I wanted to not have to wonder why my weight was suddenly 30 pounds more than in college, without me remembering how that ever happened.<p>I started exercising with some light running, gym use, breaking a little sweat. Didn't do anything, didn't show any noticeable result over like 4 months.<p>Then I hopped on a rowing machine (above preparation probably helped to be ready for it) because I wanted to see something happen. I'm not that special. Do something to your body and it will probably do the same for you as it does for other people, you just have to stick with it. I stopped thinking "eh, it won't do anything for me".<p>I rowed each day before the weights workout, 10 minutes super intense, until I felt like I was gonna puke as I fell off the machine. Heartbeat way elevated, out of breath, blood coursing through body, and soaked.<p>In conjunction with not eating quite as much (that rowing machine does something to your appetite) I dropped I would say 1 pound per week. Doctor asked if anything was wrong the next time I went in for physical and got weighed. Felt great.<p>Exercise is a part of my routine now. I don't eat junk any more. I now say the thing people always say after such things, but you don't internalize or believe it until you try: "I wish I had done it sooner".
I see a lot of comments from people I suspect have never struggled with weight loss here.<p>"Put the fork down" is easy advice, but for many it's a lot more challenging than it sounds.<p>For me, and I suspect a lot of people, focusing on exercise first is the key. I can plot the number of miles I post on the bike against my weight. Of course I <i>absolutely do</i> more than 300 minutes a week on the bike.<p>Diet is super important, likely more important that fitness, but diet is vastly more difficult for me. Also, when I'm working out regularly, my diet naturally shifts. If I'm sitting at my desk or on the couch for weeks at a time, food intake increases.<p>I'm sure if I could ever properly reign in my eating I could change this, but I've tried so many times and it never works. Working out on the bike does, and as I mentioned above, the intake adjusts correctly when I do it.
I've found I lost more weight walking (long walks) than doing intense exercise. Cole (Snake Diet guy), had an interesting comment/hypothesis, when your exercise is intense you burn sugar (easily accessible). Your body senses that it needs a lot of energy (fight or flight scenario)and this leaves you craving to replace that energy that you burned (sugar).<p>When you do a low impact cardio exercise (walking below 4 MPH), your body doesn't want to burn that sugar you have, saving it for an emergency (flight/fight). It sees you have all this fat and determines that your energy burn rate can be sufficiently supplied by burning it. So it ends up using fat instead of sugar. Maybe burning through this fat (walking long walks) and not burning through your sugar reserve, remodels appetite hormones (Leptin).<p><i>Leptin is secreted mainly by white adipose tissue, and levels are positively correlated with the amount of body fat</i><p><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2829242/" rel="nofollow">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2829242/</a><p>The trick is keep it low impact, slow walking, for 2 or more hours a day. Combined with short 48 hour fasts and a 2500 Kcal re-feed day, it's a game changer.
Bad title. The study referenced is claiming that the compensatory rise in appetite that comes with exercise seems to be about 1000 calories per week. So only working out 1000 calories worth doesn't help, but working out more does.<p>Of course, the best way to lose weight is to clean up a bad diet. One unhealthy meal--or even a snack--can completely undo the calorie deficit of all but the most intense workouts.
Five hours a week is way more than most people who work and have a family can do. Even if you find the time, you might be quite tired and that also eats into your time budget.<p>Also, you might spend maybe 200cal lightly cycling during a zoom call. You will get that back in a few seconds of eating, if you choose something heavy like a chocolate bar. Your best bet then is to just control the incoming calories, because even an all-out workout of an hour will do you maybe 800cal if you're a bit bigger and stronger than me, and even if you did that you'd feel super tired for a long time after and maybe even decide to eat up that amount again.<p>In my case, it was all about calories. I've done this, and a friend did this as well: get one of those electronic scales that's got a couple of decimals on it, eg says 92.15kg. Then you can get used to understanding how much weight you lose while sleeping, how much you are carrying as pee and poo, and how much a meal tends to weigh. This will tell you how much you actually weigh, because you can take out the noise.<p>Have a look at an online calculator that tells you how much you should be eating for a given target. Find out the calories in everything you eat, and eat that budget.<p>I did this, and amazingly, the weight loss was just as expected. Thermodynamics seems to work.
A few years ago I decided I was sick of being overweight and decided to make a change. My approach was two-pronged: 1) eat better, 2) exercise.<p>For eating, I cut out as much sugar as I reasonably could. For exercise, I made sure I "moved vigorously" for 30 minutes per day, every day.<p>I was never a runner. And in my early shape, that 30 minutes was just me walking. Eventually, though, I stopped sweating and being out of breath, so I started walking more briskly. Then eventually I moved to a treadmill and started jogging for bits of it.<p>And then I could jog the whole time.
And then I could run while taking jog breaks.
About 7 months in, I was able to run 5 miles in about 35 minutes. I did it every day.<p>The point was that I went every day. It wasn't about how much I did, but that I was sweating and moving for 30 minutes. Lost 75 pounds in about 9 months.<p>I took the winter off last year and fell into sugar again, so I restarted this past summer. A 5k every day, as many days as I can. I have to run outside instead of at the gym, so weather controls a lot.<p>All of this is to say I agree, mostly. 30 minutes per day every day can fix a lot of problems. It did for me. :)
That's 50 minutes per day with a day off per week. Two pomodoros. E.g. cardio in the morning and resistance in the afternoon. That sounds like a lot to fit into a busy life, but a low price if it's all it takes to emulate the health of the hunter gatherers we evolved from.
if you wanna lose weight and love the idea of data:<p>- Start weighing yourself daily (once a day -- smart scale helps, but a notepad to track will work). You start here to build the habit.<p>Do this for a 3 weeks just to understand how much your weight will fluctuate +/-. On any given day I seem to fluctuate 2 lbs or so. You will be similar. if you only weigh yourself once a week you might get encouraged/discouraged while in one of these micro-cycles.<p>- Then after 3 weeks, calculate your macros -- and then understand what in your 'normal' diet is throwing your macros out of wack. If you eat labeled food, look at the labels. If you eat more whole foods, google around for some data. It sounds hard, but you'll build an intuition quick.<p>For my partner and I, we both needed MORE protein. We weren't getting enough. I ate MORE meat, and they added a pea protein smoothie (which sounds lame but they are really good.) My partner started to eat less nuts as well, because they were getting too much fats.<p>- Control for your macros with your normal diet.<p>- Eat whatever you want in your macros, balance yourself by watching the scale. if your macros are off, you will trend up for about 4 days in a row. Anything less in my experience is "expected". I can reverse 3 days of small weight gains (3-5 lbs) in about 1-2 days.<p>Once my partner mastered this, they eat 1 cookie and ice cream every night, guilt-free, to hit their sweet tooth, and we have combined lost close to 40lbs by doing this.<p>- You can work out to firm up, but depending on how much you wanna lose, diet alone could be enough.
The majority of weight is lost through respiration, that's the C in CO2. Exercise is great for health, and does help weight loss. But diet is the only thing that is going to resolve this. You consume far more calories in a regular sized Milkyway then you're going to burn exercising in 50 minutes that's for sure. Here's a chart of just those tiny "fun sized" Halloween candies. <a href="https://www.popsugar.com/fitness/What-Takes-Burn-Off-Halloween-Candy-32307957" rel="nofollow">https://www.popsugar.com/fitness/What-Takes-Burn-Off-Hallowe...</a>
I lost roughly 30kg since Corona started by changing my lifestyle to Keto and OMAD.<p>I have been exercising 3 days a week with a PT for 3 years before with no results on the weight (but many other great results like fixing my knee and back problems, getting really strong, etc.)
Admittedly I haven't read tons of scientific research on this topic, but whenever the topic of diet/exercise comes up, I often find the way the question is researched to be lacking.<p>The article mentioned the participants could exercise however they wanted and "many chose to walk". I don't understand why walking is considered exercise. I understand it burns more calories than sitting still, but it doesn't elevate your heart rate nor push your muscles to grow/develop in any real way, and it feels like trying to "cheat" your way into exercise.<p>Also, this bit was really interesting to me: "Those burning about 3,000 calories a week showed changes now in their bodies’ levels of leptin, an appetite hormone that can reduce appetite. These alterations suggested that exercise had increased the exercisers’ sensitivity to the hormone, enabling them to better regulate their desire to eat." I would bet that those who burned the most amount of calories weren't just walking farther than the others, but instead their choice of exercise was just more intense.<p>I've always heard that running isn't a great way to lose weight because it just makes you want to eat more, but that hasn't been my experience. After running somewhere between 3.5-5 miles, my appetite is gone for at least a few hours after the run. I have no desire to snack, and while I might eat slightly more at dinner, the overall calories for my day don't change too significantly.
2018 study <i>Energy compensation in response to aerobic exercise training in overweight adults</i> [1] and 2020 study <i>Incentive sensitization for exercise reinforcement to increase exercise behaviors</i> [2].<p>My key takeaway is that we consume up to 1000 kcal per week to compensate for exercise but not more and that the mechanism works through appetite hormones like leptin [3]. This is a good reference point but I suspect the results don't mesh with the studies on insulin sensitivity, high-intensity interval training, and oxidative stress. There is probably a more optimal workout strategy in terms of time and frequency to achieve the same health benefits but perhaps this is an optimal weight loss strategy.<p>[1] <a href="https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/ajpregu.00071.2018" rel="nofollow">https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/ajpregu.000...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1359105320914073" rel="nofollow">https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/135910532091407...</a><p>[3] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_(physiology)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_(physiology)</a>
Here's the paper that the article cites (1). It's a RCT thankfully.<p>(1) <a href="https://journals.lww.com/acsm-msse/Fulltext/2020/11000/Exercise_for_Weight_Loss__Further_Evaluating.22.aspx" rel="nofollow">https://journals.lww.com/acsm-msse/Fulltext/2020/11000/Exerc...</a>
A half hour a day while improving your diet (Pick one: cut booze, fast until afternoon, cut bread, cut soda) is a lot easier to maintain. I ride an exercise bike for a half hour a day while working from home.
Assuming fifty percent efficiency, that’s ten hours a week. Or basically a part time job without considering the time it can take to eat a healthier diet. And fifty percent efficiency is probably high considering clothes and showers and travel and equipment acquisition and maintenance and distribution of these throughout a week. Plus recovery time after working out.<p>Yes, it’s possible and people do it. But it’s got a whole host of dependencies that are ordinarily subject to breaking changes.
This pandemic I've been eating at most twice a day (light breakfast, skip lunch, then dinner). Sometimes I eat only once a day (dinner). I was surprised how quickly my body adjust and I don't feel as hungry anymore. I don't think humans need to eat three times a day.<p>I also only gain weight for 1kg after all these 8 months lockdown/not allowed to open (pre lock down I did karate about 3 times a week).
I found that the psychological impacts of only creating a deficit via diet are over long term not negligible, and this gets worse as you get leaner. At low body fat percents (low teens and below) you'll start to feel hungry all the time and it will impact moods/productivity. So I find myself forced to eat more but claw it back with exercise, which is great anyway because of all the other benefits of exercise. The degree to which you do this is the big question mark. In addition, the net achievable deficit while remaining happy as a function of exercise ratio is in my experience a U shape - if I exercise too much (e.g. a few ~2K cal hikes) I become ravenous, to the point that eating large amount of food barely makes me any less hungry, and almost always net out in the wrong direction. So this is a great kind of study, though my current happy setting all things considered is hovering around 150min/week.
Note that the article describes "walking moderately for 30 or 60 minutes". I'd be curious to see how high-impact exercise like running would make a difference.
This article doesn't mention routine at all, and the only focus is on weight loss. This is extremely short sighted as a novice sticking to a routine of increasingly heavy compound lifts 2-3 times a week (~120-180 minutes) can expect improvements in body composition and coordination that will be a much bigger improvement in overall physical ability than just losing some arbitrary amount of weight. Even if weight loss is the end goal, having a solid foundation will help immensely.
Semi-related life hack: as gyms are closed and I am a tad too heavy to run (screwed up knees from my youthful pursuits), I have decided to emulate the walk to work. I recently started to rent an external office (they come super cheap right now) and leave my work laptop there. It forces me to walk 2x25 minutes everyday. I need to do something after hours? Well, back to the office it is (although in this case I usually dash there on my supercool kick scooter).
Doesn’t matter how much you exercise if it’s not high and intense quality exercise.<p>But don’t exercise without seeking advice from a physician and/or completing a physical!
"To Lose Weight with Exercise, Aim for 300 Minutes a Week"<p>should be titled<p>"To Lose Weight with Exercise you're gonna need to workout more if you eat more too"