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Actually you're more of less agreeing with the conventional wisdom of those who do weight lifting. The vast majority of fat loss is simply diet. Walking, is he

by graeme 8y ago

Actually you're more of less agreeing with the conventional wisdom of those who do weight lifting. The vast majority of fat loss is simply diet. Walking, is helpful. And strength training is good to prevent muscle loss. Anyway, the above is actually the conventional wisdom of those who go to the gym and try to get lean. This is not the message you hear in pop nutrition however. Congrats on your progress! If you do ever do strength training (or for anyone reading this), one very simple metric to add is weight + waist measure. After all, the goal is fat loss, not "weight", per se. When doing lifts, it can be discouraging to see the scale not moving. However, in lost cases the fat is still going away and the waist shrinks.

kd5bjo 8y ago
When I got serious about this stuff, the best decision I made was to focus on performance measures instead of body composition ones. I’m still overweight (but not nearly as much as I once was), but people don’t generally treat me like it because I don’t act overweight— I’ve now got more strength, endurance, and agility than a great many normal-weight people. So, for most people, my advice is to first focus on how much they’re able to do: it’s faster and more reliable than weight loss, brings comparable health and social benefits, and puts you in a better position to appreciate the fat reduction when you start focusing on that.
- graeme 8y ago
  That's a great approach. I should add that having only one measure is discouraging: in fitness or anything else. So your approach broadens beyond weight and gives a win, even in the event weight temporarily increased. Also per my previous comment, I suspect that if you got stronger, then you probably lowered your weight circumference too. At least if your weight was stable. Muscle mass and bone density take the place of fat as strength increases, at equal weights. Hard to go wrong with functional measures. The types of fat may change in a good way too as function increases. I looked into the health of sumo wrestlers. Turns out that at an equivalent fat percentage of a non-athlete, they will have much less visceral fat. This is fat around the organs, and is the type of fat most linked to bad health effects.

by graeme 8y ago

kd5bjo 8y ago

When I got serious about this stuff, the best decision I made was to focus on performance measures instead of body composition ones. I’m still overweight (but not nearly as much as I once was), but people don’t generally treat me like it because I don’t act overweight— I’ve now got more strength, endurance, and agility than a great many normal-weight people. So, for most people, my advice is to first focus on how much they’re able to do: it’s faster and more reliable than weight loss, brings comparable health and social benefits, and puts you in a better position to appreciate the fat reduction when you start focusing on that.

graeme 8y ago
That's a great approach. I should add that having only one measure is discouraging: in fitness or anything else. So your approach broadens beyond weight and gives a win, even in the event weight temporarily increased. Also per my previous comment, I suspect that if you got stronger, then you probably lowered your weight circumference too. At least if your weight was stable. Muscle mass and bone density take the place of fat as strength increases, at equal weights. Hard to go wrong with functional measures. The types of fat may change in a good way too as function increases. I looked into the health of sumo wrestlers. Turns out that at an equivalent fat percentage of a non-athlete, they will have much less visceral fat. This is fat around the organs, and is the type of fat most linked to bad health effects.