Is it possible for you to exercise enough to eat whatever you want and not gain weight?

I eat what I want, probably between 2,500 to 3000 calories a day. I cycle 20 miles a day on work days, and run 15-20k a week. 1 hour of Pilates. Walk a lot. Sedentary job. Late forties. Bmi is 20. I can't imagine surviving on a thousand calories a day, I'd starve! I've been the same weight pretty much all my adult life and getting older hasn't affected my metabolism.

Forgot to say I walk a lot, run a fair bit and cycle twice a week.

I eat nearly 3000 calories a day BMI 18.5. I eat what I like but I do like eating healthy stuff, it tastes better and I feel good on it.

When I didn't exercise and ate crap I felt crap and had loads of health problems.

Which is why I decided to get fit.

It's just easier to eat less.

From what I have seen, women who are around a size ten and 5'5 (averagely slim let's say) don't eat much at all.

Around 1200-1400 cals per day.

The only people who can eat a full English breakfast, pizza for lunch and burger and chips for tea are men with physical jobs.

Getting up every hour isn't much. I'm up every 20 mins, I plan my toilet, tea and copier breaks around that.

Any chance you can walk to work? I know only the lucky few can though. Can you get out every lunch for 30 min walk?

I didn't gain weight but didn't loose any either whilst training for a marathon so 20-30 miles a week.

It's quite easy as long as you don't want to eat very much.

Weight is something like 80% food,,20% exercise. Exercise is more to do with shape, toning, rather than weight loss.
To be slim, you really need to watch your food intake.
As you get older you lose muscle, muscle burns energy, so the older you get the harder it is to stay slim.

Yep triathlon training! Fil goes out maybe 5 times a week? He said he did 60 miles on bike other day, think that's about average. Physical job too. Eats like a horse! Also have a friend who is weight lifter, he eats mountains of food, but it's a very strict plan iyswim.

My DD eats around 3500 calories a day and is slim. She does 18 hours of physical exercise a week though.

I could eat anything and everything when I was training for a marathon, running 20-30 miles a week plus 60 minutes strength work a week. Think being more muscle than fat helps burn the calories as well as the exercise itself. But all my spare time was spent exercising or resting, getting ready for the next session. Not much time for life. Certainly couldn't do it now, post children.

I went to a talk by the Brownlee brothers, they pretty much said they eat a good all around healthy diet but they burn so many calories its fine to have a few pies, burgers and beers on top of that. They do train full time though.

I went through a period of doing ultra distance fell running a few years ago. At the peak of my training I was probably running 20 hrs a week. I couldn't eat enough food to maintain my weight, especially as i was often really tired. I now run about 30 miles a week and I am not hungry all the time like I was when training all the time. I am conscious of eating healthily but don't really have to control the amount I eat.

I've read somewhere that weight loss is 80% diet and 20% exercise. So think it would be pretty hard to focus only on the exercise part and not gain weight

Yeah, unfortunately you'd probably need to be doing a hardcore sport professionally, and even then you can't eat what you want because an appropriate nutritional balance is essential to performance.

Have you ever used a treadmill or exercise bike that told you how many calories you've burned? None of them are particularly accurate but it gives you the general idea: It can take an hour to 'burn off' a mars bar, but seconds to eat it

I can remember being on the cross trainer, seemingly forever, only to realise I'd burned off the calories in an apple!!

Generally speaking loss occurs in the kitchen, not the gym. But, the best way to work this out is to use an app like myfitnesspal and measure calories in v's calories out and aim for a deficit.

Exercise like HIIT, running and spinning are excellent calorie burners.

Building muscle will also help.

I think you'd need to be looking into triathlon training . Tour de France riders need to eat 8,000 calories a day but I don't think that's compatible with a full time job.

It depends what you want to eat!

I find my slim friends who tell me they can eat whatever they want and not gain weight are actually very controlled healthy eaters.

It gets much harder to lose/sustain weight when older, especially post-menopausal - crap isn't it?