Is it okay not to exercise if you're in a calorie deficit?

LynnArellano · August 29

nossmf · August 29

Absolutely! Losing weight is 100% a function of calories in compared to calories out, so even a couch potato who never stands up burns calories simply from breathing, and if your calories are in a deficit, you will lose weight.

That said, exercise is excellent for overall general health, so even a little bit is helpful. But for losing weight, it is perfectly okay to not exercise.

AnnPT77 · August 29

Sure, it's OK.

Also OK, and proven by some pranksters to be effective at both weight loss and improvement of health markers, as long as in a calorie deficit: Eating only food from McDonald's, eating mostly foods from convenience stores (Twinkies were involved), and more.

Are any of those ideal? No.

If a person can't exercise, they can still lose weight. If they don't want to exercise, they can still lose weight.

But if the person is pursuing robust health improvement, and able to exercise, exercise is part of the most effective formula.

Personally - and rather weirdly - I became very active while remaining class 1 obese, even competing as an athlete (not always unsuccessfully, either), and stayed obese for around a dozen years while training pretty hard 6 days most weeks. My health improved, my daily life functioning improved, even my happiness improved: Big quality of life benefits. My body got smaller (from a little more muscle and a little less fat, at constant body weight). I was the semi-mythical pretty-fit fat person: Strong, good endurance, low resting heart rate, etc.

I'm fairly certain that level of exercise wasn't necessary to begin to see benefits along those same lines. Too many people think exercise has to be some miserable, punitively intense gym-y thing done for hours every day. That's definitely not true.

Weight loss is great for health, probably the biggest single health improvement a lot of people can make. (I lied to myself about that for those dozen years, admittedly.) But exercise independently is potentially a major health improvement. There's even evidence that high-exercise somewhat fat people have better health and mortality outcomes than inactive slim ones.

Either one of weight loss and exercise, taken alone, is helpful and OK. But both is better, when feasible.

q64zszbg8f · August 30

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/comment/48743503#Comment_48743503

Spot on. Being able to eat bigger portions and not worrying about gaining weight is my personal motivation for working out ^^ 1900kcal is just not a lot of food if your cantene lunch is aroung 1000kcal usually ^^

All jokes aside: as mentioned above: deficite is the driver for weightloss.

The body is just generally a *kitten* generally burning muscles bevore fat, especially when you've had a higher bodyfat percentage for longer times.

In these cases the metabolism usually "thinks" that this deficite is a temporary state and thus muscles, which are easier to rebuild if excess energy is available, are burnt for energy.

if you exercise while in deficite the body gets the message that muscles are still required and thus fat reserves are targeted.

nossmf · August 30

Correction: muscle is a LOT harder to build than fat, that's not why it goes first. It goes because it is metabolically far more active than fat, which means even at rest it burns more calories than fat does. So the body, if it thinks it's in a possible starvation scenario, will choose the order of what goes first, between muscle, fat and organs. The organs will always be last, so usually it's a choice between muscle and fat. A person who is idle isn't using the muscle they have, so from a pure math standpoint, the body figures it's ok to let it go, since with less muscle the body needs less calories, thus it will survive longer. But a person who is active, the body will realize it needs to keep the muscle to fend off those hungry saber-tooth tigers, so will lose the fat first. (The brain may realize we're living in the 21st century, but the body is still stuck in the caveman days.)

AnnPT77 · August 30

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/comment/48744325#Comment_48744325

Fat stores are easier to rebuild than muscles. Anyone who's overweight has proven how easy fat stores are to build; anyone who's pursued hypertrophy recognizes that muscle mass gain is slow and requires substantial effort and solid nutrition, among other things.

Generally, fat stores will preferentially be used to make up for a calorie deficit. That's pretty much what they're there for. But researchers believe that there's a limit to how much fat we can metabolize per day per pound of body fat we have, so if we lose weight aggressively fast we're more likely to lose unnecessarily much lean tissue alongside body fat.

Further, people with high bodyfat are less likely to lose lean tissue in a calorie deficit than people with lower bodyfat. That's partly because of the body's preference to burn fat in that scenario, but also because carrying all that fat around is exercise-like. Obese people tend to have more muscle mass than lean people of similar activity level, even . . . though the muscle quality may be lower.

Noss is right, too, that reminding our body - via exercise - that we want and need that muscle helps mitigate muscle loss, but even that won't prevent muscle loss in a too-aggressive calorie deficit.

I know a lot of people exercise in order to eat more, or lose weight faster, but I'm not a fan. YMMV, but to me that's a suboptimal - somewhat dysfunctional - relationship with exercise. (The farthest extreme of that, exercise bulimia, is generally regarded as a dimension of eating disorder.)

Exercise is really probably mostly for physical health, but I'm too weak a character to do it for that reason. I do it because it's fun. That's not ideal psychologically, either, probably. 😉😆🤷‍♀️

dietrich0816251312 · August 30

If it were me, I would take light walks simply to get a little circulation going and lift my mood. Being sedentary isn't good for anyone, calorie deficit or otherwise, and being in a calorie deficit can become quite oppressive due to the low blood sugar, among other things.

paperpudding · August 31

weight loss aside, I think almost everybody benifits from excercise - with their capabilities.

even chair exercises if you cant walk, short walks if you cant go far and so on

BBIPAD · September 1

healthy food dietitian

michalsladek6095 · September 2

…depends. If you do not exercsise you will loose not just fat, but partly (even much less in comparison to fat) also muscles, which is not good at all.

MINIWHEAT70 · September 2

As I start my weight loss journey yet again there is more scientific evidence that what you eat is more important than how much in terms of overall metabolic health. You can be skinny and unhealthy - size doesn't necessarily dictate healthiness. Don't believe it check this out - https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/stop-counting-calories. That being said I'm trying to be as healthy as can. Happy weight loss everyone.

Jthanmyfitnesspal · September 2

Lot's of good discussion above. My answer to the OP's question is: "Yes, but why?"

Exercise is such a totally broad word that it can mean anything that is not lying on the couch. Are you saying you want to lose weight while lying on a couch all day? Why?

AnnPT77 · September 5

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/comment/48749031#Comment_48749031

Yeah, but no, to that article.

It's the shiny new public health idea: Improve the quality of our diet. Does it work? Probably sometimes, or kind of. The idea is that whole foods lead to greater satiation, better nutrition, possibly less over-eating (in calorie terms) whether you're counting the calories or not, better health markers even at the same body size, and even improved quality of life.

Is that true? Yeah, mostly. When it works, the person eats fewer calories of better-quality food, loses weight, improves health. Cool.

It's also possible to overeat healthy, nutrient-dense food. It's even possible to overeat that food while working out regularly and fairly intensely. I've kind of done that, personally . . . for over a decade. Most but not all of my food was nutrient-dense. I ate too much of it. It was easy.

Most of the flaws of counting they mention evaporate when a person treats a calculator estimate as a starting point, then adjusts calorie goal based on results once they have at keast 4-6 weeks of experience data from a fairly consistent activity/eating regimen.

Is counting kind of a pain? I guess so. But IME kind of a small pain compared to being over-fat and unhealthy, as I was for around 30 years. Others' experience - i.e., others' annoyance at counting - will differ from mine. That's not a criticism of me or them, just a difference. Different tactics work for different people.

And sure, skinny people can be unhealthy. Note: "Skinny" is kind of an insulting term, too. I wouldn't usually use that word.

There are a wide range of bodyweights where most people could be reasonably healthy weight-wise; and some people who can be reasonably healthy even outside that range. Weight is not synonymous with health - any weight. Some weights just make better health more likely, or less likely: Shift the odds. That's really all we can do as an individual, improve our odds.

I'd strongly recommend eating mostly nutrient-dense foods, though, as they do. At minimum, it helps.

But what do I know, I'm just some rando on the internet. I never even went to Harvard, except for one brief workshop about HIPAA, which obviously has zero to do with weight loss. 😆

elisa123gal · September 8

The answer to your question. Is, yes. You can lose weight most effectively by your diet.

I did read a study years ago.. and who knows .. just another study. But it determined that diet ..or what you eat is what leads to weight loss. and Exercise is what keeps the weight off when at goal. .. I think that's pretty much true.

littlegreenparrot1 · September 25

For me exercise is a lot more about my mental health than my physical health or my weight, but it supports it.

I only do things I like, I'm not up for punishment. When I'm exercising I feel better, brighter, more energetic - this means I'm much more likely to make better food choices. Better nourishment makes me feel better, makes everything easier, I get quicker/stronger and see the progress so want to do more. The positive spiral continues so I try to do more of it.

I live in the countryside in the UK. This morning I got up at 5:30 and went running. It was beautifully clear, a little bit frosty, I was out for an hour and watched the sun rise. I'll feel the benefit of that all day long.

rms62003 · September 29

Yes, you can lose weight without exercise - or in other words physical activity. But, it might not be the best for your health. There are good studies out there that show increased physical activity improves overall health.

I would highly encourage you to work to increase your physical activity. You don't have to go to the gym to do this - it can be as simple as increasing walking time every day. I attached the CDC guidelines on physical activity - they include a lot of good research about it.

https://www.cdc.gov/physical-activity/php/about/index.html

Is it okay not to exercise if you're in a calorie deficit?

Answers

Categories