Why do some people struggle with losing weight?
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Gallowmere1984 wrote: »Gallowmere1984 wrote: »cerise_noir wrote: »
This. They are most likely not watching their calorie intake.SuzySunshine99 wrote: »They are consuming more calories than they burn. Unless there is a medical condition, that is the only reason.
Eating clean/healthy and exercise does not necessarily mean someone will lose weight.
Really, this is something that's often drastically understated by most people. It's MUCH more effective to restrict calories to lose weight, than it is to increase exercise to any appreciable degree. I can create a 1000 calorie deficit, even with my relatively piddly maintenance calories (2100) pretty easily. To burn an extra 1000 calories in a day via exercise? Yeah, I don't have a bunch of spare hours to spend making myself want to die on an elliptical. So what do you expect from the kind of people who think of walking their dog and washing laundry as exercise?
Walking the dog IS exercise. It might not burn as many calories per hour as running, but it is exercise. So is housework, under the right conditions. It's just hard to quantify compared to a lot of other things. That's why if people do it consistently it winds up under the activity level setting.
No, that's not exercise, unless you do them wearing full military loadouts of gear. Those are called "life". Just like food prep isn't exercise, unless you're a hibachi chef tossing knives and dodging fireballs all day.
I walk for exercise frequently. Sometimes it's alone. Sometimes it's with my husband. Sometimes it's with my dogs. It's all physical activity carried out to improve health/fitness, which means it's exercise.
This kind of thing is another reason why people struggle. They try to make healthy changes, which are pooh-poohed, and then they get frustrated and/or confused.
This conversation is interesting because it hits on my biggest frustration with the simplistic and often belittling responses that are given to posters. There are many who give thoughtful answers too but it's not always easy for beginners to sort through all the posts and figure out which are useful.38 -
...they are eating more than they burn.3
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Gallowmere1984 wrote: »Gallowmere1984 wrote: »cerise_noir wrote: »
This. They are most likely not watching their calorie intake.SuzySunshine99 wrote: »They are consuming more calories than they burn. Unless there is a medical condition, that is the only reason.
Eating clean/healthy and exercise does not necessarily mean someone will lose weight.
Really, this is something that's often drastically understated by most people. It's MUCH more effective to restrict calories to lose weight, than it is to increase exercise to any appreciable degree. I can create a 1000 calorie deficit, even with my relatively piddly maintenance calories (2100) pretty easily. To burn an extra 1000 calories in a day via exercise? Yeah, I don't have a bunch of spare hours to spend making myself want to die on an elliptical. So what do you expect from the kind of people who think of walking their dog and washing laundry as exercise?
Walking the dog IS exercise. It might not burn as many calories per hour as running, but it is exercise. So is housework, under the right conditions. It's just hard to quantify compared to a lot of other things. That's why if people do it consistently it winds up under the activity level setting.
No, that's not exercise, unless you do them wearing full military loadouts of gear. Those are called "life". Just like food prep isn't exercise, unless you're a hibachi chef tossing knives and dodging fireballs all day.
I walk for exercise frequently. Sometimes it's alone. Sometimes it's with my husband. Sometimes it's with my dogs. It's all physical activity carried out to improve health/fitness, which means it's exercise.
This kind of thing is another reason why people struggle. They try to make healthy changes, which are pooh-poohed, and then they get frustrated and/or confused.
This conversation is interesting because it hits on my biggest frustration with the simplistic and often belittling responses that are given to posters. There are many who give thoughtful answers too but it's not always easy for beginners to sort through all the posts and figure out which are useful.
Don't get it twisted. I'm not saying that these things aren't useful or helpful. My point is more, this is the kind of stuff that should be factored into one's activity level, and not considered deliberate exercise. The disconnect between the two seems to be pretty common around here, and people fail to account for a lot of things during their inital setups.
When they look at a full exercise log, it seems to do things to their heads, and they start to justify overeating, because they "totally earned" that 1500 kcal trip to Applebees. That might be fine, except for two things: exaggerated calorie burn estimates, and the fact that they are using incredibly low output activities to try and compensate for excessive consumption.0 -
I get in about 70 minutes of walking the dogs every day. It burns, according to my pedometer, about 260 calories. That's probably pretty accurate, because eating back those calories I've been steadily losing weight at the expected rate given my net caloric intake/deficit (hint: it has also diminished greatly as I've lost 105 lbs). On top of that my blood pressure has dropped to 110/70 and my resting heart rate runs in the low 50s. When I wasn't walking, the blood pressure was about 120/80 and the resting heart rate in the 70s. So there's some clear indicators of better cardiovascular health in addition to the calorie burns. I don't particularly enjoy lifting weights, but I garden, landscape, and do housework, moving furniture around several times a week (let's just say I cannot abide dust bunnies). So I have some pretty strong muscles despite being too "lazy" to go fritter away time in a gym. Seems functional enough to me, and its enabled me to move my activity level from "sedentary" to "lightly active" (plus the walking).
The experts actually divide up exercise in low-intensity, moderate-intensity, and high-intensity categories. They are all exercise. They accomplish different things. And for a lot of people, simply increasing their low-intensity activity can yield some surprisingly positive results, particularly if they were very inactive. It is, however, really easy to overestimate calorie burns regardless of the activity you participate in. Aside from moving furniture, I wouldn't classify much housework as anything but "low intensity". Not even moving my really heavy Kirby vacuum cleaner around (and the time spent lugging that thing up/down stairs is negligible).
As far as walking the dogs go, maybe you have some little toy breed that walks at like, 10 feet a minute or something. Some of us have large, active dogs. And we take them out into the wilderness, across fields and up and down hills, playing Frisbee the entire time. Darn straight that's going to get counted as exercise. Particularly when it's also trudging through a foot or more of snow for 6 months out of the year.
"Struggling" with weight loss is generally a combination of psychological and physiological factors. Variable levels of stress, support, discipline, dedication, hormones, physical limitations, opportunities, and attitudes will all affect the perceived and real difficulty in losing weight.
I had a roommate in college who was perpetually underweight. She did not like the taste of food. She did not like the experience of eating. For her, eating was a chore that had to be accomplished to survive. I, on the other hand, loved food and loved eating. For me, keeping track of how much I eat is a chore that must be accomplished. CICO worked for both of us. It just doesn't lead to the same experience in life because we are not the same person living the same life.
CICO works for everyone. Achieving a sustained deficit or balance on the other hand has many paths.32 -
I think some people struggle because they haven't found their "groove" or "sweet spot" where all of a sudden everything clicks and works. That's what happened to me when I started MFP 3 yrs ago. I had always struggled with that 20 lbs--up and down, over the years. CICO works, but you have to find the way to make it work best for you. For some, it's better to up their exercise, for others, to concentrate on cutting calories, for others a combination. Alot of people spin their wheels following the latest fad--healthy eating, detoxes, paleo,vegan, fasting, etc. These all have their place, but they are not the best choice for everyone. Then there are the people with no patience that want to drop 40 lbs in a month. Is that too much???? they ask.4
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Gallowmere1984 wrote: »Gallowmere1984 wrote: »Gallowmere1984 wrote: »cerise_noir wrote: »
This. They are most likely not watching their calorie intake.SuzySunshine99 wrote: »They are consuming more calories than they burn. Unless there is a medical condition, that is the only reason.
Eating clean/healthy and exercise does not necessarily mean someone will lose weight.
Really, this is something that's often drastically understated by most people. It's MUCH more effective to restrict calories to lose weight, than it is to increase exercise to any appreciable degree. I can create a 1000 calorie deficit, even with my relatively piddly maintenance calories (2100) pretty easily. To burn an extra 1000 calories in a day via exercise? Yeah, I don't have a bunch of spare hours to spend making myself want to die on an elliptical. So what do you expect from the kind of people who think of walking their dog and washing laundry as exercise?
Walking the dog IS exercise. It might not burn as many calories per hour as running, but it is exercise. So is housework, under the right conditions. It's just hard to quantify compared to a lot of other things. That's why if people do it consistently it winds up under the activity level setting.
No, that's not exercise, unless you do them wearing full military loadouts of gear. Those are called "life". Just like food prep isn't exercise, unless you're a hibachi chef tossing knives and dodging fireballs all day.
I walk for exercise frequently. Sometimes it's alone. Sometimes it's with my husband. Sometimes it's with my dogs. It's all physical activity carried out to improve health/fitness, which means it's exercise.
This kind of thing is another reason why people struggle. They try to make healthy changes, which are pooh-poohed, and then they get frustrated and/or confused.
This conversation is interesting because it hits on my biggest frustration with the simplistic and often belittling responses that are given to posters. There are many who give thoughtful answers too but it's not always easy for beginners to sort through all the posts and figure out which are useful.
Don't get it twisted. I'm not saying that these things aren't useful or helpful. My point is more, this is the kind of stuff that should be factored into one's activity level, and not considered deliberate exercise. The disconnect between the two seems to be pretty common around here, and people fail to account for a lot of things during their inital setups.
When they look at a full exercise log, it seems to do things to their heads, and they start to justify overeating, because they "totally earned" that 1500 kcal trip to Applebees. That might be fine, except for two things: exaggerated calorie burn estimates, and the fact that they are using incredibly low output activities to try and compensate for excessive consumption.
Then the reason that person is struggling is because they are using exaggerated calorie burn estimates which leads to overeating. It's not that they are considering the walking to be exercise as opposed to daily activity. It doesn't really matter what pot you put the exercise in (purposeful exercise or daily activity) as long as you don't double count it and use reasonable calorie estimates.
I have seen several MFP long-timers, as opposed to beginners, who have been struggling lately, myself included. We are people who fully know and understand the concept of CICO but for many of us there are other things going on in life that are making weight loss (or even maintenance) difficult at the moment. I am taking the OP's question--"What's gone wrong?"--in a very literal sense, as in what are the complicating factors that are causing this struggle. I'm not taking it as "Why don't they lose weight?" which just boils down to math.14 -
They haven't chosen the right detox, bought the right weight loss supplements and aren't eating clean healthy organic vegan food.
Or they are not eating in a calorie deficit.7 -
It does depend what you mean by "struggling".
(1) Trying the right things (i.e. eating less and moving more) but finding it hard? That's because it is hard, it takes, time, practice and knowledge, including self-knowledge, and we will all struggle sometimes. The key is to persist and learn.
Or (2) trying the wrong things? For example, eating "healthy" but not paying attention to portion sizes and calorie counts? Or "doing lots of exercise" but overestimating the calorie burn and eating too much as a result?
A LOT of people are stuck in the second situation. The only way out of it is to knuckle down and start tracking food and exercise honestly and using good information.5 -
trigden1991 wrote: »They haven't chosen the right detox, bought the right weight loss supplements and aren't eating clean healthy organic vegan food.
Or they are not eating in a calorie deficit.
I'll take door #2, Monty.2 -
To me if some one is overweight they have skewed idea what "healthy" is or how much they truly eat. I had been my same weight of my life, I Wrongly assumed that I couldn't be skinny. low and behold when I actually weigh my food the melted off. So if it doesnt, I've come to realize they're not being honest/truthful in their diet and log somehow.1
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misshoneyz2dab wrote: »I've known people, who eat healthy, drink plenty of water and exercise a lot. They always have trouble losing weight. What's gone wrong?
Most people will say CICO, however...
http://www.shiftn.com/obesity/Full-Map.html
It's far more complex.
Too bad we can't simply install critical thinking to the pack mentality on this forum.5 -
On a simplistic level they consume more calories than they expend but this doesn't answer why, and that's where the complexities lie.4
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Gallowmere1984 wrote: »Gallowmere1984 wrote: »Gallowmere1984 wrote: »cerise_noir wrote: »
This. They are most likely not watching their calorie intake.SuzySunshine99 wrote: »They are consuming more calories than they burn. Unless there is a medical condition, that is the only reason.
Eating clean/healthy and exercise does not necessarily mean someone will lose weight.
Really, this is something that's often drastically understated by most people. It's MUCH more effective to restrict calories to lose weight, than it is to increase exercise to any appreciable degree. I can create a 1000 calorie deficit, even with my relatively piddly maintenance calories (2100) pretty easily. To burn an extra 1000 calories in a day via exercise? Yeah, I don't have a bunch of spare hours to spend making myself want to die on an elliptical. So what do you expect from the kind of people who think of walking their dog and washing laundry as exercise?
Walking the dog IS exercise. It might not burn as many calories per hour as running, but it is exercise. So is housework, under the right conditions. It's just hard to quantify compared to a lot of other things. That's why if people do it consistently it winds up under the activity level setting.
No, that's not exercise, unless you do them wearing full military loadouts of gear. Those are called "life". Just like food prep isn't exercise, unless you're a hibachi chef tossing knives and dodging fireballs all day.
I walk for exercise frequently. Sometimes it's alone. Sometimes it's with my husband. Sometimes it's with my dogs. It's all physical activity carried out to improve health/fitness, which means it's exercise.
This kind of thing is another reason why people struggle. They try to make healthy changes, which are pooh-poohed, and then they get frustrated and/or confused.
This conversation is interesting because it hits on my biggest frustration with the simplistic and often belittling responses that are given to posters. There are many who give thoughtful answers too but it's not always easy for beginners to sort through all the posts and figure out which are useful.
Don't get it twisted. I'm not saying that these things aren't useful or helpful. My point is more, this is the kind of stuff that should be factored into one's activity level, and not considered deliberate exercise. The disconnect between the two seems to be pretty common around here, and people fail to account for a lot of things during their inital setups.
In my opinion, there is zero difference between "activity" and "exercise". I generally fall into the "pick your best activity level and only log formal time 'working out'" camp, but that's just because it's easier - especially if your "activity" is broken into lots of little chunks over the course of the day (which are very difficult to log with any accuracy and are a pain in the butt to log).
That said, I find the activity level options on MFP to really lowball the amount of physical activity they allegedly correspond to. A teacher is "lightly active"? Maybe if they mostly sit at their desk while the students do worksheets, but no teacher I've ever met only burns 200-300 calories more than the sedentary setting on MFP (which is really really sedentary). A fulltime waitress only burns ~500 calories more per day than a sedentary worker with a desk job? Nonsense.
I eventually gave up on the activity levels here and got a FitBit synced (with negative calories enabled), but that's not feasible for everyone. I wish they'd list a representative number of steps/day for each activity level because I think that would give people a much better starting point (and pedometers are cheap).4 -
misshoneyz2dab wrote: »I've known people, who eat healthy, drink plenty of water and exercise a lot. They always have trouble losing weight. What's gone wrong?
They need to watch their calorie intake and figure out what would be a deficit for them.2 -
Helloitsdan wrote: »misshoneyz2dab wrote: »I've known people, who eat healthy, drink plenty of water and exercise a lot. They always have trouble losing weight. What's gone wrong?
Most people will say CICO, however...
http://www.shiftn.com/obesity/Full-Map.html
It's far more complex.
Too bad we can't simply install critical thinking to the pack mentality on this forum.
I would have to agree.
I havent been here for very long (july this year) but its quite clear that this forum is "run" by 15-20 people. Those people will in general have a big post count, they are likely to throw a title in your face, and some of them tend to flag posts they simply disagree with.
And yes, the answer is far more complex.
For instance, we dont all have the same amount of fat cells in our body.
7 -
I get in about 70 minutes of walking the dogs every day. It burns, according to my pedometer, about 260 calories. That's probably pretty accurate, because eating back those calories I've been steadily losing weight at the expected rate given my net caloric intake/deficit (hint: it has also diminished greatly as I've lost 105 lbs). On top of that my blood pressure has dropped to 110/70 and my resting heart rate runs in the low 50s. When I wasn't walking, the blood pressure was about 120/80 and the resting heart rate in the 70s. So there's some clear indicators of better cardiovascular health in addition to the calorie burns. I don't particularly enjoy lifting weights, but I garden, landscape, and do housework, moving furniture around several times a week (let's just say I cannot abide dust bunnies). So I have some pretty strong muscles despite being too "lazy" to go fritter away time in a gym. Seems functional enough to me, and its enabled me to move my activity level from "sedentary" to "lightly active" (plus the walking).
The experts actually divide up exercise in low-intensity, moderate-intensity, and high-intensity categories. They are all exercise. They accomplish different things. And for a lot of people, simply increasing their low-intensity activity can yield some surprisingly positive results, particularly if they were very inactive. It is, however, really easy to overestimate calorie burns regardless of the activity you participate in. Aside from moving furniture, I wouldn't classify much housework as anything but "low intensity". Not even moving my really heavy Kirby vacuum cleaner around (and the time spent lugging that thing up/down stairs is negligible).
As far as walking the dogs go, maybe you have some little toy breed that walks at like, 10 feet a minute or something. Some of us have large, active dogs. And we take them out into the wilderness, across fields and up and down hills, playing Frisbee the entire time. Darn straight that's going to get counted as exercise. Particularly when it's also trudging through a foot or more of snow for 6 months out of the year.
"Struggling" with weight loss is generally a combination of psychological and physiological factors. Variable levels of stress, support, discipline, dedication, hormones, physical limitations, opportunities, and attitudes will all affect the perceived and real difficulty in losing weight.
I had a roommate in college who was perpetually underweight. She did not like the taste of food. She did not like the experience of eating. For her, eating was a chore that had to be accomplished to survive. I, on the other hand, loved food and loved eating. For me, keeping track of how much I eat is a chore that must be accomplished. CICO worked for both of us. It just doesn't lead to the same experience in life because we are not the same person living the same life.
CICO works for everyone. Achieving a sustained deficit or balance on the other hand has many paths.
I agree with this. I just try to move more. It's not always exercise on an elliptical machine or doing exercise videos. I just think to myself that I burn more standing than sitting, and that everything I do requires some form of energy to accomplish. So, I may only do 30 minutes of sustained exercise 6 days a week. However, I try to be more active in general. I honestly believe that has made a difference. So, doing laundry, cutting veggies, washing dishes, sweeping the garage.... all of it is some level of activity that is better than sitting on my tush.
4 -
Helloitsdan wrote: »misshoneyz2dab wrote: »I've known people, who eat healthy, drink plenty of water and exercise a lot. They always have trouble losing weight. What's gone wrong?
Most people will say CICO, however...
http://www.shiftn.com/obesity/Full-Map.html
It's far more complex.
Too bad we can't simply install critical thinking to the pack mentality on this forum.
@Helloitsdan I remember you from the old days of this forum and IPOARM and EMTWL helped me immensely when I was starting out here. But your need to constantly disparage and berate those of us trying to give advice here on these forums is getting tiresome.14 -
Helloitsdan wrote: »misshoneyz2dab wrote: »I've known people, who eat healthy, drink plenty of water and exercise a lot. They always have trouble losing weight. What's gone wrong?
Most people will say CICO, however...
http://www.shiftn.com/obesity/Full-Map.html
It's far more complex.
Too bad we can't simply install critical thinking to the pack mentality on this forum.
CICO is a simplified explanation of a mathematical equation. What your CICO numbers are are different than mine, but that does not invalidate CICO.
8 -
Helloitsdan wrote: »misshoneyz2dab wrote: »I've known people, who eat healthy, drink plenty of water and exercise a lot. They always have trouble losing weight. What's gone wrong?
Most people will say CICO, however...
http://www.shiftn.com/obesity/Full-Map.html
It's far more complex.
Too bad we can't simply install critical thinking to the pack mentality on this forum.
I would have to agree.
I havent been here for very long (july this year) but its quite clear that this forum is "run" by 15-20 people. Those people will in general have a big post count, they are likely to throw a title in your face, and some of them tend to flag posts they simply disagree with.
And yes, the answer is far more complex.
For instance, we dont all have the same amount of fat cells in our body.
Stick around for another year and the people "in charge" will change.2 -
Helloitsdan wrote: »misshoneyz2dab wrote: »I've known people, who eat healthy, drink plenty of water and exercise a lot. They always have trouble losing weight. What's gone wrong?
Most people will say CICO, however...
http://www.shiftn.com/obesity/Full-Map.html
It's far more complex.
Too bad we can't simply install critical thinking to the pack mentality on this forum.
I would have to agree.
I havent been here for very long (july this year) but its quite clear that this forum is "run" by 15-20 people. Those people will in general have a big post count, they are likely to throw a title in your face, and some of them tend to flag posts they simply disagree with.
And yes, the answer is far more complex.
For instance, we dont all have the same amount of fat cells in our body.
Odd... I find that it's typically newer members that misuse the flag system. Not always, but typically.9
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