise + drinking enough water = happy maintenance. But I have to do all 4, and all maintaining weight makes exercise easier, water makes thinking and moving easier, sleep gives body and brain rest so I make the decisions on what and how much to eat easier, and so on , and so on. It's just the daily discipline. I will add that two to three 10 minute barre3 or yoga or pilates a day makes it even better.
  • tigerblue
    tigerblue Posts: 1,526 Member
    In addition to the many ways exercise reshape so my body (so that I might be happier with my body at a higher weight), as a small person, exercise allows me to eat at a reasonable level and still keep to a deficit. Without exercise, I would have to eat around 1200 cals a day to maintain a small (300 calorie) deficit. If I exercise, I can lose while eating 1500 calories. This is much more sustainable.
  • caseylainetx
    caseylainetx Posts: 6 Member
    overwhelmed and confused....so I should be eating back my exercise calories rather than letting them contribute to a deficit? I would have thought not eating them back would help me lose or make up for days that I might go over. And exercising, sometimes I do an hour long bike ride...but that extra 30 minutes isn't helpful? Or I need to immediately go and eat back what I burned? I know there is oodles of science posted here on all this, but the details are lost on me. It's an interesting thread though because I have implemented a simple program of watching what I eat and being active daily (of some form, whether that's just getting my 10K steps in, or intentional cardio or strength training), but I'm really not losing like I would like I would think I should. I do feel I have a relatively healthy and varied diet, but it may not necessarily be conducive to weight loss. This is where I picked up exercise. Which, as a nice side effect, has just made me feel so much better in so many ways - but still... very little pounds lost. That's a little (okay, a lot) disappointing. But I think I'm just not 'getting it', somehow.
  • janejellyroll
    janejellyroll Posts: 25,763 Member
    caseylainetx wrote: »
    overwhelmed and confused....so I should be eating back my exercise calories rather than letting them contribute to a deficit? I would have thought not eating them back would help me lose or make up for days that I might go over. And exercising, sometimes I do an hour long bike ride...but that extra 30 minutes isn't helpful? Or I need to immediately go and eat back what I burned? I know there is oodles of science posted here on all this, but the details are lost on me. It's an interesting thread though because I have implemented a simple program of watching what I eat and being active daily (of some form, whether that's just getting my 10K steps in, or intentional cardio or strength training), but I'm really not losing like I would like I would think I should. I do feel I have a relatively healthy and varied diet, but it may not necessarily be conducive to weight loss. This is where I picked up exercise. Which, as a nice side effect, has just made me feel so much better in so many ways - but still... very little pounds lost. That's a little (okay, a lot) disappointing. But I think I'm just not 'getting it', somehow.

    If your calorie goal comes from MFP, it doesn't include any exercise. This is why people who use MFP's goals often eat back exercise calories -- a deficit is great for weight loss, but a deficit that is *too high* can lead to lack of energy, increased muscle loss, hunger, cravings, and other unwanted side effects. Some people do have success not eating them -- but in my experience this would be people at the beginning of their weight loss journey, people who have a lot of weight to lose, people who are eating more than they think (and therefore the exercise calories are being consumed back sometimes, they just aren't aware of it), or people who don't do much exercise.

    You don't have to eat them back immediately, but you do want to give some thought as to how you are fueling your activity. If you are a person who regularly goes on hour long bike rides *and* does other exercise, your nutritional needs are different than someone who doesn't exercise. You probably want to fuel that activity in some way. And it's great practice for maintaining your weight loss, when you will need to learn how to match your calorie consumption to your activity level (so that you don't continue to lose weight).
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    caseylainetx wrote: »
    overwhelmed and confused....so I should be eating back my exercise calories rather than letting them contribute to a deficit?

    It depends on where you get the calorie goal.

    One way of thinking of it is that you want to get a deficit through calorie cutting + exercise, so you cut 300 calories and plan to exercise off another 300 calories, for example. The problem is that this is not how MFP works unless you set it up that way -- if you ask MFP for a 2 lb (1000 calorie) deficit, it will give you that without reference to exercise plans, so you will end up (often) undereating if you ALSO exercise and don't adjust the calorie goal up. That's why MFP adds calories when you exercise.

    If you get the goal in another way, it is often different.
    And exercising, sometimes I do an hour long bike ride...but that extra 30 minutes isn't helpful?

    Sure it is, why wouldn't it be. The 30 minutes thing is just a minimum recommended for health.
    Or I need to immediately go and eat back what I burned?

    Not at all. The idea, though, is that if you normally eat at an aggressive deficit (let's say 1200) and then add on significant exercise (let's say you start riding outdoors an hour a day and estimate the burn at 400 calories), you should eat more overall to support that activity. Doesn't have to be right after, and could be spread over the week if you only ride on 3 days, say. That's what TDEE method is.
    This is where I picked up exercise. Which, as a nice side effect, has just made me feel so much better in so many ways - but still... very little pounds lost. That's a little (okay, a lot) disappointing. But I think I'm just not 'getting it', somehow.

    If you aren't losing it could be a couple of things:

    (1) If the exercise is new, often people retain water for repairing sore muscles and the like. Give it time.

    (2) You aren't at a deficit, which could relate to the wrong goal or else logging issues.

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