Diet only for Weight loss?

Yes - you don't have to exercise. Watching portions and calories in is the biggest contributor for weight loss.

Exercise if you can. Strength training can help you retain a larger % of lean muscle mass. It's not a big calorie burner, but it shapes the end result.

Walking is great too. Active people earn more calories. So if you find sticking to goals is difficult.....go for a walk.

Every body requires a set amount of energy to perform daily activities and maintain life. The calories needed changes, but the formula is the same for everyone.

If your body receives it's calorie needs from food alone and you don't go over or under then your body will sustain itself solely on the food you eat.

If your body receives too many calories then it sets extra calories aside to help sustain life for times of crisis like famine. The body is adept at putting away calories in the form of fat and we can measure the amount of energy available in these fat stores at approximately 3500 calories per pound. So essentially your body puts away about 2-3 days of fuel per pound that could essentially keep you alive without food.

The problem is we don't experience enough "lean" times to balance the scales so we have to create that through diet which is the exact opposite.

So the flip side is reducing the amount of calories the body uses from food so it will turn to that stored energy. This is why you can also add exercise to help your body mobilize the stored fat. Not only does exercise demand more energy used, but it also tells your body that you need to maintain as much muscle as your using to perform your daily duties so it will draw as much energy as possible from your fat and preserve muscle mass needed for your activity level.

According to the calculation to gain a pound you need to eat 3500 calories to gain a pound so simply eating 100 calories more than your body uses every day will equal roughly a 1 pound gain per month or about 10 lbs per year. Taking into account that one tablespoon of peanut butter is about 100 calories it's not hard to see how you could inadvertently be eating more than your body needs on a regular basis. Now to lose that weight it takes a little more attention to detail.

If you want to lose a pound a week you need to force your body to use 3500 calories from your fat stores because you are eating 3500 calories less in food. If you keep your food intake exactly the same you need to burn 3500 calories a week or 500 per day. That is 35 miles walked per week at a moderate pace of 3 mph. You could reduce your caloric intake by 500 calories per day or do a combination of the two, but in the end it literally just comes down to

CICO- calories in/calories out
If you eat more than you use you gain weight. If you use more than you eat you lose weight

Yep, that's how I lost around 50lbs.

I've lost 30 pounds since October with diet alone. I have recently started walking and jogging daily to help with those last 5 pounds, it gets harder to lose when you get close to your goal. I would recommend exercise from the beginning to give yourself extra calories and also to cover any logging mistakes. Good luck!

I had 30lbs to lose, and i was a sedentary slug for the first 24 of those. I did zero exercise, and 3000 steps was a high day for me

I used to work in a nursing home and I saw people who were totally sedentary, did absolutely no exercise, some did no purposeful movement at all as they were virtually comatose and tube fed - they sometimes lost weight.

Of course their intake was minimal too ( and if they lost significant amount of weight their tube feeds were increased)

But point being they didn't need exercise to lose weight.

saundts wrote: »

I am curious, can we lose weight by diet only, watching what we eat and with a calorie deficit only?

Yes, but the people who do that soon discover that the person hiding under their excess fat isn't the fit, healthy, happy person they thought he was. And to top it all off, they just spent several months eating rabbit food to get him out. Most people who are trying to lose weight have bigger goals than just "lose weight." Many are looking for such things as improving blood pressure, reducing bad cholesterol, improvement in mood, more energy, improved sleep, and better physical appearance. For those things you need regular exercise. So, you might want to consider whether your goal is to lose weight or to get fit.