Who knows best: Fighting the fat

Its called laziness in 99% of people.

If you expell more energy than you put in you loose weight.

Put in more energy than you exert you gain weight.

Conservation of energy, you cannot beat physics.
 
The human metabolism is much more complex than that. The body adapts to reduced calories after a while, becoming more efficient, so even if you're sticking to a rigorous low calorie diet, consistently taking in fewer calories than you should be expending, you can easily hit a plateau and not lose anything for weeks. It's just not a simple in - out equation.
 
It is that simple to a certain extent, if you look at the rise in popularity of BOOT CAMP breaks - and the weightloss results they achieve. Thats basically from eating healthy foods and shed loads of physical exercise.

It's really not rocket science IMHO.
 
Sure but what happens when that person goes back into the real world with their internal issues and the temptations? The weight goes straight back on. Having an army guy shouting at you 24/7 works for a week or two but won't work forever. I think it's always important to address self worth/self confidence/anxiety issues and give the person a set of mental tools to go along with exercise and healthy eating.
 
You may well be right - I'm not really questioning why people may have weight problems due to various issues - but I personally just don't think the importance of the exercise part of it and actually moving off your bum can be ignored.

I also appreciate that a Boot Camp style thing or a personal trainer may well be just a temporary option. The secret I think is to find exercises or sports you really enjoy. I play tennis and cyle and I really enjoy both.
 
What gets me is they said this young mum didnt exercise. Blimey as any young mum will tell you having a young toddler in the house is like doing a marathon everyday lol. Picking up toys, putting in washing, changing beds, hoovering, picking up child, running after child lol and so on and so forth.

When I had my grandkids for their day I was fair tuckered out lol.

I think her problem was more eating what she shouldnt.

My daughter was over weight through comfort eating but she was told to diet first and start to loose weight before she started to worry about exercise as once you start exercising muscle weighs heavy so you dont get a true weight loss.

Pushing this girl into army style combat training I would have thought was dangerous even though he said her heart was ok what about her joints?

A walk out everyday with her daughter pushing her buggy would have been adequate to start with.

I didnt think either of the experts won to be honest as I bet you when the cameras went their dieting did too lol.
 
LucyDTrym: Yep you're right. What disturbs me about these shows in general is they appear to play with peoples lives for our entertainment. Paul in particular only cared about winning the "bet", he wanted to get as much weight off her as possible in the short time frame and verbally attacked her if she didn't meet his targets. What was she? A piece of meat? He only cared about winning.

As you say a good process would have been to examine her diet and portion sizes, then work on getting her out of the house and walking on a daily basis and then build it up from there. But who knows, maybe the short sharp shock treatment worked for her and it's what she needed but I fear some people don't realise what they're signing up for with these shows.
 
I'm surprised so many people still put so much emphasis on exercise for weight loss, when any effect it may have is essentially negligible (unless undertaking an antarctic expedition, or something). I suppose constantly equating one with the other helps reinforce peoples idea that fat = lazy. Diet is the only real contributing factor to body mass. People (in general, and myself included) just need to eat less. :eek:

Obviously, exercise does help with general fitness and well-being, so it should not be ignored. :cool:
 
Hallaluah Dudius...

You speak sense.

The thing is once you start the gym then you cant stop the gym as if you do the muscles will just drop and eventually sag lol I mean stretched skin has to go somewhere lol.

I honestly think that the so called experts forget that the MAJORITY of mothers get exercise everyday. When I had my kids young I was running up and down stairs, cleaning, cooking shopping and stuff. Phew I was fair tuckered out by lunch time.

They bang on about going to the gym well the few people I know who go to the gym constantly complain that they are tired and their muscles ache as they pushed themselves too hard. Not one of them were overweight to start anyway and all of them lead quite busy lives anyway.

I think if the person is overweight because of over eating then they need to eat less. Because I am disabled I eat from a smaller plate then a dinner plate and it works for me.

Yes some exercise is good for us but please why are we obsessed by it all?

I mean my mum and my MIL never went to the gym, NEVER dieted and just lived a normal life. One is 87 and the other is 89.
 
I completely disagree. There have been studies done that show that on average we consume the same amount of calories per day as people did in the 1940's. Yet today obesity is much more common. The reason is that people tend to have a much more sedentary lifestyle compared with the 1940's.

I lost nearly three stone in six months with only a moderate change to my diet. My supercharged weight loss was because I went to the gym or went running religiously four or five times a week. A hard gym session or a 45 minute run can easily burn 800 calories or more. That's one third of a man's daily calorie intake!

I kept the weight off for 18 months or so but when I got lazy and I stopped going to the gym the weight piled back on.

I'm now doing the Paul McKenna weight loss programme which is not a diet as such just a healthy approach to eating which is pretty much what I was doing before i.e. only eat when your hungry, eat slowly and stop eating when your full. It works but it works a lot better with exercise. I'm now walking to work and back, and at weekends,around an hour and twenty minutes of fast walking a day. On average that's around 450 calories burned per day. The weight is now falling off me.

Eating less is part of the equation but exercise really speeds up weight loss and helps to keep it off once you've lost it. The fact is most fat people don't don't do enough exercise, if they did, they wouldn't be fat in the first place.
 
If it works for you, TSW, then fair do's, good on ya. But do you not think the 800 calories burned would just have easily been eliminated by not eating them? Obviously, I'm not talking about fitness, here, as we'll get inundated with everybodies workout regimen. :eek:
I think the sedentary lifestyle/fattened population idea is more of a corollary than a cause-effect equation. The massive change in the average diet could just as easily explain the phenomenon.
How many of us know those people who do bugger all, and still stay slim? :mad: (of course, I know the same is sometimes said about those who can "eat anything", but you don't know if they really do, when they're out-of-sight).
 
The 800 calories could have been eliminated by not eating them but I think that's where the diet only approach runs into difficulty. I had already moderated my diet, reducing by a further 800 calories I would effectively be starving myself. If I'd felt hungry all the time I would have been setting myself up to fail. Also, by doing the exercise I got quicker results, a better physique and I felt fitter and stronger which all helped to boost my motivation.

In years gone by people used to have much more active lifestyles, manual work, no labour saving devices and fewer cars etc. Evolution hasn't caught up and as human beings we're programmed to consume 2000 - 2500 calories per day. Anything much below that and you're going to start feeling deprived and hungry which is why diets often fail. That's why I think exercise is key, especially for someone like me who likes their food, works in an office and like most people spends a fair amount of free time slouching in front of the TV on the sofa. :o

Ultimately I think it's a simple equation of calorie intake vs calorie expenditure. For example, when I had reached my target weight I was able to reduce my gym/running from 4-5 times a week to 2-3 times a week and ate pretty much what I wanted. I do think it's possible to lose weight by adjusting one or the other but in my experience I got faster results that were more sustainable by adjusting both.

There are, of course, people with fast metabolisms who can eat a lot and stay slim but I think they are relatively few. I hazard a guess that if you were to analyse what a most slim people ate you'd find they just eat less and/or expend more energy.

There again, I guess it's different strokes for different folks, whatever works for you personally. :)
 
Do you think, for example, if someone who eats 2000 calories a day (which might be too much for some people taking into consideration factors such as their height and activity levels) wants to lose some weight, that it's realistic to expect them to eat 800 calories less a day which would bring them to a too-low calorie intake? Much better to do a bit of exercise.

I know some of these women would ingest a lot more than that but it's better to combine eating less and moving more to lose weight.
 
So sorry to resurrect this thread guys, but I only just realised someone had replied to me (was messing with my profile), and didn't want to seem ignorant.



Firstly, it was not I who bandied the 800 calorie figure about, but the maths stay the same. Disregarding for a moment the extra health benefits of exercise, these calories are just as easily (indeed, much more so) shifted through non-consumption of them.
You have to do much more than you think to use up calories, and the added psychological effect of thinking you have "earned" more calories does not help.
It has come to light in recent months that the growing childhood obesity "epidemic" is not being at all affected by exercise regimes or focing kids to play outside instead of playing video games (which, ironically, have been shown to have beneficial problem-solving and coordination effects), because their diets remain so carb/fat/calorie laden. It is still diet which has the most "say" in one's weight.
 
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