Many of the responses tell you what you "should" do. But, if you want to enjoy this process, you might want to look inside yourself and find what you like and go from there. One step at a time. Any small change is helpful.
At the end of the day, your most important asset is your mind and emotions. How you feel is where you should start. Take care of your emotions, and you will inevitably take care of yourself. Remove punishment and reward as incentives and replace it with intrinsic motivation. TRUST your internal process. We are all designed by nature to have a drive toward health and wellness.
When you start liking yourself and caring about yourself, you might find that moving your body is a natural extension of that. For me, facing strong feelings while walking keeps me walking longer and harder. I look forward to walking because that's MY time. I can feel and be and know myself without any outside influences. I learn a lot this way. That's the biggest benefit, not just that I'm burning calories.
I'm talking about a lifelong change, not just a get thin quick scheme. Do it right, and you'll only ever have to do it once and for all.
When I lost my 50 lbs I did not exercise. Now, lets define that. I still was active. I have job that has me walking and moving around a lot. 9000 steps or so a day. But for the "exercise" part.. (going to the gym or something) I chose not to do it. I have long felt that it isn't: diet & exercise -- it is diet, motivation, and exercise. With motivation being more important that exercise. If you feel that exercise is something you dislike and will cut down on your motivation.. I wouldn't do it. If you feel exercise is distracting you... making you be careless with calories or hungry so you eat more... I wouldn't do it.
However, when I got close enough to goal that I felt I was ok doing it.. I did it. I started with weight training. This added a whole new aspect / motivation burst as it was something new and different.
Personally, I think it is too much to take on diet and exercise right from the start. It always overwhelms me and saps my motivation.
So I think the answer is no.. you don't have to exercise.
Well, here's the thing. I have gone down 62 lbs since April, but MOST of that was from doing physical activity. I eat way less than my BMR of almost 3000 calories. I've tried bumping how much I do consume up, but it's not working. I'm pretty much stuck. My husband is totally convinced I need to start moving again because my body got used to what I was doing. I have cut enough calories to be losing weight. I think my body is carb resistant. Who knows. I lost so much weight already from pure system shock but I've always been convinced that I'm one of those people who just needs a lot of extra help. I thank everyone for their input. I'm going to try to at least go back to the gym 3x a week for an undetermined amount of time. I'm also going to start watching a little more what I shove in my mouth, but I can guarantee I hardly even ever come close to 2000 calories.
I think exercise is a "whole different ballpark" for us in the higher weight classes or those of us with additional disabilities mainly because we don't acknowledge that it is.
We think of exercise as "working out" in a way that only much fitter people can - walking unassisted for 30 minuted or more - following and completing an exercise class or video tape.
And when we can't keep up or hate every second of it, , we think we "can't exercise" because we don't consider what we can and like to do exercise.
I agree that finding a movement you want to do, and enjoy doing is extremely important. I chose water exercise (as soon as I was able) because I've always loved the water. It's the one place where fat works for us rather than against us.
If you're not ready to add movement, focus on what you are ready to change, but don't be held back wanting to move, but thinking that you can't. Every time you sit instead of lie, stand instead of sit, and walk instead of stand, you are burning more calories than making the more sedentary choice. You don't have to "exercise" in a way that most people would recognize as exercise. Even tapping your foot and swaying to music in your chair or putting dishes away in a high cabinet is exercise if it replaces something less energetic.
One of the best side effects of exercise is seeing progress. It's hard to see weight loss in the mirror, because every day you see pretty much the same as yesterday. The changes don't register, because even on the fastest diet, today's body still looks like yesterday's and we don't "keep" last month's mirror in our heads, at least not easily.
But with exercise, progress can often be easier to see, especially if we look for and celebrate small progresses along the way, especially if we document it all.
In the past, I often gave up when weight loss slowed, because I forgot or didn't think about what I would ne giving up by quitting.
I don't want to go back to sleeping in a modified bed - alone, because hubby can't sleep on the incline or with the noise I and a machine to keep me breathing makes...
Even small things, like tying my own shoes (in the center, not on the sides) are small treasures I don't want to give up.
Small changes can do every bit as much as big ones, they just take longer. Do what you enjoy and find easy-but-not-too easy.
I like what you said, Kaplods, about keeping "last month's mirror" in our head. You're right. This is why people we see every day - or even every week at Church or the grocery store - don't notice our weight loss until it's bigger. Our eyes work the same way. And I realize now - 2 years after the fact - that while I was losing weight I realized I was smaller than photos from Christmas of 2010, but I didn't think I looked that big in the photos taken just a couple weeks before I started to lose weight. I had that attitude even after I'd lost 90 pounds and stopped losing. At first. But NOW when I look at the photos from 2010, my brain sees me as having been fat. There's no other word for it. I think it takes time for us to see (realize?) the truth of the situation and adjust to the current reality.
This is off-topic - sorry. Your comment about the mirror led me off a bit. I do think, however, that it's important to realize this. How we look NOW seems normal to us and as a defense mechanism, perhaps, it takes a while for reality to sink in.
Wheezypi, I had a DEXA scan done early in the spring, then again four months later. I really wanted to get it done to see what my LBM (lean body mass) was, and then I could figure out my BMR and how much to eat. At 155 lbs. of LBM, I can eat 2092 calories to maintain that. To burn fat and maintain my lean body mass, I lift weights and do about 20 minutes of cardio three times a week, plus Pilates three times a week. In those four months, I put on three pounds of muscle and two pounds of bone.
I only lost half a pound of fat during those four months. At that caloric level, I don't seem to burn fat unless I'm keeping my total carb intake under 100 gms. and completely devoid of grains, tubers, legumes, sugar and fruit. There are days when I choose to eat that stuff, and I'll gain some weight back. I'm starting an eight week block where all that stuff is being cut from my diet. I'll eat lots of non-starchy vegetables, proteins and healthy fats. I'm eliminating alcohol too. I'm actually increasing my workouts, because I want to add more muscle. If I'm on target with my efforts, I should lose a good bit of fat.
But I won't ever stop exercising, because when we cut calories and don't exercise, the weight we lose is both fat and muscle. And that makes our metabolic rate go down, and then we just need to cut more and more calories to lose weight. That is a vicious cycle!
