I started my journey with exercise alone. At that time I wasn't ready to change my eating habits and I really just wanted to focus on my fitness levels initially. Eventually I did making small changes to my diet but it was never all at once and I did it gradually because it was much easier on me.
I think the best thing to do is make changes that you CAN stick to. I've never been successful with calorie counting because it actually made me hungrier (because I kept thinking about food). It was easier for me to give up certain foods or introduce new ones and pay attention to my hunger cues then calorie count.
In the end you have to do what works for you. If you CAN workout now do it! Make that habit and then start worrying about the rest.
I've known soooo many people who gained fat when they started working out. Why? Because they overestimated how much they were burning and ate MORE to compensate. So no, I don't believe many people can out-exercise poor eating to lose weight. It really depends. One has to diligently monitor food intake in order to lose. In fact, you can gain if you are hungrier due to exercise and eat back more than what you burned. You can't escape the change in diet in order to lose weight. I wish that weren't the case either :-(
Last edited by christine123; 09-20-2011 at 05:48 PM.
Originally Posted by lin43;4040526 Also, I don't think people differentiate between the number of calories burned doing an activity and the number of [B
net[/B] calories burned. I never did, but now I do. For example, today I walked on the treadmill at 3.0 for two hours (I have a tread desk and was working at the time). According to my smartphone app, I burned 440 calories. However, that doesn't mean that I can add that 440 calories onto my daily calorie count. I first must subtract what I would have burned if I had just been sitting around those two hours---approx. 135 calories. So, that means, I netted a calorie burn of 305 calories.
I can't imagine losing weight without exercise.. People say it's 80% diet and 20% exercise but I have to disagree in my case it's more the opposite.. Maybe it's also the psychological effect of exercise but without it I keep losing and gaining the same few pounds..
When I started losing my weight I didn't follow any diet plan. Any time I would previously I would 1 either be starving or 2 when I would stop the diet gain more. So all that I do it just watch what I eat, if I eat carbs or grains its whole grain. I eat more chicken, less salty less sweets. I eat more healthy snacks and more frequently. I love apples and the Jumbo Fugi apples the perfect size for a snack.
I still don't diet just keep watching what I eat and workout now. I never worked out before and when I workout for days in a row i do feel more energized and my joints hurt a ton less.
I love exercise but struggle with my intake--I'm losing very very slowly.
But check out this article on the results of a 16 month study in which overweight men and women were prescribed a fairly intensive steady-state cardio regimen without any change in diet. The participants burned 2000 calories per week at the gym and their weight, after the 16 months stayed basically the same.
The author of the article prefers interval training and weight lifting for fat loss, fwiw, (which is what I prefer too, luckily!) but the article is interesting nonetheless.
few months ago I managed to lose some weight over a period of several months by "just exercising"... But that's a bit of a lie!
For some reason, running instead of making me hungry would make me lose appetite, and I ended up not having dinner about 3 times a week...
I'd come home around 22:30, drink some water and go for a 30 to 60 minute run (depended on the day) and then doing crunches and lunges, weights, etc. I did this for about 5 weeks and lost about 4 pounds without doing much besides the exercise and missing a few meals.
It's a question of calorie deficit... And now I know how much certain foods contain, I can't really contemplate eating them like I used to. I used to order pizza and that would be a 2000 calorie dinner. And that was JUST dinner...
I'm not really dieting, just not really eating. I've already lost about 10 pounds just from being busy and not being able to eat, cutting out soda almost completely, and chasing around my kids. But now it's time for the exercise! Hopefully all of this combined will help me shed these pounds!
