To explain that exercise does not affect your weight, or impact on obesity rates

[allmyown]

I see this misconception all over MN every day.

Exercise is fantastic for your physical and mental health in many ways, but it is not a weight loss tool.

Posters are forever quoting energy in -minus energy out = energy stored, etc, as if we are petrol engines or something! we are not - this is not how our body works.

It is more like energy available / energy required to maintain weight= energy body decides to use.

Your body burns off excess energy if you are taking in more than your homeostatic systems think you need. Your body slows down and uses far less energy if you have taken in less than your homeostatic system thinks you need.

And so if you lose weight, and go below what your body wants you to be, then your metabolism will just slow down massively to make the weight go back on. And if you exercise a lot, your metabolism will just adjust to accommodate that.

The key to weight loss is making sure your homeostatic systems decide you should be a healthy weight. You can lower the weight your homeostatic systems is attempting to maintain, with healthy eating, cut out sugar, HPF, vegetable oil, margarine, and cut down on wheat.

Eat plenty of fresh food and greens, nothing long dated.

Unless you are running 10K every single day, you are not exercising enough to change your weight, and even if you are, it won't stay changed.

The obesity epidemic is related to sugar, highly processed food, vegetable oil, margarine, etc, and poor diet in general, not too little exercise.

But don't get me wrong, there are other health problems caused by too little exercise, I am not saying exercise is bad, just that an obese child is not necessarily a child getting inadequate exercise, as so many people seem to think.

Read "Why we eat too much" by Andrew Jenkinson, he explains the up to date science in so much more detail.

Honestly do what works for you, I feel there are so many people with ideas and beliefs around weight loss they state as law. And they seem to expect others to deny their lived experience in order to accommodate their theories.

Many years ago I lost weight over one year through calorie counting AND the gym AND walking lots, then stopped calorie counting and maintained a healthy/low weight with just the latter two for 10-15 years while hardly being the poster kid for healthy eating or small portions. Let’s just say the staff at the Starbucks and Waitrose bakery next to my office knew me very well!

My weight only began to creep back up eventually after I moved from a very walkable city with a nearby gym to a new city where I was very sedentary and at home all the time due to lack of unemployment and didn’t know many people and couldn’t afford the gym.

from what I can see, this is about how to up your omega 3 to omega 6 ratio so I don't know why you have linked something telling you not to eat almonds (omega 6 to omega 3 ratio of OVER 2000:1) to a post saying almonds are a "superfood" without any explanation at all of what you mean by "superfood" (cit doesn't mean anything)

What is it with MN and people telling others what does and doesn’t work for them? Yes some things might be more or less likely to make us lose or gain weight but it’s never the case for everyone. Personally going to the gym speeds up my weight loss. If I eat exactly the same food one week and don’t go to the gym I might lose 1-1.5 pounds. If I go to the gym 3-4 times this is more likely to be 3-4 pounds. This is my experience, it’s always been that way for me. This is just as ridiculous as the post I read the other day when the OP was complaining thar she had gained weight without increasing her calorie intake. Several posters then jumped in telling her she must be lying! 🙄
There are many theories about factors causing weight gain or loss but in reality there is so much we still don’t know.

But it literally is Calories in vs Calories out. Exercise is not the miracle that people think it is - you can eat 3 bags of crisps and consume 1000 calories or walk for 3 hours to burn 1000 calories. One is much harder psychologically to do than the other. Diet is easier to change than building an intense exercise routing. Remove unhealthy options, replace with healthy options.

Use a TDEE (total daily energy expenditure) calculator to work out how many calories you need to maintain your weight each day. Multiply it by 7 and get your weekly budget. If you can cut 500 cals a day that'll be about 1lb of fat loss per week. Jog for an hour too and it'll be 2lbs a week. If you have cheat days and go over your limit it's fine, but the next day will be harder.

I lost 3 stone in 3 months this way, but I walked for 3 hours in the evenings instead of watching TV after work. Chicken has been my friend, cabbage, tomatoes and cucumber have also been my friend.

A couple month in I also started intermittent fasting. (4 hour eating window each day, 5pm - 9pm). I'm working my way towards fasting 3 days a week and eating what I want the rest of the week and I likely won't have to exercise this way.

Mentally though, after walks I feel amazing!

Op talking absolute nonsense. What exactly are "homeostatic systems"? And if what you say is true, can you explain why most athletes are not morbidly obese when they eat up to 12,000 calories a day?

How Many Calories Do Olympic Athletes Need?

@allmyown because you said the ratio was bad, but the article states that doesn’t mean the food is unhealthy. If you read it it states omega 6 rich foods are very good for health but you also need omega 3, not cut out omega 6.
A Mediterranean diet is well known to be linked to longevity.

Because a very physical job will be burning lots of calories, if you suddenly stop the activity but don't change your eating habits of course you will gain weight

But if you eat 3000 calories a day and start going to the gym three times a week it won't magically melt the weight off. You have to change your eating habits.

So in other words it depends (a) what the exercise is and (b) how much of it you do. Eg. working as a builder all day every day will burn more calories than "going to the gym three times a week".

Or: if you eat 3000 a day and run for 2-3 hours a day it WILL melt the weight off. Although there's nothing magical about it, there's just a certain number of calories that it burns per amount of time that you do it.

Going to the gym for an hour and then being sedentary at work and home isn’t superior to being active all day, on your feet and walking everywhere. It’s good to go and workout if you’re sedentary but it’s not a magic wand.
Walking 1 mile and running 1 mile burns the same amount of calories because walking the same distance takes longer. Yea I know calories aren’t the only important factor and that there are other benefits to getting out of breath etc

I think anyone would be unreasonable to butt in about anyones weight. Fact is, anything to do with your physical or mental health should be discussed with a medical professional, of their choosing and that they have approached in that capacity.

@Barz Really want to try this myself, can you recommends a TDEE calculator / app or anything you've found helpful?

Calories in / calories out has always worked for me before but I've always guesstimated things, I'd like to be a bit more organised about it and also would like to try fasting windows.

Problem with me is I'm terrible at organising myself, I need instructions lol

TDEE calculator on Fast Diet website.

@Ivyy

Here's a calculator:

tdeecalculator.net

This is good for calorie counting homemade recipes:

www.verywellfit.com/recipe-nutrition-analyzer-4157076

Yeah sure!
https://tdeecalculator.net/ for calculating TDEE, remember to multiply it by 7 and have a weekly limit rather than daily. If you feel the need for that Friday Night Takeaway after a stressful week go for it but keep within the weekly target.

For calorie tracking I use Nutracheck - I liked it so much I bought the yearly plan on mobile and think it's 100% worth it, but there is also a free version you'll likely be fine with!

Also for my walks I just use my phone and google fit. I've had 3 smart watches (Garmin, Fitbit and cheap amazon brand) and they've all given different readouts when my walk although long, is a very consistent route, Google Fit's the only one that's been consistent!

Diet's the main one to curb though, I'm in a calorie deficit just on food alone - the walking just gives me a break away from work/life but the extra caloric expenditure is nice to see too.

I burn about 270 calories for 5k so 700k for 10k seems a lot for me for someone who's not overweight.

@Gwenhwyfar I ran 7.2 miles today and my garmin says I used 660 cals.
I'm tall and slim - classic long distance runner build.
Truthfully though until this thread I didn't pay much attention to it.

@Gwenhwyfar as I have said I've only the most basic of basic Fitbits (flex2) don't even make it now. All based on steps.

But the data was enough for me to lose weight when I needed to and maintain now. I just spotted patterns and tweaked accordingly over any plateaus, fluctuations.

Thing is I don't think weight loss is as linear as calories in calories out. The exercise IMO trains the body to work more effectively and efficiently in burning stored fat for energy when needed.

Some people who are sedentary will never get much of a chance to develop that body function. If left to atrophy they have an energy slump and want to rest and eat before any stored fat is utilised. So when they do eat over their energy requirements and store body fat it can be difficult to lose.

@Gwenhwyfar what tracker do you use? Are you sure that calorie burn it logs is not just the extra calories, over what you would normally burn if sedentary, the exercise burns?

Runkeeper

For example my total calories for the day, yesterday, was 2401cals which includes a 10k run (703 cals) and a 5 and a half k walk (405 cals). Distances are approximate but I have mapped them out before on 'plot a route' so they won't be far off. It makes sense to me.

This is what ASICs say

www.asics.com/gb/en-gb/running-advice/how-to-burn-more-calories-running/#:~:text=According%20to%20Medical%20News%20Today,effective%20ways%20to%20do%20it.

Actually my run might be further as I run circuits. I run for 75minutes basically. I don't log speed. Just thought I'm not particularly fast. Sorry, I'm a bit approximate..🥴

@heyhohello Brilliant thanks I'll check those out!

Anyone who is conversant in fitness - as in, has studied it properly - will read this post and say ' well, of course'.

On the basis of this thread alone, it's clear we desperately need proper education around fitness, weight loss, eating, etc, in schools so girls (& boys) can grow up with a healthy attitude to weight loss - the mechanics of how it works - to be actually empowered to know how to look after their bodies. It's almost like black magic at the moment - somebody knows a bit about this or a bit about that, or someone else is emotionally defending some theory or other and trying to argue it's better than another. It's not about theories it's about understanding the basic science behind it, otherwise you'll never be in control of your body and your weight and your health.

I burn off 400 calories in a weights/cardio workout of an hour. 600 for cardio only. Seems about right to me.