Hummus is a good way to eat beans. It is made mostly from chickpeas. I love drizzling olive oil over it then dipping whole wheat pita bread slices in it. YUM!

Without exercise, weightloss is a job half done.

I exercise a lot.

And what you eat affects your desire to exercise. Dramatically imo. Get your nutrition right and your energy levels will be right up there.

If you just diet, you lose weight by losing fat and muscle. In other words, you waste away.

Luckily, perhaps, some women are happy with that look as society generally favors/tolerates slim/stick insect. But for a guy, skinny fat guy is a no-no which is what we are left with if we just diet.

So lose the weight with diet. And build/preserve muscle and general physical fitness with exercise.

Diet and weightloss are the easy bit. And just half the job.

You have to break yourself down but then build yourself up again. imo of course.

Lose weight by eating less (and doing cardio). And build by changing what you eat (clean, real foods, a lot of it) and working out (lifting weights).

Exercise can help with weight loss, yes, but MORE importantly, exercise improves HEALTH.

It sounds like you have some other underlying health issues that you need to get worked out. Hopefully the lack of energy and lack of weight loss is related to adjusting to your new medication, and I feel like making too many changes to your diet until you know for sure would be counterproductive.

You don't need to stress out about adding an intense exercise routine to lose the weight. However, it wouldn't hurt your weight loss goals (and it would certainly help your overall health) to add some exercise. It sounds like you aren't very active at all right now, so keep it shorts and easy. A walk a few times a week. Then build up as you get more comfortable and get more energy. Find something you ENJOY so it doesn't feel like work! Then you'll be more likely to stick to it for life.

Are you tracking your calories? Like REALLY tracking them? Weighing them? That is first.

Second, how is your edema? Do you get really swollen and it varies from day to day? That is two.

Three, what are your thyroid levels - don't just go by "they are normal". That may not be good enough. You might find that your are super sensitive to weight gains/losses depending on precise numbers. if you aren't seeing an endocrinologist, you should (they are much more likely to tweak meds).

But is exercise key? It helps, but you can and should be able to lose weight with diet alone. You can just lose faster or easier with adding in exercise (and it's just plain good for you any way).

Not trying to derail but society is very tolerant with men's bodies. I've never in my life overheard 2 dudes or 2 women ripping on men for having love handles or being skinny fat. Never. When we have love handles it's practically a felony.

I think MEN think women like/want muscles. In actuality, women are less visual creatures than men (a generalization) and really don't care that much. For example, this recent study (as just highlighted on NPR by this study):

http://hellogiggles.com/perfect-man-study/



EDITING TO ADD - my husband basically looks like man "B" except he's balding and he has the outline shape of Man A - just take away the muscles (basically skinny down the frame of man B). To me he looks PERFECT... and I've never seen a six pack on him or any "big" muscles. And he's as healthy as can be.

Came here to say THIS... almost everyone I know that struggles with weight loss is dramatically over-estimating how much they burn. I have friends at work that eat a donut and a coke for breakfast and then take a walk around the block to "burn it off" and can't figure out why they didn't lose weight. Well, it's because your walk around the block didn't even burn off the frosting on your donut.

When you are first starting out especially, nutrition is FAR more important than exercise, but they go together so nicely.

I, for one, am a believer in science. If you are consistently gaining or not losing, you are eating too much. Period.

I really don't want to minimize the effort one makes to exercise, but what health experts think that "walking around the block" will help people lose weight?

And if a large majority actually ran a 5K every single day, would we still have the same obesity problem? Yeah, we all may still be a little overweight, but how many truly obese people run that much?

I don't disagree that food intake is a bigger part of weight loss and maintenance. But my weight maintenance has been successful because of exercise regime. It keeps me mentally saner and it encourages me to eat more healtfully.

Agreed. Most women aren't looking for a hardbody. We aren't salivating over bodybuilders.

Very few women care anything at all about all that.

Personally, I'd much prefer the B body. The A guy has a torso that looks like he's spent many hours trying to make the muscles poke through. It kind of reeks of vanity and/or insecurity and makes me wonder about whether or not he has Muscle Dysmorphia.

A woman who doesn't want you unless you spend a trillion hours working on your torso is a woman you don't want!! Promise.

...yeah, but Guy A would do...in a rush...

A man who has a nice body reeks of vanity? That's a bit harsh. I've dated my share of hard bodied men (I used to date a Calvin Klein underwear model) and none of them were ever vain, just joyfully active. Not all beautiful people are stuck up.

For my goal, exercise was and still is very important to me.

Not only because I want to want to have good health with good physical fitness, I wanted a fit and toned body. Something I've never had. Also though I watch what I eat so that is very important as well.

I don't do anything extreme on the diet or exercise side, but I am quite active because I enjoy it. I mainly speed walk at least 5K daily (exercise miles, including not random walking steps) and lift weights 4 days a week. Also I eat a balanced diet (no macros too high or too low) and I IF.

This regimen has helped me reach my goal and has made maintaining pretty easy for me so yes, 2 thumbs up for exercise!

Exercise does not have to be intense or painful to see results, but consistency is important.

At the same time I feel you should do things you enjoy and that you can maintain. I've seen people do intense workouts during the weight loss stage, then they cut back during maintenance and eventually start to put on weight.

Good luck OP.

If I watch my food and don't exercise I gain weight, if I exercise and stop watching what goes in my mouth I gain weight.

The only way I've found to lose is to do both, but that is just me. My exercise challenge to myself this year is 30,000 minutes of exercise, so far I have 12000 minutes but, I have been bad about the food- no weight loss and I've been yo yoing the same 10 pounds for months- I spose it could have been worse though.

I think exercise is great for fitness but for me it all came down to food. I knew right off the bat I wasn't going to work out for hours a day. When I first started I could only walk for a few minutes.

To join the kidney bean discussion, I love them! I've never noticed a bad smell coming from the can though. They just smell beanie to me!

From personal experience, constant exercise is a huge part of losing weight and keeping it off.