Eh, I was a lackadaisical exerciser when losing weight and I don't exercise at all to maintain my weight loss. However, I have very little problem sticking to a healthy diet.

Sometimes I feel all guilty about my cardiovascular health/muscle density and think I should do something, but not to manage my weight.

Exercise does not make me eat more. PEriod. I don't allow it too.

I think what it is referring to is what I've heard very often and feel to be true - that weight loss is 80% food/20% exercise. Of course those numbers are not written in stone, they will vary from person to person and there is no way to know for sure the exact percentages.

I think it's just another way of saying that you can exercise from today till tomorrow, but if you don't keep your food FIRMLY in check you WILL NOT LOSE WEIGHT. I think it's another way of saying that you can not "exercise" yourself slim.

It reminds me of the many posts that we see here at 3FC, "why am I not losing weight?" - I go to the gym 5 days a week or I do cardio 45 minutes a day or I work out like crazy - but I still can't lose weight. We get those often and there is no mention of the FOOD. IMO, the bottom line is, steady consistent weight loss can not occur without being mindful of ones food intake.

Once again, I think it depends on who you are. For me, exercise can and will lead to me wanting and believing I can have more food. Instead of focusing on exercise, and then food as an after-thought, like a lot of fitness junkies, I work the other way. I still exercise, but it's not my main focus. I look at it as being for my overall physical and mental health, not as a means to lose weight.

I think the truth may be some where in between. There are definitely a lot of people who have become convinced that a massive amount of exercise is the only way to be healthy. And there are definitely a lot of people who forget to look at the bigger picture, and eat fries after their workout. If I remember correctly, their point was not to stop exercising, but that we need to stop making it the sole focus, so that the common person (not obsessed with weight loss like us) won't make the mistakes we know better than to fall for.

I read this stupid article a while ago. People like controversy. Exercise has the opposite effect on me actually. When I work out, I dont feel like eating crap so sometimes I will skip a planned snack or get over a craving fast because I dont feel hungry. I feel refreshed, energetic and fantastic!

But it's not the ACTUAL exercise itself.

Am I the only one who can't even stand the thought of food after a workout? My eyes may say yes, but my stomach invariably says, "Don't even THINK about it." Unless I've done something really light like a short walk, it makes me nauseous to eat after exercise.

Another important point is that beginner-level exercise is especially useless, in terms of immediate exercise. When I first started working out, I doubt I was burning 100 calories a day from it. I was terribly out of shape. But as a long term investment, it's invaluable, because now I am in good enough shape that I estimate I burn 500ish calories a day from exercise. 500 calories is HUGE. Eating 500 calories a day more is an order of magnitude difference in terms of quality of life.

People will be like "So you burn 300 calories on the treadmill. Pah. You can put that back on with 3 cookies" and I am like "Yeah, or it's 200 grams of chicken." That's a lot of food. It does make a difference.

Actually, when you are really out of shape, you burn more calories doing less intense things. Calories burned is pretty closely linked to heart rate...if you're out of shape, walking or other low-intensity activity can get your heartrate up higher than even intense exercise in a very fit person. Which means exercise is PARTICULARLY helpful for those just starting out.

I so do not agree with that article, for me personally knowing that I am busting my *** in the elliptical machine reminds me to eat healthy to really see results.

There is no way that the five minutes of sustained exercise I could do when I started was anything like as effective as the 60 minutes I can do now. Yes, minute by minute it certainly burned more energy, but total duration is really important. Certainly the early benefits for my cardiovascular system were tremendous, but I continue to hold that exercise is a long-term investment.

How very interesting.

I've changed my thinking about exercise completely. I do not exercise to lose weight anymore. I exercise to keep my blood pressure under control and my endurance up. Those two things are far more important to me than being thin. I feel pretty good in this fat body now, whereas I did not before I was exercising.

I lost 30 lbs in two months without exercise and then slowed way down once I added it. The fact is, exercise makes us retain water for muscle repair. Yes, exercise often makes me gain weight, but it's never fat.

I'm on a strict calorie counting diet. I can't just eat more because I'm hungrier when I exercise. I eat every two and half hours the same calories regardless.

Exercise is a major part of my plan. Yes there are days I want to stop because I want to return to more rapid losses, but I wouldn't trade the way I feel now for anything.

Me too. Exercise does not seem to make me hungrier, unless it's HIIT. Today's a good example. I did HIIT this morning and I'm hungry an hour before my snack. What I do on HIIT days is eat less...more often. So my typical snack is an apple and yogurt. Today I ate the apple an hour prior to my snack and I'll eat the yogurt at my scheduled snack time. Same food, but I'm using it to curb the hunger differently.

But straight cardio and weight lifting do not increase my hunger.

Why would STOPPING to exercise increase your speed of weight loss?

I would bet a lot of money that your adding in exercise and the slowing down of your weight loss are TOTALLY unrelated. Just coincidental.

Oh, quite possibly it is coincidental. But there's that nagging voice in my head telling me things were so much faster before. "Faster", but not better. So it doesn't matter. ;)

Well things WERE faster before - that you are certain of, right? Not that faster ISN'T better. But it is what it is. You can only do what you can do - eat well and exercise - yes exercise - because that is SO not the reason for you "slowdown".

A year from now (or however long it takes) it won't matter how fast or how slow your weight came off. An extra few months is nothing much in the scheme of things. Keep at it! Keep at it! Keep at it! It WILL come off. :)