Losing lots- diet or exercise first?

I lost 100 pounds before I started even walking more. Weight loss is always about eating less calories than your body burns. Exercise isn’t necessary for weight loss, but highly recommended for overall health.

I lost 90+ starting two years ago at age 56.

I had been exercising regularly but was just maintaining.

Diet is the #1 thing that turned it around for me: watching what I ate and learning to manage and actually understand the implications of what I was eating.

Once I started losing weight I became more invested in the process, more interested in exercising and I amped it up.

I discovered I loved being in motion and now I very seldom sit for more than a couple of hours- and even then I’ve usually got some kind of needlework in my lap.

Won’t lie. The extra exercise certainly helped move the process along. But diet (as opposed to “dieting”- I was determined not to have a temporary “diet” mindset) was absolutely first and foremost.

As far as lifting weights- I do so regularly however, I’ve turned into a beanpole with muscles. I’m not at all worried about bulking up. In fact, it would actually be kinda nice, but that’s not the shape my body leans toward. Ya gotta work with whatcha got, and I am darned proud of what I do gots.

I’m going to go out on a limb and repeat what my trainer has told me. She gets frustrated at the girls who do bulk and says they’re not doing it right. They don’t watch what they eat and she says their training regimen is too focused on powerlifting when she thinks they should broadening their workouts for safety, health and strength. Something simple like adding a good stretch routine or some machine work would payback a hundredfold in increased strength. She’s been training and competing for years and this just makes her nuts. She says that’s why I’ve gotten such good results and that the younger girls are frustrated they don’t look like me. (While I’m frustrated I can’t fling heavy iron like them, lol. The grass is always greener, right?)

I think it's a false dichotomy. It's simultaneously simpler, and more complicated, than "diet or exercise".

Pick a fitness target or a weight-loss target as primary goal, and spend the energy/focus you can summon up toward reaching that goal. The strategies to get there (whichever "there" you pick) may include some tactics from the eating column and some from the activity column (not just formal exercise BTW).

I "only" lost 60-ish pounds, so maybe my opinion doesn't count as much. OTOH, I'd been class 1 obese for around 30 years, and I've now been in lower 20s BMI (120s-130s at 5'5") for 5 years.

Pick your easiest on-ramp: Personalize.

My story: I didn't make an explicit pick, because my life was structured differently. After cancer treatment (surgery, chemo, radiation, drugs) in my mid-40s, which was extremely physically depleting, I started becoming active, because I realized that if I ever wanted to feel strong and good again, I was going to have to *work* at it. After some forays into milder exercise (on-ramp!), I was lucky to stumble onto something that I found so fun that I'd do it even if it weren't good for me (on-water rowing), and that led me to do other activities for the good of improved rowing.

As a result, I lost around 1-2 pants sizes through recomposition (more muscle, less fat at the same weight), and gained a wealth of other benefits (strength, cardiovascular fitness, new active friends, the first athletic competitions of my life (even a few medals - place, not participation!), and more)).

But I stayed fat for another dozen years, even while working out regularly (6 days a week, usually). It's so easy to eat those extra few hundred calories, wiping out any weight loss potential of the exercise! But the fitness for sure helped my health and quality of life.

Eventually, though, it finally sunk in that fitness alone - and I was pretty fit, even while fat - was not enough for health. Not even very close, sadly.

Getting my eating under control via calorie-counting was easier than I expected. I felt like an idiot for not doing it much earlier. It wasn't super easy every second, but I was expecting major difficulty, deprivation, angst, and more - didn't happen. It was kind of a fun science fair experiment for grown-ups, with a few mis-steps along the way, but pretty manageable, and the payoff was huge. Daily life got easier, joint pain reduced, health improved, and I just felt a higher sense of well-being.

If, unlike me, you're starting from a point of low exercise, maybe low daily life activity, over-maintenance calories, and maybe sub-ideal nutrition, the easiest IMO to tackle is calorie intake level. It's easier to cut 500 calories (or whatever) of eating every day, for most of us, vs. doing 500 calories of exercise (kind of a lot). Log what you eat now, find the easy cuts, lose weight. (My approach was this one: http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10636388/free-customized-personal-weight-loss-eating-plan-not-spam-or-mlm/p1).

If you have the emotional energy on top of that, do a little to increase daily life activity. (What do I mean? Here are ideas: http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10610953/neat-improvement-strategies-to-improve-weight-loss/p1)

Beyond that, if your ability to multi-focus is excellent, then add some exercise. For ease of on-ramp, do something - anything - you enjoy, that involves movement: Dancing, activity video games, walking/hiking, biking, swimming, active play with your kids - whatever. Strength training helps maintain muscle while losing weight (maybe even gain muscle, but certainly gain strength, among beginners). Cardio burns more calories per minute. If I were looking at pure benefit, I'd go with strength exercise as priority 1, but I truly believe that enjoyment is a bigger deal (via compliance) than theoretical goodness, in the world of exercise.

Recap: FInd an easy on-ramp that works for you, eating, exercise, daily life activity, or a combination. Any meaningful amount of weight loss (multiple tens of pounds) is a long-term proposition. Pick a sustainable (to YOU) approach. If you have an off day, learn from it, adjust, and move on (no guilt, self-recrimination. or other emotional drama - all that's optional, burns no extra calories, feels unpleasat). The majority of our days determine the majority of our outcome, and only giving up completely leads to actual failure to improve. Just keep going, pick yourself up and resume after oopsies, do what works FOR YOU, you'll improve.

Just my opinions, throughout. YMMV, and all that.

Wishing you much success!

P.S. That comment that said that strength exercise may add a couple of pounds of water weight (not fat) for muscle repair, otherwise doesn't hinder weight loss? 100% true. Weight loss is entirely about calorie balance, especially in the short run. In the long run, too low calorie intake can increase fatigue so decrease calorie expenditure (bad for weight loss); or too low calorie intake can incline a person to catch-up overeating in challenged moments (bad for weight loss). Those are *indirect* effects. The weight loss is still directly about getting calories spent lower than calories eaten - entirely. Even a tiny bit lower accumulates. Over the past year, I've lost 10-15 more vanity pounds eating 150-250 calories under maintenance. Super slow, but painless, and it works. Have more losing days than gaining days, proportionally, and you'll get lighter.