Everyone seems interested only in weight loss. But the scale is just a poor proxy for what people actually care about ( looks, health or physical aptitude ). Your bodyweight remaining the same while gaining muscle should also be a huge win since that's building muscle, bone density and losing fat.
Do people actually just want to lose weight momentarily through diet? Instead of keeping it off long term, which is way easier achievable through diet + exercise?
Also no mention of body composition, bone density and cardiovascular health, which should be the actual metrics, instead of the proxy used for them.
I'm interested in weight loss because my BMI is over 30 which is considered obese regardless of whether it's muscle or not. I should not have a third of this weight. A couple years ago, I bought an electric scooter and it could not carry me because of the weight, so I ended up having to return it. Nowdays I have one that costs four times more and can carry me, but I still weigh much more than I should!
You can run a marathon a month or not drink a coke a day or eat one less slice of bread. Exercise is important for your health but it’s not how one loses weight.
This ignores metabolism. If you are in a state of high caloric excess (i.e. you eat more than you need every day, like most modern humans) and then you reduce your calories a bit, you'll see some initial minor weight lots, but then your metabolism will simply compensate.
To see real weight loss over a period of months you need to push past the point of metabolic adaption and stay there. Dropping a slice of bread won't cut it. That's why weight loss is so hard.
That's why exercise is useful for weight loss even though it won't do much by itself. You'll need to use every tool at your disposal to burn those excess calories.
Exercise burns extra calories, just not as much as one would expect based on simple calcs.
At least this time the article is mostly okay, last article I saw here a while back was basically saying exercise doesn’t burn extra calories despite his works actually showing levels of activity influencing ~1,000 calorie difference in energy expenditure. Although speaking from experience, good luck trying to maintain high activity levels if one underfuels.
This is just my own observations, but I find that when cutting calories I need to really optimize the rest of my life to avoid crashing in energy. Sleeping well, no alcohol, plenty of caffeine, lots of water and electrolytes, and time my carb intake. Doing a simple deficient will usually either not work, or lead to my energy completely crashing.
By how much are you cutting calories? At first glance it seems somewhat excessive if it affects your life so much. Also do you live in a very hot area or do a lot of cardio? Otherwise thinking about electrolytes is way too overrated
It sucks that losing weight is just impossible unless you change every habit you have instantly and totally and sustain that for the rest of your life. Otherwise your body will balance out anything you ever try to do in a way that makes it totally ineffective.
One could just start slowly with something like learning to make delicious food that's not as calorie dense or going for an activity like rock climbing or basketball with friends once a week instead of going to a restaurant.
Yes, you have to sustain them for long periods of time, but that doesn't mean they can't be fun.
There's so much friction just getting to the point of even trying any one of those things that it just feels unattainable. Because you have to make it your whole life if you want to have any hope.
TLDR - your body compensates by using less energy in all other activities if you do aerobic exercise, more so if you cut back on calories in. This appears not to happen with weightlifting. They directly measured energy burned with doubly labeled water.
Everyone seems interested only in weight loss. But the scale is just a poor proxy for what people actually care about ( looks, health or physical aptitude ). Your bodyweight remaining the same while gaining muscle should also be a huge win since that's building muscle, bone density and losing fat.
Do people actually just want to lose weight momentarily through diet? Instead of keeping it off long term, which is way easier achievable through diet + exercise?
Also no mention of body composition, bone density and cardiovascular health, which should be the actual metrics, instead of the proxy used for them.
I'm interested in weight loss because my BMI is over 30 which is considered obese regardless of whether it's muscle or not. I should not have a third of this weight. A couple years ago, I bought an electric scooter and it could not carry me because of the weight, so I ended up having to return it. Nowdays I have one that costs four times more and can carry me, but I still weigh much more than I should!
You can run a marathon a month or not drink a coke a day or eat one less slice of bread. Exercise is important for your health but it’s not how one loses weight.
This ignores metabolism. If you are in a state of high caloric excess (i.e. you eat more than you need every day, like most modern humans) and then you reduce your calories a bit, you'll see some initial minor weight lots, but then your metabolism will simply compensate.
To see real weight loss over a period of months you need to push past the point of metabolic adaption and stay there. Dropping a slice of bread won't cut it. That's why weight loss is so hard.
That's why exercise is useful for weight loss even though it won't do much by itself. You'll need to use every tool at your disposal to burn those excess calories.
Egh pontzer and his misinterpreted studies again.
Exercise burns extra calories, just not as much as one would expect based on simple calcs.
At least this time the article is mostly okay, last article I saw here a while back was basically saying exercise doesn’t burn extra calories despite his works actually showing levels of activity influencing ~1,000 calorie difference in energy expenditure. Although speaking from experience, good luck trying to maintain high activity levels if one underfuels.
No mention of cardiovascular health?
This is just my own observations, but I find that when cutting calories I need to really optimize the rest of my life to avoid crashing in energy. Sleeping well, no alcohol, plenty of caffeine, lots of water and electrolytes, and time my carb intake. Doing a simple deficient will usually either not work, or lead to my energy completely crashing.
By how much are you cutting calories? At first glance it seems somewhat excessive if it affects your life so much. Also do you live in a very hot area or do a lot of cardio? Otherwise thinking about electrolytes is way too overrated
It sucks that losing weight is just impossible unless you change every habit you have instantly and totally and sustain that for the rest of your life. Otherwise your body will balance out anything you ever try to do in a way that makes it totally ineffective.
One could just start slowly with something like learning to make delicious food that's not as calorie dense or going for an activity like rock climbing or basketball with friends once a week instead of going to a restaurant.
Yes, you have to sustain them for long periods of time, but that doesn't mean they can't be fun.
There's so much friction just getting to the point of even trying any one of those things that it just feels unattainable. Because you have to make it your whole life if you want to have any hope.
TLDR - your body compensates by using less energy in all other activities if you do aerobic exercise, more so if you cut back on calories in. This appears not to happen with weightlifting. They directly measured energy burned with doubly labeled water.
Is it more difficult to lose than to gain?