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I think exercise for weight loss/management isn't going to be a good idea for the vast majority of people. As you said, you get hungrier when you burn those cal

by neaden 8y ago

I think exercise for weight loss/management isn't going to be a good idea for the vast majority of people. As you said, you get hungrier when you burn those calories and it's very easy to spend five minutes and eat all the calories you burned working out for an hour.

hombre_fatal 8y ago
When I exercise, it puts me on a health-minded path every day that snowballs into other good decisions. It's like how they say making your bed in the morning helps put you on task the rest of the day. I find your line of thought unconvincing. The thing in common among everyone I know who is overweight is that they don't even work out at all. The amount of people I know who don't do anything is astonishing. The problem people have with exercise is that they don't build the habit at all. That's where they fail, long before your hypothesis could even be tested. "Better not exercise so I don't overeat!" sounds like every other self-sabotaging bargaining we do to avoid effort, like not jogging because you can't yet afford nice running shoes. This seems like the last excuse that we need to be peddling to people trying to turn their life around.
- nxc18 8y ago
  I think you're on the right track, but you have to account for the biases in the fat people who need this advice. No amount of exercise can counteract overeating at the scale seriously fat people (like past versions of myself) do. Often weight is _the_ barrier to exercise. When I was at 300lb it was physically painful to walk more than a few minutes. The small muscles near my ankles just couldn't take it. After I lost ~25lbs I suddenly could walk without serious trouble. I'm still working on actual exercise beyond walking 30 minutes to and from work each day. You can use it as an excuse but really I suspect for most people sticking with a diet is actually much easier than sticking to an exercise plan. Especially if you didn't grow up exercising and don't have any happy memories of exercise. When did you start exercising regularly? Any tips for the rest of us on sticking with it long enough to form a habit?
  - OkGoDoIt 8y ago
    I lost 50lbs a few years ago. Walking was a great gateway drug for exercise since I really hated the idea of exercise and sweating, plus I felt so awkward and out of place going to a gym. It always felt like everyone at the gym was staring at me and I felt stupid not knowing how to do things properly. Walking was a solo activity and pretty hard to do wrong, so it eliminated the self confidence barrier at least. Listening to podcasts and audiobooks made the walking more enjoyable, sometimes I’d walk for hours and not realize how sweaty and tired I was until I stopped due to a phone call or something. Beyond walking, a friend got me into rock climbing. It seemed super daunting since everyone at climbing gyms is so buff and I had no muscle and lots of fat and couldn’t do a pull up to save my life. But it turns out with proper instruction the entry level climbs are pretty easy, no harder than climbing a ladder. But then when you get to the top there’s adrenaline from the height looking down, plus a real sense of accomplishment. It helped me build momentum. Eventually things got easier as I did it more often. And once I started looking in the mirror and seeing actual muscle on my arm it was a huge confidence boost and I doubled down on my efforts. Getting over that initial hump where you don’t see any benefit yet is the hardest part. I never fully lost my belly fat even today, but the visible muscle growth was something I could latch onto to keep motivated. TL;DR: start small, avoid situations that hurt self-confidence, find things that are enjoyable or exciting, look for signs of progress in order to stay motivated Edit: to be clear my diet changes made a huge difference as well, I’m not attributing my weight loss entirely to the exercise. But I was responding to the question of how to start exercising. I do think it made a difference. I found regular exercise improved my mood which probably helped me limit overeating from depression/stress.
- DanBC 8y ago
  > The thing in common among everyone I know who is overweight is that they don't even work out at all Exercise does not help people lose weight, and it may make it harder for people to lose weight. Exercise is important, and we need to help more people exercise, but we should avoid suggesting that exercise helps weight loss. It does not.
  - gamblor956 8y ago
    That's extremely wrong and dangerous advice. Exercise is absolutely essential for healthy weight loss unless your sole focus is on lost mass. Exercising while dieting (meaning restricting calories) minimizes the loss of muscle tissue when trying to lose >1 lb/week. If you're losing >2lb/week dieting without exercise, a sizable portion of the weight loss is actually muscle. It is possible to take the exercise to an unhealthy extreme, such as on Biggest Loser, where they exercised to the point of causing muscle damage/rhabo, but that's the exceptional case, not the norm. Exercise absolutely helps weight loss. 100%.
    - parasubvert 8y ago
      It is not wrong advice. It is not dangerous. Exercise is essential for health. From a purely scientific numbers perspective, it has little impact on weight loss in the morbidly obese. The vast majority of impact is from food consumption. Too much Aerobic exercise can be detrimental to weight loss as it encourages metabolic slow down and increases cravings for easy energy. It also has near zero impact on preserving lean body mass. Modest aerobic activity is always healthy, but in the morbidly obese, any more than that is counter productive. Weight lifting on the other hand does have a major impact on preserving lean body mass during a diet, but it also depends on you eating a lot of protein. Without the protein, you’re also not going to be conserving lean body mass. Again, what you eat is the most important. You can lose trmeendous fat , water, and muscle mass purely by eating less. It’s going to be fat-loss with with 20-30 minutes of walking 5 days a week, and some modest dumbbells or resistance band work, and a decent amount of lean protein ingestion.
  - parthdesai 8y ago
    Do you have any sources to back you up? I was never obese, but i definitely was on the "healthier" side back in the day (~182 pounds at 5'8"). Going to gym and running or working out gives you a perspective of how much work you need to do to burn even 100 calories. Iirc, A can of coke contains ~160 calories, two oreo cookies contain around that amount as well. Once you start thinking about how many calories you need to burn to eat those things, your diet becomes significantly healthier. And before someone says anything about not being able to control themselves, i will still finish an entire pack of cookies in one sitting if i buy them. What has helped me is not to buy them outright itself.
- CJefferson 8y ago
  I think it goes the other way around -- once people get overweight, they stop exercising. When I was overweight (I've lost about 80kg), just walking around the shops was a significant exercise, I'd be short of breath. Now I need a 15 mile bike ride to achieve the same level of exertion. Also, after any kind of exercise it used to be every joint would hurt.

by neaden 8y ago

hombre_fatal 8y ago

When I exercise, it puts me on a health-minded path every day that snowballs into other good decisions. It's like how they say making your bed in the morning helps put you on task the rest of the day. I find your line of thought unconvincing. The thing in common among everyone I know who is overweight is that they don't even work out at all. The amount of people I know who don't do anything is astonishing. The problem people have with exercise is that they don't build the habit at all. That's where they fail, long before your hypothesis could even be tested. "Better not exercise so I don't overeat!" sounds like every other self-sabotaging bargaining we do to avoid effort, like not jogging because you can't yet afford nice running shoes. This seems like the last excuse that we need to be peddling to people trying to turn their life around.

nxc18 8y ago
I think you're on the right track, but you have to account for the biases in the fat people who need this advice. No amount of exercise can counteract overeating at the scale seriously fat people (like past versions of myself) do. Often weight is _the_ barrier to exercise. When I was at 300lb it was physically painful to walk more than a few minutes. The small muscles near my ankles just couldn't take it. After I lost ~25lbs I suddenly could walk without serious trouble. I'm still working on actual exercise beyond walking 30 minutes to and from work each day. You can use it as an excuse but really I suspect for most people sticking with a diet is actually much easier than sticking to an exercise plan. Especially if you didn't grow up exercising and don't have any happy memories of exercise. When did you start exercising regularly? Any tips for the rest of us on sticking with it long enough to form a habit?
- OkGoDoIt 8y ago
  I lost 50lbs a few years ago. Walking was a great gateway drug for exercise since I really hated the idea of exercise and sweating, plus I felt so awkward and out of place going to a gym. It always felt like everyone at the gym was staring at me and I felt stupid not knowing how to do things properly. Walking was a solo activity and pretty hard to do wrong, so it eliminated the self confidence barrier at least. Listening to podcasts and audiobooks made the walking more enjoyable, sometimes I’d walk for hours and not realize how sweaty and tired I was until I stopped due to a phone call or something. Beyond walking, a friend got me into rock climbing. It seemed super daunting since everyone at climbing gyms is so buff and I had no muscle and lots of fat and couldn’t do a pull up to save my life. But it turns out with proper instruction the entry level climbs are pretty easy, no harder than climbing a ladder. But then when you get to the top there’s adrenaline from the height looking down, plus a real sense of accomplishment. It helped me build momentum. Eventually things got easier as I did it more often. And once I started looking in the mirror and seeing actual muscle on my arm it was a huge confidence boost and I doubled down on my efforts. Getting over that initial hump where you don’t see any benefit yet is the hardest part. I never fully lost my belly fat even today, but the visible muscle growth was something I could latch onto to keep motivated. TL;DR: start small, avoid situations that hurt self-confidence, find things that are enjoyable or exciting, look for signs of progress in order to stay motivated Edit: to be clear my diet changes made a huge difference as well, I’m not attributing my weight loss entirely to the exercise. But I was responding to the question of how to start exercising. I do think it made a difference. I found regular exercise improved my mood which probably helped me limit overeating from depression/stress.
DanBC 8y ago
> The thing in common among everyone I know who is overweight is that they don't even work out at all Exercise does not help people lose weight, and it may make it harder for people to lose weight. Exercise is important, and we need to help more people exercise, but we should avoid suggesting that exercise helps weight loss. It does not.
- gamblor956 8y ago
  That's extremely wrong and dangerous advice. Exercise is absolutely essential for healthy weight loss unless your sole focus is on lost mass. Exercising while dieting (meaning restricting calories) minimizes the loss of muscle tissue when trying to lose >1 lb/week. If you're losing >2lb/week dieting without exercise, a sizable portion of the weight loss is actually muscle. It is possible to take the exercise to an unhealthy extreme, such as on Biggest Loser, where they exercised to the point of causing muscle damage/rhabo, but that's the exceptional case, not the norm. Exercise absolutely helps weight loss. 100%.
  - parasubvert 8y ago
    It is not wrong advice. It is not dangerous. Exercise is essential for health. From a purely scientific numbers perspective, it has little impact on weight loss in the morbidly obese. The vast majority of impact is from food consumption. Too much Aerobic exercise can be detrimental to weight loss as it encourages metabolic slow down and increases cravings for easy energy. It also has near zero impact on preserving lean body mass. Modest aerobic activity is always healthy, but in the morbidly obese, any more than that is counter productive. Weight lifting on the other hand does have a major impact on preserving lean body mass during a diet, but it also depends on you eating a lot of protein. Without the protein, you’re also not going to be conserving lean body mass. Again, what you eat is the most important. You can lose trmeendous fat , water, and muscle mass purely by eating less. It’s going to be fat-loss with with 20-30 minutes of walking 5 days a week, and some modest dumbbells or resistance band work, and a decent amount of lean protein ingestion.
- parthdesai 8y ago
  Do you have any sources to back you up? I was never obese, but i definitely was on the "healthier" side back in the day (~182 pounds at 5'8"). Going to gym and running or working out gives you a perspective of how much work you need to do to burn even 100 calories. Iirc, A can of coke contains ~160 calories, two oreo cookies contain around that amount as well. Once you start thinking about how many calories you need to burn to eat those things, your diet becomes significantly healthier. And before someone says anything about not being able to control themselves, i will still finish an entire pack of cookies in one sitting if i buy them. What has helped me is not to buy them outright itself.
CJefferson 8y ago
I think it goes the other way around -- once people get overweight, they stop exercising. When I was overweight (I've lost about 80kg), just walking around the shops was a significant exercise, I'd be short of breath. Now I need a 15 mile bike ride to achieve the same level of exertion. Also, after any kind of exercise it used to be every joint would hurt.