Still struggling with this concept?!!??!?!

i guess i'll add.... ST i would always make a must.. cardio is something you do if you want to eat an extra chip.

Well, cardio adds more benefit than that. I can assure you I've seen many a patients who would have drastically benefitted from having a daily cardio routine. Heart attack patients recover much more rapidly when they have been following a good cardio program. Same thing for stroke patients. A solid cardio program decreases a person systemic blood pressure, increases vascular elasticity and decreases pulse pressure.

well of course you would do that if you are at a risk of heart related problems.. but at the same time.. ST benefits your heart a ton also... after squatting 300+ for reps/sets .. my heart is going just as hard as if i just ran around the world.

I don't understand why you would want to eat more. I started at 410 before I joined MFP. The first 20 lbs was the hardest without this help here.
What makes this easy to me is seeing with my own eyes calorie equals = so much food. Meaning not guessing at what something weighs and doesn't weigh.
This is how I have managed to get to about 371 today. First time ever losing weight.
VERY IMPORTANT INFO: I cannot exercise. Have a very bad heart, and arthritis is destroying my ability to do a lot things needed in every day life.
For me.....no exercise has equaled close to a 40 pound weight loss.

Good luck in your program....

exercise promotes muscle growth. 1 lb. of muscle takes up less room than 1 lb. of fat. Fat is fluffier, so to speak. If you are 150 lbs. of muscle you look a helluva lot better than 150 lbs. of fat. You will also wear significantly small clothes.

exercise promotes serotonin production and improves mood.

exercise promotes better looking skin, hair, nails, and increases your money-earning potential.

well, not that last one. well, maybe. you be the judge.

When you lose weight you lose both muscle and fat. The fat is good the muscle is bad. The main goal of exercising is to prevent the muscle loss and maximize the fat loss.

So for example you have 2 people who weigh 200 lbs. They both have a bodyfat percentage of 25%. So that means that they have 50 pounds of fat and 150 pounds of not fat (lean body mass).

Envision the following scenario (the numbers are made up and likely exaggerated but you get the point):

Over the course of time they both lose 30 lbs. One guy exercises regularly and the other one doesn't.

The guy who exercises loses 29 lbs of fat and 1 lb of muscle. That means that he weighs 170 lbs with a bodyfat percentage of 12% with a lean body mass of 149lbs. So now that he is a perfect weight he can go back to eating a decent diet and he will be fine.

The other guy loses 20lbs of fat and 10 lbs of muscle. That means that he weighs in with a bodyfat percentage of 18% (not to shabby ) with a lean body mass of 140 lbs. But because he has significantly less muscle then the first guy when he goes back to regular eating and maintenance he will need to eat for a man with 140lbs of lean mass which means he will have to take in significantly less calories to maintain his weight loss.

What happens many times is that a person will go back to their old eating patterns. Unfortunately they have less muscle then they did before and so they gain the weight back and they gain it quicker then the first time and they gain more weight because their are used to (over)eating for a guy with 150lbs lean body mass instead of the 140lbs that they now are. Also when they get to 200 lbs again they will have a bodyfat percentage of 30% - meaning they are significantly fatter even though they weigh the same.

So they go on a diet again and don't exercise again and they lose the 30lbs again, but this time they lose 5 lbs of muscle - so now their bodyfat percentage is 21% with a lean body mass is 135lbs. And it repeats over and over again like a yo-yo.

I've got one for you, Ruger2506, since we are both well out of our 20s. Both cardio and serious strength training are important tools for combating the aging process. A lot of what we view as normal aging is actually more like atrophy due to under-use. It's usual for people to lose significant muscle mass as they age, but a committed strength training program can reverse that trend. Almost as important as strength training is a program for maintaining flexible and healthy joints. And of course you already know how great it is to have cardio in your routine. Did you have a time in mind for your future when you think it would be fun to get too weak and breakable and decrepit to have hot sex? Nah, me neither. So I plan to be hitting the weights pretty much from now until the paramedics come to wheel my corpse out of the squat rack at Gold's.

But over and beyond that, there's a good bit of evidence that, while exercise isn't strictly necessary to lose weight, it's absolutely crucial to maintaining weight loss -- probably because of that whole thing where muscle burns more calories than fat, and also because exercising helps you burn more calories in general. I'm not done losing weight yet, but I'm working hard at building muscle for this very reason, because I sure as hell don't want to have to lose all this weigh again.

So just do it already, Ruger! Do it so you can enjoy seeing other guys look at you with envy, so you can be the beneficiary of the delighted sparkle in your lady's eyes when she sees how sexy you've become. Do it because it will improve your life in a thousand little and big ways!

I like you!
hugs!

U lose weight even faster with exercise, muscle burns fat way quicker, u can eat even more if u want to, or not to lose weight alittle quicker, u look and feel better, if ur older u will look younger, all the way down to ur skin! Definitely worth every minute of it! I look better now at the weight I'm at because I workout, my clothes fit way better, and I look smaller then I really am. When I didn't workout, at this weight I could barely squeeze into these jeans I got on right now:)

There is growing evidence that interval training also helps to reduce belly fat. I'd rather get some exercise so I can look better when I get to goal.

You've got it! I also like the way you lulled that caribou or whatever to sleep in your lap like that.