weight loss without exercise

angelakl2016
angelakl2016 Posts: 15 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
hello

Second time around. im working on my cutting back calories and making better food choices. Next i want to work towards exercise and quitting smoking.

i am a working mom with 2 kids so very busy and i dont want overwhelm myself.

Im on week two week and have lost 8 pounds but i think its water weight.

Can you still lose weight without exercise?

Thanks

Replies

  • LyndaBSS
    LyndaBSS Posts: 6,964 Member
    edited September 2019
    I've been here 3 months and I'm just introducing exercise. I've lost 30 pounds and many inches with only calorie deficit.
  • Hilogirl2018
    Hilogirl2018 Posts: 687 Member
    I've lost almost 30 lbs with no exercise. A calorie deficit is your goal, and this can be achieved through your diet alone.
  • Courtscan2
    Courtscan2 Posts: 499 Member
    Absolutely you can. But as another busy working mum of two, I love my exercise now, mainly because the 60 minutes I spend throwing weights around in my "gym" (garage) at 5am every morning is the only me time I get.
  • pjwrt
    pjwrt Posts: 166 Member
    angelakl2016 wrote: »
    hello
    i smoke...i am a working mom with 2 kids so very busy and i dont want overwhelm myself.

    Can you still lose weight without exercise?...

    uh yeah. You *probably* burn enough calories just living life, but there's all sorts of websites that have "body weight in-home" exercises. I have a small home gym that I use every weekday. No way could I get to the gym with my schedule.

    Word of caution: when you quit smoking the calories will pile on like a blizzard.

    Take it slow. Get well beneath your target and quit smoking. When I quit 20 years ago (!), I gained 60 lbs and acquired 49 stitches and a bad rep. Worst time evah for me. Now-a-days, there's all sorts of meds to help with nicotine withdrawal. Use them.

  • middlehaitch
    middlehaitch Posts: 8,486 Member
    Most certainly, yes.

    Get your calorie counting in line first to establish you are losing at the rate you chose.
    ~6 weeks to eliminate the (maybe) water weight drop at the beginning and give you a whole month of data.

    If you are not losing at the rate you anticipated revisit your logging and scale use.
    Scale for everything (cups, spoons for liquids), mfg packaging or website, and USDA for MFP logging comparisons.

    Once you have your deficit firmly established, decide which you want to address next.

    I don’t know about stopping smoking except it is hard.

    You may find exercise a distraction, so it could help.
    Going for a 5min walk, push-ups, etc instead of a cigarette could work.

    Or, you may find starting exercise and stopping smoking is too much at once.

    I think if I found doing exercise was a distraction, I would focus on quitting smoking and work on exercise last.

    In the realm of health improvements
    Quitting smoking would come first.
    Losing weight, especially if overweight or obese would come second.
    Exercise, improving cardiovascular function and muscle/bone strength/density, third.

    Be kind to yourself and don’t expect to do all three things at once. Experiment and find what approach works for you.

    Cheers, h.
  • fitoverfortymom
    fitoverfortymom Posts: 3,452 Member
    I lost 60lbs with just monitoring my calories and walking my dog.
  • getto80kg
    getto80kg Posts: 17 Member
    You need to exercise or all you are doing is losing muscle mass as well as fat, do weights dumbbells are a good start.
  • lgfrie
    lgfrie Posts: 1,449 Member
    edited September 2019
    Yes, you can lose weight without exercising.

    But exercise can make a big difference, typically adding either 20 % more food, or 50-60 % more weight loss, or some combination of the two.

    Some math to back this up. Assume an average, typical person, on an average, typical diet:

    Maintenance calories = 2000

    To lose 1 lb / week = 1500 calories per day.

    No exercise, 1 week later: 1 pound lost.

    Now, say you do some easy exercise - 300 calories worth of walking or other light cardio.

    If you eat all those 300 calories back, you'd get to eat 1800 calories per day, which is 20 % more food than 1500.

    Or, if you eat none of them back, you'd get an 800 cal/day deficit, or 1.6 lbs lost, which is 60 % more than 1 lb

    Let's take the usual case: eating half of the calories back. For this 30-45 minutes of light exercise per day you'd get:
    • 1650 calories per day to eat instead of 1500, a 10 % increase, and
    • 1.3 lbs of fat lost instead of 1 lb, a 30 % increase.

    In short, even some easy, non-sweaty exercise will give you more food to eat and a lot more weight loss. Both can help hugely with diet satisfaction, and therefore compliance, i.e. staying on your diet over time.

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