Yeah I was reading on that a while ago, how women have to eat 200 calories less than men their age JUST to maintain! IT SUCKS! I am still under 30 at, but it was depressing to see that it goes down so much. No wonder women put on weight later in life easier than men..cause our metabolisms SUCK and this society has such HIGH calorie foods. Being healthy is a ***** in today's world no doubt.

I've been exercising throughout. What I can do has increased ten fold, but getting fit was as important if not more important than dropping the weight.

And we will see if my metabolism ever picks back up. Over the holidays I was not exercising much at all and was eating about 2200 a day on average. I gained net about 5-6 pounds in that month off. (and that is not even counting the other 9 pounds of water weight I gained!). I'm still trying to get back down to my all time low which I hit mid-December. 2.8 pounds to go.

[QUOTE=lin43;4229780]I, too, hope this is true, freelance. But I have read evidence to the contrary. For instance, there's this story from NPR: http://www.npr.org/2012/01/03/144627...ork-against-us

I suppose we could trade links. Here are a couple that make the opposite argument: (I don't have time to look for the others I recently encountered as we're going out to dinner.)

http://articles.latimes.com/1990-08-...metabolic-rate
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2797708/

Until the jury is out, I'll stick with my hunch because it matches my own experience, fits with what I know about the laws of physics, and gives people hope! If pressed against a wall, I would have to say that deep down I believe that most people who regain weight after losing it have simply stopped moderating their eating.

Freelance

Many people can & do lose weight without a lot of planned extra exercise, but that doesn't mean exercise can't help ... and, it can come from many different sources: such as just an active job where you walk a lot or are very physical. If you have a "sitting" job, then maybe some planned exercise would help for sure, like walking.

You said that a monitor you were wearing, said that you had only used 1600 calories one day, but you had already eaten 1650 worth of food. Are you sure that machine is accurate? Please correct me if I am wrong (anyone), but I thought you needed on average 2000 calories a day just to maintain your body weight; and that was before any extra exercise.

As stated here by Vex ...

If you weigh 175 lbs, and are moderately active (175 x 12 = 2100 calories). A very active person (usually means an athlete) might use x 15. A sedentary person would multiply that by only x 10 = 175 x 10 = 1750 to maintain. Now I realize this is not an exact science, but a rough guesstimate. At my weight, I should be losing 2.4 lbs a week, but I'm not even close -- so, I can only think that the reason is that I am not burning off nearly enough energy; and/or I have a very slow metabolism. So much for science ...

The other possibility is that I am not eating enough, and my body is refusing to allow me to lose very quickly; that is possible, I guess. Yet, others may say that I should eat much less, or that I am not eating the right kind of foods (i.e. by eating less carbs).

So, I can certainly understand why you are perplexed, esp after reading how much exercise you are doing, although you do admit that you have the odd sedentary day. Still, I would expect that you should be losing something. As VEX mentioned above, maybe our metabolisms ARE screwed up from all this dieting (excuse me, eating less).

PS ~ your example around Christmas: you were eating 2200 and not exercising at all. If you should have only eaten 1750 calories to maintain, that may have been why you gained, but I am surprised by how much. 2200-1750 = 450 x 31 days= 13950 divided by 3500 = about a 4 lb gain. Well, I suppose that's close.

The only advice I can offer, is to just keep going and tweak your plan here and there; mix it up a bit. Vary your calories: cycle them. Plus vary your exercise each day (EOD) to change it up a bit, and see what happens. Keep track, so you can see what works and what doesn't.

My experience matches yours, though I don't have any gizmo that's tracking calories burned. But I can't get enough of a deficit to lose unless I exercise.

When they say 80% of it is eating habits, it's because it takes a lot of exercise to burn off something like a slice of cake or a bag of M&Ms.

In your case, yes, because of your insulin resistance, yes, your metabolism works differently than someone who is healthy, so for you, what you eat is really critical.

But if you're having ONE day where you have to be sedentary to take care of work, then that's not going to throw you off. But if you didn't exercise at all, you would probably be eating at 1200 calories to lose -- and either you would be hungry or you would have adapted to that amount of calories.

And that's something to take into account, which is your body is used to a specific amount of exercise because you have that habit -- even when you don't exercise, your body will want those calories anyway (and it probably wants the exercise too!). But it shouldn't hamper your weight loss to have one or two a month where you're eating maintenance and not exercising.

I'm in a similar boat. But I also recognize that exercise isn't just to give me extra calories to eat, but rather it helps balance the glucose in my blood, it relaxes me, it makes me stronger or improves my cardio fitness. It won't actually make me lose weight. I have to track and choose wisely if I want to lose (and I'm not losing weight now, just maintaining!).

I try, TRY to eat around 1400 calories a day, but in winter, it just isn't happening. The food I'm craving/drawn too is denser in calories, so I'm usually right around 1600-1650 a day.

On my sedentary days, I burn about 1750 it seems. But on active days I burn about 2400-2500. So, day to day if I'm inactive, I'm eating pretty darn close to maintenance. Summer I find it easier to drop calories to at or below 1400 and easier to be more active naturally. So maybe in those months I could actually lose by diet alone (not that I would) but for now, if I want to lose, it means I have to either starve (not happening as that would mean binging eventually) or exercising off to burn enough to lose weight.


Of course, if I was just eating as I used to eat, I would be eating way more than I am now and would be gaining weight over the winter months at this current weight. I am consciously eating lower calorie, but not low enough to lose weight by calorie counting alone.

For me, the 80% rule has helped me come to grips with where to put my effort. It takes more time and energy to eat well than it does to exercise well. I get frustrated when I think about it some times, how much time I spend in the kitchen, but when I work it out it's about 80-20. That is, of the time I spend devoted to my healthy lifestyle, 80% is in the planning-prepping-cooking-eating-clean up and 20% is in the workouts.

<<That is, of the time I spend devoted to my healthy lifestyle, 80% is in the planning-prepping-cooking-eating-clean up and 20% is in the workouts.>>

Wow, that's very different from my experience. It takes me almost no time at all to prepare my food, while I probably spend 10 hours a week on working out (door-to-door to and from the gym). In terms of sheer time, I'm probably 80/20 the other way.

Freelance

It is mostly about what goes in your body. As others have said, burning large amounts of calories is difficult. It is much easier to consume less than it is to burn unnecessary calories. I generally use the BMR calculation and base my caloric intake on that. For my body personally, that is the golden ticket. 1500 calories is maintenance level and anything under that allows me to lose. The loss rate is the same with or without working out. What working out does do is give me a sense of accomplishment and I can tell a difference in my strength and endurance. I'm a believer in the 80%/20% ratio because it works for me. Everyone's situation is different and the same thing doesn't work for everyone. It sucks there doesn't seem to be a definite system that works for everyone.

I too feel like I need to exercise to lose weight. I ate 1200 calories a day for 4 months, then upped it to 1400 from Nov to Dec, and now I'm up to 1600 because I was sick of being hungry. I know I could eventually lose weight at that intake without exercise (since it's slightly less than maintenance for me) but I'd like to lose a pound a week. I really enjoy exercising but I do worry that, if I let up even a little, my weight loss will stall. I'm pretty sure that's not true, but I'd rather be a compulsive exerciser than a compulsive eater.

As so many have said, the bigger benefit of exercise is that it makes me feel better. Every time I get up to use the bathroom at work, I run down to the first floor (I'm on the the 3rd floor) and then trot back up. It feels great to barely be winded!