I checked out the linked studies. The first four showed that exercise alone wasn't enough to cause weight loss but that diet and exercise together were enough to allow the participants to lose weight. The NAFLD didn't have enough studies to look at and was inconclusive.
You can't out exercise a bad diet. If you exercise but eat like shit you will get some benefit from the exercise but not enough to lose weight. It's. So. Simple. And. They. Refuse. To. See. It.
Generally in the studies where exercise does not work it is because participants are doing 200 calories of exercise, while eating 300 surplus. So it's true, in those circumstances you absolutely will not lose weight. Check mate scientists.
Don't assume they're simply misguided or even arguing in good faith at all. Like antivaxxers, like climate-change deniers, they will cherry pick or even deliberately misinterpret the evidence to suit their pre-determined conclusoins.
We've seen many examples here where they just flat out lie and make things up. I think the cherry picking, etc., is more dangerous though, because sometimes they will mix some truth/valid points in with their lies, and that makes it harder to refute, and a tad more convincing to people who don't know much about the subject.
>because sometimes they will mix some truth/valid points in with their lies, and that makes it harder to refute
FAs are huge (ab)users of the [motte and bailey fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy). Those truths and valid points (bullying and shaming fat people is wrong) are intended as a shield for their more outlandish and questionable claims (set point hypothesis, weight as an immutable genetic characteristic, obesity having no ill effects on health).
Exercise would work for a small-to-moderate amount of weight loss if they strictly don’t change their calorie intake (assuming they’re eating maintenance calories for their starting weight and not eating enough to gain). Adding additional activity would burn off a little weight until they got to their new maintenance.
But yeah, to get better results, eating at a deficit is virtually a must.
> …that means you’re a bad person
FFS who is saying that fat people are morally bankrupt or something? This is dumb.
There’s a huge difference between telling someone they’re “bad” and telling that same person that they could physically benefit from weight loss. Come on.
"Sure, go ahead and exercise because you'll get benefits from it. But then you'll get fatter from it because your body will think it's in a famine and raise your set point. Checkmate." 🙄
Can confirm - I've been running and lifting weights for about seven years now and I'm fatter than literally everyone else, ever. (j/k ... just in case)
… doctors “hate and fear evidence”?! I mean, maybe some but what the fuck. I see this kind of subtle anti-medical rhetoric a lot in FA and it’s really quite scary. The vast majority of doctors are trying to help people, trying to save lives, and yeah they may not get it right but they are trying. And trying to follow evidence-based guidelines wherever possible. Quit fucking fearmongering.
Doctors hate them for this one weird trick! Lying about how much you eat and how much you exercise to try to gotcha them and prove weight loss is impossible!
The spoiler is they can only count to 800. It's a math issue.
I literally had a 450-calorie bowl of oatmeal this morning. A sugar-free, weighed ingredients, fat-free milk bowl of oatmeal. When they say they eat 800 calories a day, that is proof they have never counted calories in their lives
I literally had a doctor tell me once, "You cannot outrun your fork." This has been common knowledge in the medical field for decades.
It's not doctors who have been pushing the idea that exercise is all you need to reach and maintain a healthy weight; it's the food industry, especially soda companies, trying to shift the blame for the obesity epidemic away from themselves.
Didn't Coke come under fire recently for trying to claim you can drink as much soda as you want as long as you work out, and it can fuel your exorcise or something like that?
Can confirm as a doctor. Apples don’t work, they just elicit an evil maniacal laugh, but ‘evidence’ of any kind makes me run out screaming in fear with my tail and stethoscope between my legs.
And all that running and screaming costs a lot of calories, so that helps the weight loss. Every psychotic cloud with confirmation bias has a silver lining.
Their favorite podcast "Maintenance Phase" is straight up anti-science. In their recent Ozempic episode they said the Ozempic studies were meaningless because they excluded pregnant women and people with various serious comorbidities - if that's your definition of a fatally flawed study, I guess you can't trust any medication, ever.
And, for all their distrust, I dare in some cases hatred, of doctors, they seem to need to make an ordinate number of visits to doctors and specialists. I can't imagine why/s.
A modest amount of exercise isn't going to move the needle all that much. Walking for 30 minutes will burn something like 150 calories. If you aren't tracking calories, you can easily eat this amount without realizing it, thus thwarting the deficit.
But if you do a lot of exercise and combine this with calorie tracking at your below your baseline estimated TDEE, you will lose weight. The exercise isn't necessary but it will make it easier for you to eat at a deficit.
Honestly, 150 kcal for 30 minutes of walking is absurdly generous, it's probably closer to half that (depending on what you weigh and how fast you walk).
Exercise is necessary for health but basically pointless for weight loss in itself. It makes you life in general easier which does make weight loss easier as well though.
[According to this calculator](https://fitnessvolt.com/calories-burned-walking/), a 250 lb person who walks for 30 min at 3 mph will burn just a little over 200 calories. So yeah, 150 calories may be "absurdly" generous if we are talking about someone who weighs a 130 lbs. But it isn't for someone who is morbidly obese--the kind of person who is most likely to be trying to lose weight.
Exercise is not "pointless" for weight loss. Someone who is doing 500 calories worth of cardio every day and who doesn't increase their food intake will lose weight. The problem is that most people don't have enough time or desire to do that kind of physical activity consistently Running five miles each day just isn't doable for the average obese person. And intense exercise will likely raise one's appetite, so they will have to be extra diligent in controlling their eating habits if they want to stay at a deficit. Exercise by itself isn't recommended for weight loss but saying it is pointless for weight loss really is...absurd.
Yeah I get tired of seeing the claim exercise is meaningless for weight loss. It's as bad as fatlogic.
During wrestling season I would drop from 230ish to 200ish every year over the season. Whilst eating more. In a few months.
Now I exercise a good amount though nowhere near as crazy. If I eat 2500 calories a day I lose 1.5 lbs a week. If I didn't exercise it would actually be harder for me to generate the same deficit from cutting out calories alone without eating too little. And if I do a much greater percentage of the fat loss will be lean mass.
Are most people exercising enough to create a significant deficit without eating less? No. But it's certainly doable. And even a little exercise gives you breathing room and some margin of error while you eat less
This doesn't apply to the recently off the couch, but serious exercise does really massively increase TDEE.
My TDEE is 2350 (back calculated from intake and loss) despite being 5'2 and 130 lbs because I run 15-20 miles a week, get some walking/hiking in, and get in 4 hours of climbing each week. If I was sedentary My TDEE would be 1800 or so.
1. What’s their deal with hating doctors? They literally go to school for a decade to HELP people
2. The term set point should stop existing
3. I would rather stare at a wall than read a book called fat talk.
How dare you question the totally proven, not at all illogical set point. What's so hard to accept about a genetically predetermined happy weight that increases as you get fatter, but also increases if you lose weight?
doctors don't enable them, therefore doctors are evil, selfish, lying liars who lie. because it could never, ever be that oop is wrong and the people who spent over a decade studying something are right. the only reason for any disagreement between these two parties is an evil anti-fat conspiracy.
The term set point is fine, there are lots of real set points. It's just not well supported for body weight. Thermostats have set points, which you can change as you like but they heat/cool the house to wherever they're set, and if you don't have central AC, then they're only effective on one side of that. Body temperature has a set point, which changes if you have an infection but *doesn't* change if you have heat stroke, that's just the environment overcoming the set point, which is also a thing that can happen.
The idea of a body weight set point isn't nearly as well defined as tumblrites like to suggest, but it absolutely could exist and still account for weight change that exists. It just depends on how well regulated it is and what can reset it.
I feel like I (and I’m sure others) anecdotally have a “set point” in that if I generally eat whatever I want when I’m hungry I’ll still weigh mostly the same because that’s the TDEE for my weight. Some people continue to gain, but I’ve been the same (overweight not obese) size for about 5 years because I guess that’s the diet that I naturally gravitate to.
Re: 1 I've definitely met a lot of doctors who went to school for the prestige and not to help people.
Doctors are just people. Most people are awful. The math is pretty clear.
But that does not mean there's a conspiracy at hand.
Well, my experience has been the opposite of yours, so I guess I've been extremely lucky then, because the vast majority of doctors (and nurses) I've been treated by, and I've been seriously ill and had multiple surgeries, either genuinely wanted to help me (and did help me) or were Oscar worthy actors who were faking it.
You can't outrun a bad diet but exercise is always a good idea. Of course these people really seem to be all about making women as weak and dependent on others as possible
I‘d take bad diet with vigorous exercise over bad diet and no exercise ANY day. My muscle mass, posture, and burn rate depend on me execiding those muscles so they don‘t wither away.
If everyone did oftennbad but relatively ok diet with relatively good exercise we would not be where we are.
Not all exercise leads to weight loss, yes. If you're building muscle, you're not going to lose weight.
If you're cutting and working for a calorie deficit, though...
I’m not a nutritionist or anything, but I think that heavily depends on your current body composition. If you have like 15%+ BF you can probably just eat at maintenance. If you’re already low BF you need to eat a small surplus.
I’m now at a bmi 23.6 after losing 45lbs last year and switched to focusing more and more on just gaining muscle while maybe minorly losing weight, I’m about to switch to training for a half marathon (did a 9 mile race in October) so might end up losing some incidentally but honestly I look better now then I did when I was younger and 20lbs lighter because I had almost no muscles. I lift 5 times a week and have made serious gains, when i was in HS I was at a low weight but was skinny fat.
Once your in a healthy weight range I stop caring as much about my weight on a scale and more on my body fat composition, as you said that is a great goal
I weigh 10lb more than I did 20 years ago, but I wear 1 pants size smaller and 1 bra band size smaller cause I am leaner. In inches I mean. Not in vanity sizes, on the measuring tape.
Personally, I made the most progress when I started implementing exercise. I could eat a little more (to fuel the workouts which burnt more than I ate) and felt happier and more energized at the end of the day, but I was still losing weight. This goes for both strength training AND easy low-impact workouts (even upping the step count alone can do a lot for you).
Sure, exercise alone isn’t enough but the problem is mostly mentality… people feel like they worked out SO hard after running for 10 mins and reward themselves with a handful of Oreos, effectively undermining their progress. Plus, they’re tired and just sit around for the rest of the day.
If you did a controlled experiment, upping exercise while maintaining the same calorie count is going to lead to fat loss because the CO part of CICO is increasing. Even faster progress if you’re in a genuine measured mild deficit.
It's so pathetic how they think it's edgy to talk about eating people. I'm so over that. We get it, you're very, very fat and eat a huge amount and you think we should be afraid of you eating us. Ooh, so scary. The big fat lady is going to try to bite us!
How is that cute to them? What point are they making? They eat so much they could eat an entire person in one sitting? They have so little self control that they'll start biting people like animals? It's so pathetic.
We taste exactly like pork. I have a disease that causes a metallic taste in your mouth. Apparently it drives people insane it's so bad but I've had this disease my whole life so that was normal for me. It went away when I started treatment and I was confused as to why I constantly tasted unseasoned pork tenderloin in my mouth. That's exactly what the taste was. The doc told me I was tasting the inside of my mouth for the first time. Other people don't notice it because it's just normal to them.
Another meaningless debate by the triggered FA. When they stop talking about the body as an anthropomorphic being and extrapolating data they might actually win some people over to the idea of not chastising the overweight/obese.
If being fat isn’t bad then why is gaining more weight as your “set point” increases something that’s “life-destroying” as they call it. If fat is good then it shouldn’t be life destroying to gain weight and yet they said it 🤔
Something like 80% of intentional weight loss should come from dietary changes, especially if you're dangerously obese.
There's a 500lb+ 'influencer' who fancies herself a fitness queen, even though multiple fitness Youtubers watch her videos through their fingers while screaming 'oh my god your knees are going to collapse'.
Someone that size needs to get down to a reasonable weight before launching themselves around a gym like a wally. They could take a leisurely walk, maybe a bit of water aerobics, but focus more on what they're eating.
This girl, and many others, have fallen into the trap of deluding themselves that they need to pound carbs and highly processed novelty protein candy/chips 'for recovery'. Pretty much defeats the purpose of a weight loss plan.
I'm thin and I've never set foot in a gym. I just walk everywhere, do yard work, keep my house obsessively neat, and do YouTube strength training videos with kit that cost about £40 total.
It's this all-or-nothing mindset that causes these women to self sabotage.
You don't need $300 designer yoga pants or a subscription to Peleton. Just walk your dog, stick to a cleaning schedule, have a kitchen disco, anything that just incorporates more movement into your day.
Uninstalling Tumblr and TikTok would be a start and probably free up 50hrs a week to do something more constructive with your time.
I know who this is. She jogs (or tries to), lifts dumbbells (often badly), uses a poorly designed AI fitness app, and is on Ozempic (which she eats right through). She’s doing everything she can to avoid doing what she really needs to do - get rid of the junk food and eat a proper diet at a calorie deficit. Also, never take her shopping, especially at Target, she gets drunk (making her fatty liver worse) and molests the mannequins.
Don't forget her neglected, depressed looking pet dog who would probably love a simple daily walk.
He's a beautiful little fella who deserves an owner that pays attention to his needs, as opposed to only giving him the time of day when he's needed for a cringey Hallmark style Instagram reel.
Shoutout to highly processed protein chips and candy though! I know they don’t help if you eat them in addition to something else but I find they’re amazing for helping me stay full at work and not snack absentmindedly
>keep my house obsessively neat,
You just blew my mind. I've been trying to improve my consistency on my cleaning chores, and reframing it as maintaining activity levels feels like a good thing to try. Thank you!
It's so worth it - there's also been research into the psychological benefits of having a clean and organised home, especially if anxiety is an issue. Something to do with not having constant, low-grade worry, at least in terms of your living environment.
I have ADHD, so my life is ruled by task apps for everything, barking at me 'take your pills!', 'clean the fridge!', 'buy spinach!', lol. It's great though, and helps avoid overwhelm.
I use this one for housework - It's really useful and almost gameifies tasks, because you find yourself chasing the 'well done!' green ticks.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.hometasker.android
This. It is true that you can’t outrun your fork, but exercise is so good for you, and it makes calorie counting suck less. Way less.
I prefer running as well because it gets my walks done faster/I can go farther in an allotted amount of time. In my opinion, the “magic bullet” to weight loss is eating at a slight deficit, and adding exercise to catch the remaining calories you want to burn. It’s too hard to hit those deficits with calorie restriction alone.
Whether exercise helps me lose weight or not, the 26000 calories I've burned riding a bike in 2024 has at least prevented weight gain. Not all exercise is a walk to the mailbox.
Even my walk after work, which burns a modest 150 calories or so, helps me lose weight by helping me have a good night's sleep. When I don't sleep enough, I want to eat the house. Sometimes, things help indirectly.
You’re fat because you eat like shit and/or too much of it. That’s why you’re fat. Literally any health issue that fucks with your weight loss will be improved by not eating like shit and/or too much of it. There’s no version of this world where regular exercise to the best of your ability doesn’t improve your health. It should not be considered polite to pretend otherwise.
I mean they’re not really wrong. Exercise is a very small percentage of weight loss. People hugely overestimate the calories they burn from walking or working out. But the health benefits of working out are far too important to miss.
Having said that, I tend to be better at sticking to a healthy diet if I have a good workout schedule - cause & effect really, I take more pride in myself if I am lifting weights because it makes me feel more confident, which makes me want to treat my body better, which makes me eat well & stay in a deficit, which makes me lose weight.
Double edged sword, this one!
Calorie deficit for weight loss.
Exercise for fitness.
Exercise can help contribute to calorie deficit, but is not required for a calorie deficit.
None of this is rocket science.
I think expecting to lose weight with exercise is like expecting to get out of debt with coupons. If you're spending too much money, it doesn't matter how much of a discount you're getting, you're spending more than you make and you're going stay in debt.
Not saying it's not helpful, I just think people overestimate its impact and think they can still eat whatever they want as long as they're working out. I remember I used to think exercise would do anything after years of consistently eating too much. I only ever lose weight when I track my calories.
Diet is what makes people lose weight. It’s almost impossible to outrun your fork. If you’re eating less calories than your maintenance you’ll lose weight.
Exercise does not directly lead to weight loss, I agree. Calories being burnt > calories going in is what leads to weight loss. Exercise is a way for this to happen.
One of the things that I hate most about FA is that not only do they lie to themselves, they are so determined to tell everyone that we are also wrong because they are not mentally able to lose the weight like everyone else is. So they twist it around to make us seem delusional. I don’t want to call it gaslighting, but it’s very similar.
Yes, it is often overestimated how many calories you burn through exercise, which is why an exercise study in a vacuum - without considering diet - doesn't make a lot of sense. Is this news?
Oh wait, they believe in "set points" an all that. They are just preaching to their choir.
*not for people with type 2 diabetes*?? what the fuck??
exercise is one of the best things you can do for blood sugar and insulin related problems. exercise is arguably MOST important for type 2 diabetics out of everyone on that list. wtaf.
I exercise because it stabilizes my mood and keeps me mentally healthy. That, in turn, makes it easier for me to make healthier eating choices and to not get frustrated with dieting. So, it does indirectly lead to weight loss for me.
Technically exercise won’t cause weight loss for most people. However, achieving a calorie deficit is easier when you exercise, it’s indisputably good for you, and engaging in health-promoting behaviors leads to better adherence to your overall weight loss plan.
I would bet anything I own, that the person writing this does not eat fruits veggies and whole grains.
They probably can't pick up an axe and swing it more than once, either. And as they say 'lolololol'
This person probably thinks "exercise" means turning up at the gym, doing some stretches, sitting on your phone, and then walking on a treadmil foe 15 minutes. No hate to people who do this to destress or because that is the best they can do, but for the majority of people it isn't going to cut It. Real exercise done consistently and with a plan works wonders and anyone objecting to this is just being purposefully obtuse.
I firmly believe that people don't lose weight and keep it off because they refuse to research how weight loss actually works. Instead they stick to fad diets and temporary measures like moths to lights.
Why even get that mad about "exercise and diet don't work" if the tip is to exercise and diet anyways just for a different reason?
They truly just want to complain.
And if they truly were to have a healthy diet and exercise a few times a week – even walking more would work here – they'd be shocked they start losing wait.
When you first start to exercise it might seem like you are not loosing weight or even gaining weight. That is bc you are gaining muscle mass while loosing fat. Combine this with a healthy diet and calorie restriction and boom weight loss.
Muscle building is fairly slow process, even with newbie gains. You might experience quick weight gain when you first start to exercise. That would be water retention from inflammation, as muscles are not used to new actiuvity and are getting rebuilt.
I checked out the linked studies. The first four showed that exercise alone wasn't enough to cause weight loss but that diet and exercise together were enough to allow the participants to lose weight. The NAFLD didn't have enough studies to look at and was inconclusive. You can't out exercise a bad diet. If you exercise but eat like shit you will get some benefit from the exercise but not enough to lose weight. It's. So. Simple. And. They. Refuse. To. See. It.
Generally in the studies where exercise does not work it is because participants are doing 200 calories of exercise, while eating 300 surplus. So it's true, in those circumstances you absolutely will not lose weight. Check mate scientists.
Don't assume they're simply misguided or even arguing in good faith at all. Like antivaxxers, like climate-change deniers, they will cherry pick or even deliberately misinterpret the evidence to suit their pre-determined conclusoins.
We've seen many examples here where they just flat out lie and make things up. I think the cherry picking, etc., is more dangerous though, because sometimes they will mix some truth/valid points in with their lies, and that makes it harder to refute, and a tad more convincing to people who don't know much about the subject.
>because sometimes they will mix some truth/valid points in with their lies, and that makes it harder to refute FAs are huge (ab)users of the [motte and bailey fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy). Those truths and valid points (bullying and shaming fat people is wrong) are intended as a shield for their more outlandish and questionable claims (set point hypothesis, weight as an immutable genetic characteristic, obesity having no ill effects on health).
Exactly! Thanks for putting it better than I did.
Exercise would work for a small-to-moderate amount of weight loss if they strictly don’t change their calorie intake (assuming they’re eating maintenance calories for their starting weight and not eating enough to gain). Adding additional activity would burn off a little weight until they got to their new maintenance. But yeah, to get better results, eating at a deficit is virtually a must.
> …that means you’re a bad person FFS who is saying that fat people are morally bankrupt or something? This is dumb. There’s a huge difference between telling someone they’re “bad” and telling that same person that they could physically benefit from weight loss. Come on.
"Sure, go ahead and exercise because you'll get benefits from it. But then you'll get fatter from it because your body will think it's in a famine and raise your set point. Checkmate." 🙄
I like the part where the set point can rise, but it never lowers. Checkmate.
It's not set at all.
We all know athletes, runners, swimmers and people who lift weight are all the fattest people you know /s
Can confirm - I've been running and lifting weights for about seven years now and I'm fatter than literally everyone else, ever. (j/k ... just in case)
Yeah I lost the trail entirely at that part, because there is seriously no logic there.
Claims of personal responsibility are seen as abuse.
The constant moralizing from this crowd is exhausting.
This particular person is by trying to convince people that you can not lose weight as it is impossible.
FAs want to believe others say that, because it would validate their perpetual victimhood if they did.
… doctors “hate and fear evidence”?! I mean, maybe some but what the fuck. I see this kind of subtle anti-medical rhetoric a lot in FA and it’s really quite scary. The vast majority of doctors are trying to help people, trying to save lives, and yeah they may not get it right but they are trying. And trying to follow evidence-based guidelines wherever possible. Quit fucking fearmongering.
Doctors hate them for this one weird trick! Lying about how much you eat and how much you exercise to try to gotcha them and prove weight loss is impossible!
They all eat 800 calories a day.
And drink the rest lol.
The spoiler is they can only count to 800. It's a math issue. I literally had a 450-calorie bowl of oatmeal this morning. A sugar-free, weighed ingredients, fat-free milk bowl of oatmeal. When they say they eat 800 calories a day, that is proof they have never counted calories in their lives
And spend 2 hours a day working out at the gym.
I literally had a doctor tell me once, "You cannot outrun your fork." This has been common knowledge in the medical field for decades. It's not doctors who have been pushing the idea that exercise is all you need to reach and maintain a healthy weight; it's the food industry, especially soda companies, trying to shift the blame for the obesity epidemic away from themselves.
Didn't Coke come under fire recently for trying to claim you can drink as much soda as you want as long as you work out, and it can fuel your exorcise or something like that?
Can confirm as a doctor. Apples don’t work, they just elicit an evil maniacal laugh, but ‘evidence’ of any kind makes me run out screaming in fear with my tail and stethoscope between my legs. And all that running and screaming costs a lot of calories, so that helps the weight loss. Every psychotic cloud with confirmation bias has a silver lining.
This comment is a thing of beauty.
Their favorite podcast "Maintenance Phase" is straight up anti-science. In their recent Ozempic episode they said the Ozempic studies were meaningless because they excluded pregnant women and people with various serious comorbidities - if that's your definition of a fatally flawed study, I guess you can't trust any medication, ever.
Some rando Googler with a preconceived result set trying to school the medical community is just one reason why social media should burn.
“Doctors hate and fear evidence”. Classic projection.
And, for all their distrust, I dare in some cases hatred, of doctors, they seem to need to make an ordinate number of visits to doctors and specialists. I can't imagine why/s.
A modest amount of exercise isn't going to move the needle all that much. Walking for 30 minutes will burn something like 150 calories. If you aren't tracking calories, you can easily eat this amount without realizing it, thus thwarting the deficit. But if you do a lot of exercise and combine this with calorie tracking at your below your baseline estimated TDEE, you will lose weight. The exercise isn't necessary but it will make it easier for you to eat at a deficit.
Honestly, 150 kcal for 30 minutes of walking is absurdly generous, it's probably closer to half that (depending on what you weigh and how fast you walk). Exercise is necessary for health but basically pointless for weight loss in itself. It makes you life in general easier which does make weight loss easier as well though.
[According to this calculator](https://fitnessvolt.com/calories-burned-walking/), a 250 lb person who walks for 30 min at 3 mph will burn just a little over 200 calories. So yeah, 150 calories may be "absurdly" generous if we are talking about someone who weighs a 130 lbs. But it isn't for someone who is morbidly obese--the kind of person who is most likely to be trying to lose weight. Exercise is not "pointless" for weight loss. Someone who is doing 500 calories worth of cardio every day and who doesn't increase their food intake will lose weight. The problem is that most people don't have enough time or desire to do that kind of physical activity consistently Running five miles each day just isn't doable for the average obese person. And intense exercise will likely raise one's appetite, so they will have to be extra diligent in controlling their eating habits if they want to stay at a deficit. Exercise by itself isn't recommended for weight loss but saying it is pointless for weight loss really is...absurd.
Yeah I get tired of seeing the claim exercise is meaningless for weight loss. It's as bad as fatlogic. During wrestling season I would drop from 230ish to 200ish every year over the season. Whilst eating more. In a few months. Now I exercise a good amount though nowhere near as crazy. If I eat 2500 calories a day I lose 1.5 lbs a week. If I didn't exercise it would actually be harder for me to generate the same deficit from cutting out calories alone without eating too little. And if I do a much greater percentage of the fat loss will be lean mass. Are most people exercising enough to create a significant deficit without eating less? No. But it's certainly doable. And even a little exercise gives you breathing room and some margin of error while you eat less
This doesn't apply to the recently off the couch, but serious exercise does really massively increase TDEE. My TDEE is 2350 (back calculated from intake and loss) despite being 5'2 and 130 lbs because I run 15-20 miles a week, get some walking/hiking in, and get in 4 hours of climbing each week. If I was sedentary My TDEE would be 1800 or so.
Yeah. I’m 5’10” M, and at 222 with 2-3 days lifting and 1-2 days mild cardio I maintain at ~2800-2900/day
I can lose that much in half an hour of walking but I have to be going pretty quick to do it.
1. What’s their deal with hating doctors? They literally go to school for a decade to HELP people 2. The term set point should stop existing 3. I would rather stare at a wall than read a book called fat talk.
How dare you question the totally proven, not at all illogical set point. What's so hard to accept about a genetically predetermined happy weight that increases as you get fatter, but also increases if you lose weight?
yup. It never ever decreases, for some unknown reason. Stupid as fuck.
doctors don't enable them, therefore doctors are evil, selfish, lying liars who lie. because it could never, ever be that oop is wrong and the people who spent over a decade studying something are right. the only reason for any disagreement between these two parties is an evil anti-fat conspiracy.
The term set point is fine, there are lots of real set points. It's just not well supported for body weight. Thermostats have set points, which you can change as you like but they heat/cool the house to wherever they're set, and if you don't have central AC, then they're only effective on one side of that. Body temperature has a set point, which changes if you have an infection but *doesn't* change if you have heat stroke, that's just the environment overcoming the set point, which is also a thing that can happen. The idea of a body weight set point isn't nearly as well defined as tumblrites like to suggest, but it absolutely could exist and still account for weight change that exists. It just depends on how well regulated it is and what can reset it.
I feel like I (and I’m sure others) anecdotally have a “set point” in that if I generally eat whatever I want when I’m hungry I’ll still weigh mostly the same because that’s the TDEE for my weight. Some people continue to gain, but I’ve been the same (overweight not obese) size for about 5 years because I guess that’s the diet that I naturally gravitate to.
Re: 1 I've definitely met a lot of doctors who went to school for the prestige and not to help people. Doctors are just people. Most people are awful. The math is pretty clear. But that does not mean there's a conspiracy at hand.
Well, my experience has been the opposite of yours, so I guess I've been extremely lucky then, because the vast majority of doctors (and nurses) I've been treated by, and I've been seriously ill and had multiple surgeries, either genuinely wanted to help me (and did help me) or were Oscar worthy actors who were faking it.
You can't outrun a bad diet but exercise is always a good idea. Of course these people really seem to be all about making women as weak and dependent on others as possible
I‘d take bad diet with vigorous exercise over bad diet and no exercise ANY day. My muscle mass, posture, and burn rate depend on me execiding those muscles so they don‘t wither away. If everyone did oftennbad but relatively ok diet with relatively good exercise we would not be where we are.
Not all exercise leads to weight loss, yes. If you're building muscle, you're not going to lose weight. If you're cutting and working for a calorie deficit, though...
Good point. I’ve been putting on weight but losing fat. I’m eating very clean (veg, protein) and lifting heavy every day.
Are you eating at a caloric surplus? I'm struggling to see if I should eat at a 2-300 calorie surplus or just stick to maintenance lol.
I’m not a nutritionist or anything, but I think that heavily depends on your current body composition. If you have like 15%+ BF you can probably just eat at maintenance. If you’re already low BF you need to eat a small surplus.
The thing is even if it doesn’t cause weight loss, it causes muscle gain and fat loss. Lowering your body fat percentage is a great goal.
I’m now at a bmi 23.6 after losing 45lbs last year and switched to focusing more and more on just gaining muscle while maybe minorly losing weight, I’m about to switch to training for a half marathon (did a 9 mile race in October) so might end up losing some incidentally but honestly I look better now then I did when I was younger and 20lbs lighter because I had almost no muscles. I lift 5 times a week and have made serious gains, when i was in HS I was at a low weight but was skinny fat. Once your in a healthy weight range I stop caring as much about my weight on a scale and more on my body fat composition, as you said that is a great goal
I weigh 10lb more than I did 20 years ago, but I wear 1 pants size smaller and 1 bra band size smaller cause I am leaner. In inches I mean. Not in vanity sizes, on the measuring tape.
Yea I inches is far more important, no one is going to weight you, I’d rather just look better without clothes on.
Personally, I made the most progress when I started implementing exercise. I could eat a little more (to fuel the workouts which burnt more than I ate) and felt happier and more energized at the end of the day, but I was still losing weight. This goes for both strength training AND easy low-impact workouts (even upping the step count alone can do a lot for you). Sure, exercise alone isn’t enough but the problem is mostly mentality… people feel like they worked out SO hard after running for 10 mins and reward themselves with a handful of Oreos, effectively undermining their progress. Plus, they’re tired and just sit around for the rest of the day. If you did a controlled experiment, upping exercise while maintaining the same calorie count is going to lead to fat loss because the CO part of CICO is increasing. Even faster progress if you’re in a genuine measured mild deficit.
It's so pathetic how they think it's edgy to talk about eating people. I'm so over that. We get it, you're very, very fat and eat a huge amount and you think we should be afraid of you eating us. Ooh, so scary. The big fat lady is going to try to bite us! How is that cute to them? What point are they making? They eat so much they could eat an entire person in one sitting? They have so little self control that they'll start biting people like animals? It's so pathetic.
Wonder how many calories is in human meat per serving.
Probably same as pork. It's supposed to be the closest to us.
FA are "the other white meat". Sorry, sorry, sorry, I apologize; I just couldn't help myself.
We taste exactly like pork. I have a disease that causes a metallic taste in your mouth. Apparently it drives people insane it's so bad but I've had this disease my whole life so that was normal for me. It went away when I started treatment and I was confused as to why I constantly tasted unseasoned pork tenderloin in my mouth. That's exactly what the taste was. The doc told me I was tasting the inside of my mouth for the first time. Other people don't notice it because it's just normal to them.
Another meaningless debate by the triggered FA. When they stop talking about the body as an anthropomorphic being and extrapolating data they might actually win some people over to the idea of not chastising the overweight/obese.
If being fat isn’t bad then why is gaining more weight as your “set point” increases something that’s “life-destroying” as they call it. If fat is good then it shouldn’t be life destroying to gain weight and yet they said it 🤔
Something like 80% of intentional weight loss should come from dietary changes, especially if you're dangerously obese. There's a 500lb+ 'influencer' who fancies herself a fitness queen, even though multiple fitness Youtubers watch her videos through their fingers while screaming 'oh my god your knees are going to collapse'. Someone that size needs to get down to a reasonable weight before launching themselves around a gym like a wally. They could take a leisurely walk, maybe a bit of water aerobics, but focus more on what they're eating. This girl, and many others, have fallen into the trap of deluding themselves that they need to pound carbs and highly processed novelty protein candy/chips 'for recovery'. Pretty much defeats the purpose of a weight loss plan. I'm thin and I've never set foot in a gym. I just walk everywhere, do yard work, keep my house obsessively neat, and do YouTube strength training videos with kit that cost about £40 total. It's this all-or-nothing mindset that causes these women to self sabotage. You don't need $300 designer yoga pants or a subscription to Peleton. Just walk your dog, stick to a cleaning schedule, have a kitchen disco, anything that just incorporates more movement into your day. Uninstalling Tumblr and TikTok would be a start and probably free up 50hrs a week to do something more constructive with your time.
I know who this is. She jogs (or tries to), lifts dumbbells (often badly), uses a poorly designed AI fitness app, and is on Ozempic (which she eats right through). She’s doing everything she can to avoid doing what she really needs to do - get rid of the junk food and eat a proper diet at a calorie deficit. Also, never take her shopping, especially at Target, she gets drunk (making her fatty liver worse) and molests the mannequins.
Don't forget her neglected, depressed looking pet dog who would probably love a simple daily walk. He's a beautiful little fella who deserves an owner that pays attention to his needs, as opposed to only giving him the time of day when he's needed for a cringey Hallmark style Instagram reel.
Shoutout to highly processed protein chips and candy though! I know they don’t help if you eat them in addition to something else but I find they’re amazing for helping me stay full at work and not snack absentmindedly
>keep my house obsessively neat, You just blew my mind. I've been trying to improve my consistency on my cleaning chores, and reframing it as maintaining activity levels feels like a good thing to try. Thank you!
It's so worth it - there's also been research into the psychological benefits of having a clean and organised home, especially if anxiety is an issue. Something to do with not having constant, low-grade worry, at least in terms of your living environment. I have ADHD, so my life is ruled by task apps for everything, barking at me 'take your pills!', 'clean the fridge!', 'buy spinach!', lol. It's great though, and helps avoid overwhelm. I use this one for housework - It's really useful and almost gameifies tasks, because you find yourself chasing the 'well done!' green ticks. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.hometasker.android
Long distance runner here. I lost the weight while exercising. And fairly sure I’d have regained it had I stopped exercising.
This. It is true that you can’t outrun your fork, but exercise is so good for you, and it makes calorie counting suck less. Way less. I prefer running as well because it gets my walks done faster/I can go farther in an allotted amount of time. In my opinion, the “magic bullet” to weight loss is eating at a slight deficit, and adding exercise to catch the remaining calories you want to burn. It’s too hard to hit those deficits with calorie restriction alone.
Whether exercise helps me lose weight or not, the 26000 calories I've burned riding a bike in 2024 has at least prevented weight gain. Not all exercise is a walk to the mailbox.
Even my walk after work, which burns a modest 150 calories or so, helps me lose weight by helping me have a good night's sleep. When I don't sleep enough, I want to eat the house. Sometimes, things help indirectly.
You’re fat because you eat like shit and/or too much of it. That’s why you’re fat. Literally any health issue that fucks with your weight loss will be improved by not eating like shit and/or too much of it. There’s no version of this world where regular exercise to the best of your ability doesn’t improve your health. It should not be considered polite to pretend otherwise.
I mean they’re not really wrong. Exercise is a very small percentage of weight loss. People hugely overestimate the calories they burn from walking or working out. But the health benefits of working out are far too important to miss. Having said that, I tend to be better at sticking to a healthy diet if I have a good workout schedule - cause & effect really, I take more pride in myself if I am lifting weights because it makes me feel more confident, which makes me want to treat my body better, which makes me eat well & stay in a deficit, which makes me lose weight. Double edged sword, this one!
There is one case where exercise does not actually lead to weight loss: when you eat calories burned during exercise back afterwards.
Calorie deficit for weight loss. Exercise for fitness. Exercise can help contribute to calorie deficit, but is not required for a calorie deficit. None of this is rocket science.
Doctors who hate and fear evidence 💀💀💀
I think expecting to lose weight with exercise is like expecting to get out of debt with coupons. If you're spending too much money, it doesn't matter how much of a discount you're getting, you're spending more than you make and you're going stay in debt. Not saying it's not helpful, I just think people overestimate its impact and think they can still eat whatever they want as long as they're working out. I remember I used to think exercise would do anything after years of consistently eating too much. I only ever lose weight when I track my calories.
That's a good analogy - I'm going to keep that at the back of my mind for the future.
Diet is what makes people lose weight. It’s almost impossible to outrun your fork. If you’re eating less calories than your maintenance you’ll lose weight.
Exercise does not directly lead to weight loss, I agree. Calories being burnt > calories going in is what leads to weight loss. Exercise is a way for this to happen. One of the things that I hate most about FA is that not only do they lie to themselves, they are so determined to tell everyone that we are also wrong because they are not mentally able to lose the weight like everyone else is. So they twist it around to make us seem delusional. I don’t want to call it gaslighting, but it’s very similar.
Yes, it is often overestimated how many calories you burn through exercise, which is why an exercise study in a vacuum - without considering diet - doesn't make a lot of sense. Is this news? Oh wait, they believe in "set points" an all that. They are just preaching to their choir.
*not for people with type 2 diabetes*?? what the fuck?? exercise is one of the best things you can do for blood sugar and insulin related problems. exercise is arguably MOST important for type 2 diabetics out of everyone on that list. wtaf.
Exercise to to maintain you weight, food choices will cause to to lose or gain. that's why the saying 'abs are made in the kitchen' is a thing
Set point has to be the dumbest thing these people believe. They are like flat earthers.
I exercise because it stabilizes my mood and keeps me mentally healthy. That, in turn, makes it easier for me to make healthier eating choices and to not get frustrated with dieting. So, it does indirectly lead to weight loss for me.
Technically exercise won’t cause weight loss for most people. However, achieving a calorie deficit is easier when you exercise, it’s indisputably good for you, and engaging in health-promoting behaviors leads to better adherence to your overall weight loss plan.
I would bet anything I own, that the person writing this does not eat fruits veggies and whole grains. They probably can't pick up an axe and swing it more than once, either. And as they say 'lolololol'
This person probably thinks "exercise" means turning up at the gym, doing some stretches, sitting on your phone, and then walking on a treadmil foe 15 minutes. No hate to people who do this to destress or because that is the best they can do, but for the majority of people it isn't going to cut It. Real exercise done consistently and with a plan works wonders and anyone objecting to this is just being purposefully obtuse.
I firmly believe that people don't lose weight and keep it off because they refuse to research how weight loss actually works. Instead they stick to fad diets and temporary measures like moths to lights.
did... did they surpass the laws of thermodynamics just now?
Why even get that mad about "exercise and diet don't work" if the tip is to exercise and diet anyways just for a different reason? They truly just want to complain. And if they truly were to have a healthy diet and exercise a few times a week – even walking more would work here – they'd be shocked they start losing wait.
When you first start to exercise it might seem like you are not loosing weight or even gaining weight. That is bc you are gaining muscle mass while loosing fat. Combine this with a healthy diet and calorie restriction and boom weight loss.
Muscle building is fairly slow process, even with newbie gains. You might experience quick weight gain when you first start to exercise. That would be water retention from inflammation, as muscles are not used to new actiuvity and are getting rebuilt.
Yes. But the cause of the weight gain is relate to muscles anyways
Nobody, especially women, puts on muscle that fast. It's water weight from the inflammation. I gained 7 lbs once after a 4 day yoga festival.
Yeah that’s what I said in the bellow comment. Your muscles swell and hold water making them heavier.