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this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2023
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Asklemmy
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Losing weight is actually more about eating at a calorie deficit rather than what exercise you choose. Exercise is still very important in overall health though and can certainly help lose weight, but the actual mechanism is a calorie deficit.
But to more answer your question, chose something you enjoy so that you actually have motivation to stick with it. If you like cardio, do cardio, if you like weight lifting do that, if you like calisthenics do that.
And the last thing, be patient with it and yourself but be consistent in both exercise and eating well. As long as you are consistent you will see results.
Good luck!
You can still run a deficit even if you eat 10000 calories a day
I mean, maybe you exaggerate to make a point but there are practical limits to what you can exercise your way out of. I set a challenge to myself to jog a half marathon every day for a year. From January 2022 through January 2023 I jogged 22km a day seven days a week for 367 days. I also did light weights and exercises for my upper body. I burned around 4000/day, as best as I can track with my Garmin watch. Which throw in a couple of milkshakes and you can blow through 5k calories in a day.
I will say, I did struggle to keep my weight up with such a regimen and a fairly healthy diet and dropped to 150lbs at my lowest (6'2"tall). But if I wanted to eat more calories I could easily get there with fried food and ice cream.
Edit: and for most people this is completely infeasible. Most people don't have the time flexibility to wake up at 4 am every day and put on those kinds of miles.
I give myself a decent cushion to eat garbage by cycling 90 minutes a day. Raising your resting heart rate will also passively help you lose weight.
Exercise lowers your resting heart rate
You exaggerate, but there are some limits to how much energy the body can use in a day.
https://www.news18.com/news/buzz/cant-burn-more-than-4000-calories-a-day-says-new-study-on-limits-of-human-endurance-2182029.html
That's really interesting given what I mentioned in my other comment about plateauing at 4k calories/day when I was on a running challenge. Once I tracked about 4k calories burned, my energy level would just plummet.
You pretty much can't. You'd need to run for 6-8 hours per day to burn 8000 calories. For most people who are not professional athletes, that's impossible between work and sleep. To get much beyond 1000 cal/hr output, you need to get into the anaerobic region, which will exhaust you long before you can burn 8000 calories.
Exactly!
"You can't out run a bad diet".
Exercise helps, but once you do the math and see how many calories hard exercise consumes vs how easy it is to eat more calories, it becomes very clear.
Exactly. Its "I could eat this chocolate bar, and do an hour of cardio later in the gym" or to achieve the same outcome: "I could just not eat the chocolate bar".
In my terrible diet I eat the chocolate bar and then cut out something like breakfast...
Hahaha
Hour of cardio? Maybe 2!😲
Also remember that you can't lose weight in a specific part of your body. As you lose weight, your body chooses where the fat is reduced. No exercise can target fat in a specific area. Anyone telling you otherwise is selling you something.
Should note that working on the underlying muscle might help certain areas look less fat but that effect is negligible compared to finding a regimen that works for you in the long run to keep your calorie intake less than your calorie burn rate .
I also wanted to lose a bit of weight and get stronger, but to me, going to the gym sucks. I never stick with that, but I really enjoy physical activities with a purpose. So I joined a rock climbing gym. It's all the physical working out that I want with all the fun that I need to stick with it. Now if I could just eat better...
My favorite weight loss exercise is existing but being very cold. Not even joking. That’s the whole thing.
If you want to balance calories with low effort, expose yourself to whatever temperature you shiver at (cold water is great for this because you lose heat 25x faster when wet). You burn an absolute ton of calories for heat, and recruit beige fat cells to function as brown fat cells which exist only to burn through fat to maintain homeostasis. The more you shiver, the more effective you are at ambient calorie burn when you don’t shiver.
https://www.medicaldaily.com/shivering-more-effective-exercise-15-minutes-shivering-may-burn-more-fat-1-hour-working-out-268555
Cardio is wonderful for upping your overall metabolism, as is building any muscle. They also both work to strengthen your overall system. Do those things. They are good for you.
But for pure calorie balancing and deficits, cold wins hands down as far as effort involved. Because it’s just sitting there being uncomfortable, and that’s easy, some of us are that way always :)
while i'm sure this does work well, i'd maybe tone down the miraculousity of your message a bit. Don't want to overhype people and have them hurt themselves or simply not see such a big effect and conclude it's a sham.
I don’t think I oversold it at all, it’s just a calorie balancer, it’s not going to do anything else, and it won’t fix a bad diet..
But it does work; it’s just a standard biological mechanism. If you shiver, you burn a ton of energy to do so, it comes from fat. This is true in any species with the shiver capacity, that’s what it’s for.
Bigger people need more shiver time and lower temps, which makes it harder to see the result, but it still works.
The reason it's hard to build muscle, is muscles are incredibly inefficient and a huge calorie sink.
If you're heavily muscled, you're using more calories even if you're not working out. Just reaching out to grab something takes more energy.
So building muscle means you have a higher caloric baseline.
And that's not even getting into calorie density. 150 calories worth of beans will keep you feeling full for a long time, and a 12 ounce can of soda won't make anyone feel full because it's all liquid already.
Then there's physically eating slower and chewing more, because we evolved to not feel full if we're still eating.
Reducing it just down to "eat less calories than you use" is technically correct, but it's the details that help people.
Of course, yes, good point. You can lose weight by doing nothing as long as you are in a calorie deficit.
It is also essential to enjoy what you're doing or it's impossible to stick with.
Okay, so I’ve never been one who wants to lose weight. I’ve always wanted to gain. If I interpret what you’re saying, I’m just not eating enough?
Unless there's an illness at play, then yes, you're just not eating enough
Monitor your calories. Sometimes we're off when only estimating. Make sure not to skip meals. And maybe you like some nuts and other additional stuff. And probably also work out and add some more weight in muscles.
The internet contains instructions for people who like to gain weight. It's not so easy to change your body weight. But it's possible.
If in doubt, ask your doctor. You can be born with this and it's perfectly normal for you. There can also be something wrong with the thyroid. Or a tumor. Other less severe conditions. But most likely this is just how you are. Especially if you're young.