to think eat less, move more isn't as simple as it sounds

[starshaker]

People say to lose weight you need to use more calories than you eat. This is obvious. However metabolism plays a big part too. How do you know how much calories you actually burn so you can work out how many to eat? Ive never been slim and yes, i probably need to exercise more but i have so much other stuff going on that getting the chance to isnt that simple.

So AIBU in thinking that its not as simple as what people say

I often go for a walk to get something small from the shop but choose a shop thats a 45 min walk away rather than the one 10 mins away. I really enjoy it when I've got my ipod.

animagic
I dropped from 12 stone to 9 stone 11 years ago.
Last year crept back up to 10 stone
am now back down to 9 stone
because I eat less and do more
am fasting today : no food since yesterday 4pm till 7pm tonight. Lots of housework and tea.

amimagic No, I lost a stone and a half low-carbing. It's only after that initial boost I was able to concentrate on the eat less move more thing, to fine tune me down further (half a stone so far, need another 8-10 pounds). The low-carbing was absolutely invaluable for getting rid of that sick URGENT hunger I used to feel; my appetite and portion sizes reduced quite naturally with no effort on my part. I'm just not psychologically or physiologically in thrall to my food any more, and that was a necessary preparation for eat less move more.

So I do agree with the OP that it's not as simple as it sounds, and different systems (or combinations of them) will work for different people.

The calories in, calories out is wrong. It is not calories that make you fat, it is refined carbohydrates & sugars. Fat storage is primarily organised by insulin. The more carbs & sugars you eat the more insulin production you stimulate, the more insulin swimming around your system, the more fat you will store.
If you eat less & do more, you are just starving yourself (to varying degrees). Yes, you will lose weight, starved people usually do, but you will lose energy & muscle tissue, as well as body fat. It requires steely will-power and means that you will often feel hungry. Even, the BMC have acknowledged that eating less & doing more has very poor long-term results for weight loss.

How can "calories in/calories out" possibly be wrong?

Have you heard of the 1st law of thermodynamics?

Not all calories are equal though. I suggest you read one of Gary Taubes's books, or Dr Briffa.

I was shocked my porridge with semi skimmed milk was 400 cals! I thought porridge was supposed to be good for u!!!!

Black - In your place, I wouldn't hold my breath for a stranger on the internet to spend weeks reading two books on your say so. So why don't you just say whatever it is you want to say? In a paragraph or less, if possible.

Yes, different foods affect the body differently, but still you will lose weight when you spend more energy than is provided by the food you eat.

Claiming otherwise just shows a complete lack of understanding about how the universe works, notably the 1st law of thermodynamics.

Lonelybunny. It can be surprising can't it!

The thing about Porridge Lonely is that it fills you up so you are less likely to crave sugary food mid morning, so you also lose calories that way . I just make my porridge with water and stir through some honey.

OP, I wouldn't get too scientific about things. Just make an effort to cut down on unhealthy fattening food and to get out for a walk every day and use the stairs instead of the lift at work, and drink more water. You are more likely to stick to a routine like that than to a difficult regime of dull meals and spending an hour a day in they gym. That will only last for a couple of weeks and then you'll be back to your normal habits.

Calories don't make you fat? So for the sake of argument every day you eat 2500kcal in pure protein and do no exercise you won't put on weight is its not fat or carbohydrate!?!?

You do get used to porridge with water after a while. You could try half and half for a bit?

fuck I never said you couldn't mention history. I do think that it is tasteless to mention that what you noticed about a horrible tragedy where scores of people were injured and killed, in an event that was then blamed on the victims themselves, is that they were thinner than us.

CoteDAzur - no one is suggesting that you can't get something from nothing (1st law of thermodynamics) but it is actually the 2nd law about entropy or dissipation which is more relevant here!!!!

Each of the many chemical reactions in the body end up dissipating energy. We get our energy in the form of calories from the food we eat. This energy gets consumed in all the countless chemical reactions that go on all the time. Just like an automobile, we are not all that efficient. We don?t convert calories to energy on a one to one basis because of the loss of energy to the universe described by the second law.

If there are no carbohydrates (or few) in the diet, however, it?s a different story. In order to maintain the necessary sugar level in the blood the body is forced to make sugar out of protein, which isn?t a simple operation. Look in any basic biochemistry textbook and you can see all the reactions required to convert protein to sugar, and each one of these reactions consumes energy just to take place but loses energy to the universe in the process as well. It?s much less efficient for the body to convert protein to sugar than it is to simply take the sugar as it comes in already formed.

The second law of thermodynamics virtually mandates that there be a larger loss of energy when one has to convert protein to sugar instead of merely using the sugar as it comes in. Since there are 4 kcal of energy in a gram of sugar and 4 kcal of energy in a gram of protein, it should be apparent that less of the 4 kcal in a gram of sugar will be dissipated than will be the 4 kcal in a gram of protein if this gram of protein has to first be converted to sugar.

And, consequently, one would think that a diet low in carbohydrate and higher in protein and fat (both of which have to be converted to sugar) would bring about a greater weight loss than a diet of the same number of calories but with higher levels of carbohydrate. In fact, the second law of thermodynamics predicts this very phenomenon.

Holy. How about . . .

"i was watching a news story the other day which had some footage in from 1989 and i was really surprised to see how slim most people were then."

Is that better? If i don't actually mention what news story it was? Pretend it wasn't that or just don't mention it as though just saying the name is terribly wrong. Better?

1970
2011

no muffin tops in the first one

can't see any in the second one either TalkinPeace!

Simple doesn't always equals easy.

I lost five stone just over two years ago. It took me ages to get in the right mind set. Weighing all my food was shocking! What I thought was a normal portion size was at least double! I was never a big eater but with quitting smoking and slowly increasing portion sizes it went over quite easily.

I am a huge believer in lowering carbs, simply because protein fills you up for longer. I know how many calories I have to eat to maintain my weight and how many I need to eat to lose, but it took quite a bit of experimenting to get it right.

I don't do low carb diets, although I do believe that lowering carbs to 100-150g makes weight loss a LOT easier. Unfortunately I love carbs and could never stick to it.

It really is that simple, unless you have a medical condition you need to eat less calories than you burn off. I can maintain on 1,400- 1,500 calories, which isn't much. If I regularly go over 1,500 I will gain.

Well it is actually very straightforward, but not that easy. You need to lower your intake and up your physical activity. You don't have to join a gym/go and run outside, you can do a fair amount in the house. It's easy to get into a snacking habit - try keeping an honest food diary, I found that very surprising!

exercis is great, but not that good for weight loss IMO.

I know that I can burn something silly like 200 calories from an hours fast walk for example and then you can go and eat a snack and eat half of that back at least. I know too many people who exercised and wondered why they weren't losing.. they felt hungrier, ate more and were still eating more calories than they burned.

Exercise is great for health, but it isn't going to help you lose weight unless you are also watching your calorie intake. People often think they can eat loads while exercising and wonder why they don't lose. The more I work out the more hungrier I become so I still have to track everything that goes into my mouth. Plus, people often over estimate the calorie burn as well.

Weight lifting is really the best exercise you can do for weight loss.

Talking. You can see a chubby bloke and a few chubby faces on the right hand side.

fuck I was personally affected by Hillsborough. Forgive me if I get a little pissy about it.

Samu, I lost weight just doing exercise and I wasn't watching what I ate at all. But then I didn't get hungrier - I still ate the same amounts of the same stuff at the same times. Agree with you about weight-lifting though - whoa!

Holy. I was being defensive, sorry. I posted it as i was going to bed in a hurry and didn't word it well . . . as well as putting it on the wrong thread

Sorry to hear you were affected by it

(it looks like Im trying to work my way through all the emoticons)

Am very happy to hear from those of you who've successfully lost weight and kept it off, it gives me hope! I've been size 14/16 for the last 10 years now, and whilst i have lost some weight in that time, I've never really cracked it.

I do hate it though when people who i know have never been overweight say how easy it is - just eat less! I think it's much harder to lose weight than to maintain a low weight that has never been high. (there's some science involving leptin i believe ...?)