Will Exercise For Tasties!

With my annual Winter Weight Gain looming like a jealous husband, I had to get honest with myself:

I over-exercise in order to eat a lot. I'll over-exercise to eat 3500 calories and it works. I'll stay at my target weight of 160.
Take away my exercise debits and I'll gain 2 pounds a day.

With that lightning strike of honesty, I now have to confront my overeating problem. Simple, really. All I need to do is to admit I've eaten enough calories to sustain my body. Sure, if I'm going to plow the back 90 with a teaspoon, I'll have a bigger breakfast. But if I'm going to sit at my desk or run errands, then a light breakfast is all I need.

My cravings don't mean I'm hungry. All they mean is I like the Tasties way too much.
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Replies

  • pjwrt
    pjwrt Posts: 166 Member
    Your post is light hearted, but are you concerned about over exercising? I mean, it obvious ‘works’ if you are maintaining yr weight, but are you happy?

    Wasn't lighthearted, really. It's a problem I bet many have. Check it out. Someone exercises for the sole purpose of being able to overeat. That someone stops exercising for whatever reason, but still has the eating habit. Instant weight gain.

    Over-exercising to enable overeating isn't a good thing at all.

    btw, I've always had a gym, either at home or a membership. At my heaviest, I was still stronger than 99% .
  • ellie117
    ellie117 Posts: 293 Member
    What sort of habits contribute to consuming 3500 calories? Is it large meals, lots of snacking, or very high calorie foods?
  • Do you enjoy your exercise program? If it’s torture and you are tired of it that would be a reason to make a change. Or if your schedule has changed and you have less time available. That’s what happens to most people, family demands eat up personal time for things like exercise.
    Or If you are eating the large amounts of food to stuff other emotional things or are eating all junk, it may be worth addressing it. Otherwise why mess with what works unless you are miserable or see it not being a forever lifestyle.
  • pjwrt
    pjwrt Posts: 166 Member
    Do you enjoy your exercise program? If it’s torture and you are tired of it that would be a reason to make a change. Or if your schedule has changed and you have less time available. That’s what happens to most people, family demands eat up personal time for things like exercise.
    Or If you are eating the large amounts of food to stuff other emotional things or are eating all junk, it may be worth addressing it. Otherwise why mess with what works unless you are miserable or see it not being a forever lifestyle.

    Our winters are wet, cold, and the days are about six hours long. It doesn't take much to be lazy. Every winter I gain weight because of the "rewarding exercise with food" syndrome, when the calorie burning exercises are out of the equation.
  • aokoye
    aokoye Posts: 3,495 Member
    pjwrt wrote: »
    Do you enjoy your exercise program? If it’s torture and you are tired of it that would be a reason to make a change. Or if your schedule has changed and you have less time available. That’s what happens to most people, family demands eat up personal time for things like exercise.
    Or If you are eating the large amounts of food to stuff other emotional things or are eating all junk, it may be worth addressing it. Otherwise why mess with what works unless you are miserable or see it not being a forever lifestyle.

    Our winters are wet, cold, and the days are about six hours long. It doesn't take much to be lazy. Every winter I gain weight because of the "rewarding exercise with food" syndrome, when the calorie burning exercises are out of the equation.

    Our winters are wet, cold, and have short days (the whole living in the Northwestern United States thing) and it's also the time I'm the most likely to lose weight. Erging at least three days a week with the loose logging that I do will do that. Wet, cold, and short days doesn't automatically mean "no exercising/training" If it did, Norway wouldn't be as dominant in nordic skiing as they are (though I don't know how wet it is there).
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 27,846 Member
    NovusDies wrote: »
    Are you saying that if exercise yielded no extra calories for you to eat you would stop doing it? You get no other sense of satisfaction, accomplishment, or enjoyment from the experience?

    I get the bolded, plus I sleep better, exercise is crucial for my mental health, and when all goes well I get blissed out too.

    The rain keeps me indoors (and that's when I lift or do more intensive yoga) but the cold does not.
  • Danp
    Danp Posts: 1,561 Member
    edited November 2019
    I think one of the biggest problems I had in the past with my unsuccessful weight loss endeavours was the 'exercise = more food' mindset. The fact that I wasn't tracking my calorie intake only exacerbated the problem because I'd 'reward' my 300cal workout session with a 1000cal feed.

    The shift in thinking to decouple exercise from weight loss and linking it to fitness went a long way to fixing this. So instead of "exercise = more food" it became "exercise = more fitness" and the extra food became a consequence of working out rather than the goal.

    If that makes sense?

    It also meant that my weight loss wasn't tied up in my workout calories. So if I stop working out for whatever reason my weight loss continues regardless (though obviously my fitness begins to decline)
  • NovusDies
    NovusDies Posts: 8,940 Member
    kshama2001 wrote: »
    NovusDies wrote: »
    Are you saying that if exercise yielded no extra calories for you to eat you would stop doing it? You get no other sense of satisfaction, accomplishment, or enjoyment from the experience?

    I get the bolded, plus I sleep better, exercise is crucial for my mental health, and when all goes well I get blissed out too.

    The rain keeps me indoors (and that's when I lift or do more intensive yoga) but the cold does not.

    I have no idea what constitutes disordered thinking with this which is why I was curious to see how the OP views it.

    I admit that part of my plan for exercise and NEAT improvement is about food calories but that has nothing to do with today. I am trying to lay the foundation for maintenance and giving myself a decent calorie allowance then. I see it more as offsetting some of the many calories my TDEE has declined as I have lost weight. I am not trying to replace all of them but I think I would be happier at 2400-2500 than 2000 which is what I would have gotten if I remained sedentary. 200-250 in NEAT and the same in exercise is not a big ask.

    However, mostly I do it for fitness. I do get a sense of accomplishment and I do enjoy it a fair amount of the time.
  • aokoye
    aokoye Posts: 3,495 Member
    Danp wrote: »
    I think one of the biggest problems I had in the past with my unsuccessful weight loss endeavours was the 'exercise = more food' mindset. The fact that I wasn't tracking my calorie intake only exacerbated the problem because I'd 'reward' my 300cal workout session with a 1000cal feed.

    The shift in thinking to decouple exercise from weight loss and linking it to fitness went a long way to fixing this. So instead of "exercise = more food" it became "exercise = more fitness" and the extra food became a consequence of working out rather than the goal.

    If that makes sense?

    It also meant that my weight loss wasn't tied up in my workout calories. So if I stop working out for whatever reason my weight loss continues regardless (though obviously my fitness begins to decline)

    I don't know that I've ever looked at exercise being a reason to eat a ton of food in a reward sort of way, which is nice I suppose. I tend to see it as, "ok I need to eat more because I just burned 500 calories" or, if we take tonight as an example, "I will order a hamburger and fries because I didn't eat a snack before this workout and I burned at least 400 calories" - turns out I burned 514 calories according to Concept 2's online calorie counter.

    The second option is closer to the problematic idea of "exercise = all of the food I want", but even then, it's very tempered. The idea is not that I can eat and drink whatever I want without negative repercussions. The idea is that I need to eat more calories to take into account what I burned, a hamburger and fries is reasonable in that context, and it's a heck of a lot easier to fit a dinner that consists of those foods into my daily calories after burning more than 400 calories than if I hadn't.

    When I was climbing competitively in my youth it was more like "I need protein now!"
  • pjwrt
    pjwrt Posts: 166 Member
    Therapy? Who would do that? A Glutton-ologist?

    My best bet is to really modify my diet. I wasn't out-of-control for that long and never totally out of shape.