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I always felt this way and it made seeing a diet/exercise plan through to the end difficult. If the hard work of diet and exercise results in feeling more slugg

I always felt this way and it made seeing a diet/exercise plan through to the end difficult. If the hard work of diet and exercise results in feeling more sluggish and sleeping more, then I am spending 1-2 hours a day to working out so that I need more sleep and have low energy? Our bodies seem too complex for any simple diet or exercise fad to be the key, it really is just about showing up and iterating over what works and what doesn't and tweaking things to find your unique routine. You never win and eventually you die, but I guess it beats getting obese and sick.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> If the hard work of diet and exercise results in feeling more sluggish and sleeping more, Most people will feel more energetic after improving their diets and adding physical activity. If someone is feeling too drained to function or is suffering from their plan, they’re either working out too much for their current fitness level or they’ve restricted calories too much. It’s more important to focus on small, sustainable changes. The people who try to go from couch potato to CrossFit hero or who try 1000-Calorie restrictive diets are the people who burn out and give up. The people who start by walking 10 minutes per day and slowly increase their activity or who begin by cutting out 50 calories per day are the ones who see long-term progress.
ravenstine 5y ago
Diet plans can be useful for a period of time, but they usually aren't practical to keep up forever without an amount of discipline 99% of the population doesn't possess. As someone who lives a primarily fasting focused lifestyle and eats primarily ketogenic foods, I realized it just wasn't practical, desirable, or better to live that way 24/7/365. This is because it's fallacious to believe that the human body, a body that developed to depend heavily on glucose in a food scarce world, is meant to only eat one small category of foods all the time, or that every human body developed to utilize nutrients in the same way. People also just like to blow things out of proportion and go to extremes. Can't have any carbs or you'll be out of ketosis! Can't have that lemon juice in your water or you'll be thrown out of your fast! Yes, people do believe those things despite never having actually tested those theories themselves. If there's one nearly universal "rule" I've learned about nutrition and weight loss (both of which I am obsessed with), it's that most approaches have a benefit at a hormetic level. Vegan diets, paleo, Mediterranean, keto, South Beach, potato famine, fasting, etc., all can work but all can also detract when pushed beyond a threshold. Hell, even a certain amount of sugar in one's diet is perfectly fine and has a benefit at its hormetic threshold. The same can be said of exercise. Exercise has benefits, but it's often highly overrated. The primary benefits can be achieved at an incredibly low level. You don't need to run on a regular basis or lift heavy weights unless you enjoy it and find a benefit. To go beyond a certain point means compromising the longevity of your joints, providing negative feedback to your psychology rather than positive, overloading your CNS, and having elevated levels of cortisol. In fact, for people trying to lose significant weight, anything beyond walking is likely to be a waste of time until they reach their target. Exercise is not an efficient way of burning calories compared to simply not eating those calories, burns more glycogen than fat most of the time (unless you really elevate your heart rate), and raises cortisol which is counter to burning body fat. Worse yet, many people go to the gym after work because they either need to lose weight or think that they've "just got to", but raising cortisol in the evening is usually counter to getting quality sleep or getting to sleep on time. If you don't get good sleep, you're detracting from getting to a better body fat percentage and staying there.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  I mostly agree, except that weight training exercise, in combination with a proper diet, does have one huge effect on body weight: if you successfully increase muscle mass, your resting metabolic rate increases significantly. RMR can vary between ~1700 Cal/day to ~2700 Cal/day just with muscle mass changes, and this is between 'scrawny' and 'fit' body types, not going to something like body builders (who probably have a BMR well in excess of 3000 Cal/day). And the 1000 Cal I'm talking about here are a huge difference in food you can consume.
  - ravenstine 5y ago
    It can work that way, but it's also an uphill battle if you haven't reached your target body fat percentage. Building muscle is an anabolic activity, and losing fat is catabolic. It's possible to build muscle while losing fat, but it's hard because two opposed processes are fighting each other. For a really fat person, based on my personal experience, trying to build muscle while dropping weight isn't the best idea. Some people might be fine trying to lose body fat over a long period of time, but losing more fat initially and then building muscle seems less error prone than working out and then giving up after a while because the fat loss progress isn't encouraging enough. Also, I would need to see some data that an average person is going to be able to build enough muscle while losing body fat to add on an extra 1000 calories to their RMR. I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'm skeptical based on my knowledge. In fact, I would pretty much say "no way" unless one can stay anabolic and dedicated enough to build an above average amount of muscle. Have a look at this paper using your favorite hub of science. doi:10.1097/00075197-200103000-00011 https://journals.lww.com/co-clinicalnutrition/Abstract/2001/03000/Dissecting_the_energy_needs_of_the_body.11.aspx https://journals.lww.com/co-clinicalnutrition/Abstract/2001/... Based on this, a pound of muscle has a REE ~6 kCal per day. So to get to the number you are suggesting, a person would have to put on ~166 lbs of muscle. That's not realistic most people, let alone those with plenty of fat to lose. It also takes a lot of time and money (calories = cash). A person could work out that muscle and burn more calories, but there's a few problems with this as a fat loss approach. For one, you're going to need a lot of glucose to have a meaningful workout so you're already undermining fat utilization. Second, it takes time to build up that kind of muscle. It's both a short and long term time suck. Let's say an average-sized person puts on that amount of muscle and utilizes all of it during a 60 minute body building workout: 6 METS x 3.5 x 75kg ÷ 200 x 60 mins = 472.5 calories While that's not anything to sneeze at, it hardly matters anyway because muscles don't burn fat. At best you're just preventing the wrong kind of weight gain. To even get to that amount of muscle and keep it on you still have to eat at least enough calories to match that anyway. This is why working out requires more working out, otherwise energy will eventually be stored in the form of fat. Or, they could literally just not eat that 500 calories and spare themselves the sisyphean task of relentlessly working out and not losing substantial fat mass. Some resistance training is a good thing no matter what, but expecting muscle to be a weight loss aid doesn't make sense to me. At best, it's an adjunct to fat loss and should be done in intervals. I'm absolutely open to having my mind blown on this. :)

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

> If the hard work of diet and exercise results in feeling more sluggish and sleeping more, Most people will feel more energetic after improving their diets and adding physical activity. If someone is feeling too drained to function or is suffering from their plan, they’re either working out too much for their current fitness level or they’ve restricted calories too much. It’s more important to focus on small, sustainable changes. The people who try to go from couch potato to CrossFit hero or who try 1000-Calorie restrictive diets are the people who burn out and give up. The people who start by walking 10 minutes per day and slowly increase their activity or who begin by cutting out 50 calories per day are the ones who see long-term progress.

ravenstine 5y ago

Diet plans can be useful for a period of time, but they usually aren't practical to keep up forever without an amount of discipline 99% of the population doesn't possess. As someone who lives a primarily fasting focused lifestyle and eats primarily ketogenic foods, I realized it just wasn't practical, desirable, or better to live that way 24/7/365. This is because it's fallacious to believe that the human body, a body that developed to depend heavily on glucose in a food scarce world, is meant to only eat one small category of foods all the time, or that every human body developed to utilize nutrients in the same way. People also just like to blow things out of proportion and go to extremes. Can't have any carbs or you'll be out of ketosis! Can't have that lemon juice in your water or you'll be thrown out of your fast! Yes, people do believe those things despite never having actually tested those theories themselves. If there's one nearly universal "rule" I've learned about nutrition and weight loss (both of which I am obsessed with), it's that most approaches have a benefit at a hormetic level. Vegan diets, paleo, Mediterranean, keto, South Beach, potato famine, fasting, etc., all can work but all can also detract when pushed beyond a threshold. Hell, even a certain amount of sugar in one's diet is perfectly fine and has a benefit at its hormetic threshold. The same can be said of exercise. Exercise has benefits, but it's often highly overrated. The primary benefits can be achieved at an incredibly low level. You don't need to run on a regular basis or lift heavy weights unless you enjoy it and find a benefit. To go beyond a certain point means compromising the longevity of your joints, providing negative feedback to your psychology rather than positive, overloading your CNS, and having elevated levels of cortisol. In fact, for people trying to lose significant weight, anything beyond walking is likely to be a waste of time until they reach their target. Exercise is not an efficient way of burning calories compared to simply not eating those calories, burns more glycogen than fat most of the time (unless you really elevate your heart rate), and raises cortisol which is counter to burning body fat. Worse yet, many people go to the gym after work because they either need to lose weight or think that they've "just got to", but raising cortisol in the evening is usually counter to getting quality sleep or getting to sleep on time. If you don't get good sleep, you're detracting from getting to a better body fat percentage and staying there.

tsimionescu 5y ago
I mostly agree, except that weight training exercise, in combination with a proper diet, does have one huge effect on body weight: if you successfully increase muscle mass, your resting metabolic rate increases significantly. RMR can vary between ~1700 Cal/day to ~2700 Cal/day just with muscle mass changes, and this is between 'scrawny' and 'fit' body types, not going to something like body builders (who probably have a BMR well in excess of 3000 Cal/day). And the 1000 Cal I'm talking about here are a huge difference in food you can consume.
- ravenstine 5y ago
  It can work that way, but it's also an uphill battle if you haven't reached your target body fat percentage. Building muscle is an anabolic activity, and losing fat is catabolic. It's possible to build muscle while losing fat, but it's hard because two opposed processes are fighting each other. For a really fat person, based on my personal experience, trying to build muscle while dropping weight isn't the best idea. Some people might be fine trying to lose body fat over a long period of time, but losing more fat initially and then building muscle seems less error prone than working out and then giving up after a while because the fat loss progress isn't encouraging enough. Also, I would need to see some data that an average person is going to be able to build enough muscle while losing body fat to add on an extra 1000 calories to their RMR. I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'm skeptical based on my knowledge. In fact, I would pretty much say "no way" unless one can stay anabolic and dedicated enough to build an above average amount of muscle. Have a look at this paper using your favorite hub of science. doi:10.1097/00075197-200103000-00011 https://journals.lww.com/co-clinicalnutrition/Abstract/2001/03000/Dissecting_the_energy_needs_of_the_body.11.aspx https://journals.lww.com/co-clinicalnutrition/Abstract/2001/... Based on this, a pound of muscle has a REE ~6 kCal per day. So to get to the number you are suggesting, a person would have to put on ~166 lbs of muscle. That's not realistic most people, let alone those with plenty of fat to lose. It also takes a lot of time and money (calories = cash). A person could work out that muscle and burn more calories, but there's a few problems with this as a fat loss approach. For one, you're going to need a lot of glucose to have a meaningful workout so you're already undermining fat utilization. Second, it takes time to build up that kind of muscle. It's both a short and long term time suck. Let's say an average-sized person puts on that amount of muscle and utilizes all of it during a 60 minute body building workout: 6 METS x 3.5 x 75kg ÷ 200 x 60 mins = 472.5 calories While that's not anything to sneeze at, it hardly matters anyway because muscles don't burn fat. At best you're just preventing the wrong kind of weight gain. To even get to that amount of muscle and keep it on you still have to eat at least enough calories to match that anyway. This is why working out requires more working out, otherwise energy will eventually be stored in the form of fat. Or, they could literally just not eat that 500 calories and spare themselves the sisyphean task of relentlessly working out and not losing substantial fat mass. Some resistance training is a good thing no matter what, but expecting muscle to be a weight loss aid doesn't make sense to me. At best, it's an adjunct to fat loss and should be done in intervals. I'm absolutely open to having my mind blown on this. :)