How Important Is Exercise For Weight Loss?

[WillBrink]

If you’d asked me a decade ago what was the best method of weight loss, if I choose only exercise or diet, but not both, I would have said exercise all day. That is, increase exercise, lean body mass, and so forth, to create a caloric deficit vs reducing calories if I could only choose one. That conclusion appears to have been wrong, and I’m here to explain why. On the surface, that appears to turn a sacred cow of the fitness world on its head, but in retrospect, I think we knew it all along. Hey, someone said “you can’t out exercise a bad diet” and that’s essentially true. Who ever said it, just didn’t realize just how true it is.

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http://www.brinkzone.com/articles/ex...portant-is-it/

[JediGuy]

Based on personal experience, I think you could rephrase “Once you hit 30, you can’t out exercise a bad diet.”

[WillBrink]

Based on personal experience, I think you could rephrase “Once you hit 30, you can’t out exercise a bad diet.”

30?! LOL. 40 appears to be the number where metabolic changes take place where most people really notice it. You're a kid at 30. To the point, it gets more difficult with age, with 40 being a fairly good marker, but the base conclusion does not change. I could eat damn near anything as a kid, but I was also moving a lot, etc. These days, we see obese kids all the time, so...

[HKGuns]

30?! LOL. 40 appears to be the number where metabolic changes take place where most people really notice it. You're a kid at 30. To the point, it gets more difficult with age, with 40 being a fairly good marker, but the base conclusion does not change. I could eat damn near anything as a kid, but I was also moving a lot, etc. These days, we see obese kids all the time, so...

Yep and if you have good genes that number is 50.

The answer is both diet and exercise are critical.

[WillBrink]

Yep and if you have good genes that number is 50.

The answer is both diet and exercise are critical.

As always, we are looking at averages and the bell curve, which depends on variables such as genetics, life style, etc. None that changes the base conclusion of that article. Both are important, but exercise does not contribute nearly as much as once thought as it pertains to weight loss. Obviously, there's a long list of reasons to get exercise regardless. Bottom line, as it pertains to weight loss, exercise is not as critical we thought.

[TangoUniform]

You can have a good diet and never exercise and still live a fairly healthy life. If you had a shit diet, but exercised all the time, you'd still be unhealthy imo. Of course there a ton of factors and variables to consider, but if you had to choose one, I'd go with diet over exercise all day.

[thopkins22]

Diet. I lost sixty pounds in five months, and sadly put it all back on...but I didn’t work out once.

I just removed sugar from my diet and was smart about where carbs came from. I gorged myself on vegetables, eggs, and lean red meat. I guess I was relatively low carb, because I didn’t eat much bread or any pasta.

But the weight melted off. Granted I have a lot of muscle mass left over from playing sports at a medium high level...which means I needed more calories to just exist.

When exercising or running? LOL it would have taken years without a dietary change.

Diet to fit in clothes that make you look good, and exercise to look good naked.

[Doc Safari]

I can't say I buy it totally. The more I exercise by doing things at the ranch the more weight I seem to keep off. And I'm the guy who lives for food and beer.

[thopkins22]

I can't say I buy it totally. The more I exercise by doing things at the ranch the more weight I seem to keep off. And I'm the guy who lives for food and beer.

Well I mean, you absolutely CAN lose weight purely by hard work/exercise. And you can definitely keep weight from slowly accumulating.

As was pointed out, it’s all about the differential. Roughly 3000 excess calories create one pound of fat. It’s a hell of a lot easier to kill 3000 calories via diet than it is exercise. Run one of those calculators to see how many calories you’re burning some time. It’s a depressingly low number for the amount of work you’re doing.

You can run one mile, or you can skip one Coca-Cola to be in the same place.

You should definitely do both, but I don’t think there’s any question as to which has a bigger impact on obesity.

[WillBrink]

Well I mean, you absolutely CAN lose weight purely by hard work/exercise. And you can definitely keep weight from slowly accumulating.

As was pointed out, it’s all about the differential. Roughly 3000 excess calories create one pound of fat. It’s a hell of a lot easier to kill 3000 calories via diet than it is exercise. Run one of those calculators to see how many calories you’re burning some time. It’s a depressingly low number for the amount of work you’re doing.

You can run one mile, or you can skip one Coca-Cola to be in the same place.

You should definitely do both, but I don’t think there’s any question as to which has a bigger impact on obesity.

Actually, that premise has been challenged in terms of how to applies to the realities of weight. Forgive the formatting issues. It's a new site and I'm fixing the formatting issues currently:

"A pervasive dieting mantra is that a cumulative reduction of caloric intake of 3,500 will result in a weight loss of 1 pound. This dieting rule popularly states “because 3,500 calories equals about 1 pound (0.45 kilogram) of fat, if you cut 500 calories from your diet each day, or burn 500 calories extra per day from exercising (or a combination thereof) you’d lose about 1 pound a week (500 calories x 7 days = 3,500 calories) and 52 pounds in a year.
This simple weight loss rule continues to be cited on weight loss websites as well as authoritative nutrition textbooks [1, 2], scientific articles [3-6], and expert guidelines.[7] It is even common among health care professionals to believe in the 3,500 calorie rule [8], and the Patient Page on “Healthy weight loss” at The Journal of the American Medical Association website states in the first sentence on “What you need to know about weight loss” that… “A total of 3,500 calories equals 1 pound of body weight. This means if you decrease (or increase) your intake by 500 calories daily, you will lose (or gain) 1 pound per week (500 calories per day × 7 days = 3,500 calories).” [9]

However, is this really true? Most people who have ever been on a diet are probably skeptical. And rightly so. In this article I will highlight what’s wrong with the 3,500 calorie rule and present a more accurate calculator that you can use to more precisely predict how much weight loss you can except in real life from a given daily calorie reduction."

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https://brinkzone.com/is-the-dieting...-loss-correct/