“You think people need more cardio, while others think people need more weight training. If you can’t even agree on what kind of basic exercise is best for weight loss, why should anyone believe you when you say exercise is even necessary?”
> Have you *never* read any diet blog online and seen how *much* disagreement there is over what diet works and what does not? There is FAR more disagreement between the “low carb” and “low fat” camps than there could *ever* be over cardio vs strength. There are many who don’t even think that calories matter, but rather carbs or whether the food is processed or not. By the same token, we can’t say which diets work if the “Paleo” does not agree with “Vegan.” Most people agree that cardio is better for fat loss, while resistance is better for muscle gain. There are literally diets “wars” but there are no “wars” within the exercise camp.

Nonetheless, exercise is still not efficient, for reasons I’ve already pointed out.

>> However, when you keep it up for a couple to a
>> few weeks, you will gradually lose weight, and at
>> one point you will even just drop about ten pounds
>> within a week. Then, your body will start becoming
>> healthier.

If you keep dieting, you’ll also lose weight.

> when you keep dieting without exercise, you have to keep lowering the number of calories you ingest, because dieting slows metabolism. A rigorous exercise program slowly increases the amount one can eat and not gain weight. I have slowly been able to increase the number of calories that I can eat and not regain weight. That is why I also count calories- I want to be careful in increasing them. At least 95% of the people who take the just dieting approach regain their weight because their metabolism has been slowed down by the dieting and therefore they regain weight very easily. Over 90% of the persons in the National Weight Loss Registry who have successfully kept off their weight made exercise a priority from the start of their weight loss process and they also continue exercising throughout their maintenance period.

>> Encouraging people to just eat less is incredibly
>> dumb. People should be encouraged to eat right and
>> excercise. Then the body will take care of itself.

Telling people to eat less is exactly what people need, because people are eating too much.
>That depends. I was not eating that much before I lost my weight. Actually, people CAN lose weight without eating less and exercising more. The trick is just not to eat more because one exercises. My metabolism had slowed down and therefore just eating less would make my metabolism slow down even more. People who gain weight very easily are not at all helped by the approach you suggest. A person with a slow metabolism should be more encouraged to exercise more, not eat less, but certainly more sensibly. Studies DO show that intense exercise that really raises the heartrate does increase calorie burn after the exercise is performed. Men burn more calories than women because men have more muscle mass. Younger people have more muscle mass than older persons, therefore they can eat more. Therefore, increasing one’s muscle mass DOES raise one’s metabolic rate.

I think it’s also worth pointing out that in our nursing home facilities, all residents are given a physician ordered “diet” upon admission. The order can also change when a resident’s nutritional needs change. The diet ordered for residents who need to lose weight are exclusively calorie reduction diets. No physician has ever ordered a fad diet for a resident, such as a cabbage soup diet or carrot stick diet. The reasons for this are those type of diets have proven to be unhealthy and do not work.

A well-balanced diet that incorporates sufficient quantities of proteins, carbohydrates, vegetables, fruits, and vitamins and minerals are by far the most common diets ordered by our physicians. Even for morbidly obese residents. The only time a physician will write an order for a diet that excludes one of the aforementioned items is when the consumption of said item is devastating to a resident’s health and would do more harm than good. These are rare occasions. Even our residents who suffer from diabetic conditions are not prohibited from consuming limited levels of carbohydrates/sugars.

I also cut corners on food. If I want bacon or burgers, I eat turkey bacon or burgers. If I want dairy, I get 2% milk and cheese. If I want chocolate, I get the darkest chocolate. If I want bread, I get whole wheat. You see where I’m going with this?

Also, lean proteins and an electric grill can be your best friend. Sure, it dries out your food, but you can compensate with an array of spices and low-fat sauces such as vinegar.

My point is that you can consume less calories without starving yourself.

And to the person who thinks exercise is necessary to lose weight, yes, if you sit on the couch all day you WILL lose weight IF you are eating fewer calories than you expend. It is a very simple matter of calories in versus calories out. And from a weight loss standpoint it doesnt’ matter if you create your calorie deficit by diet, exercise, or a combination of the two. It’s the equation that matters. Why is that so damn hard to understand? Yes, of course it’s healthier to exercise than to be sedentary, but it is NOT, by itself, an efficient was to create a calorie deficit. To lose a pound a week you need a calorie deficit of about 500 calories a day. To achieve that by exercise alone you’d have to run about 10 (not 5) miles a day. Isn’t it a lot easier to achieve the same calorie deficit by running 3 miles a day and cutting your food intake by 350 calories? It’s calories in vs. calories out. It’s basic physics. No escaping that truth.

Now suppose you’re willing to accept a very slow and gradual weight loss. That could be achieved by exercise without caloric restriction. But most people want to see a loss of one or two pounds a week and running 10 miles is not acceptable.

As for the claims of weight loss or gain in amounts such as 10 pounds a week, that is preposterous. The human body cannot gain or lose that much tissue that quickly. Most of that weight is water.

The question is why does exercise work in obesity? Because it burns calories? That’s ridiculous. Twenty minutes of jogging is one chocolate chip cookie, I mean you can’t do it. One Big Mac requires three hours of vigorous exercise to work that off, that’s not the reason that exercise is important, exercise is important for [...] reasons exclusive of the fact that it burns calories.

The first is it increases skeletal muscle insulin sensitivity, in other words it makes your muscle more insulin sensitive, therefore your pancreas can make less, therefore your levels can drop, therefore there’s less insulin in your blood to shunt sugar to fat. That’s probably the main reason that exercise is important and I’m totally for it.

The second reason that exercise is important is because it’s the single best treatment to get your cortisol down. Cortisol is your stress hormone, it’s the hormone that goes up when you are mega-stressed, it’s the hormone that basically causes visceral fat deposition which is the bad fat and it has been tied to the metabolic syndrome. So by getting your cortisol down you’re actually reducing the amount of fat deposited and it also reduces food intake. People think that somehow exercise increases food intake, it does not, it reduces food intake.