Exercise may not be helping you lose weight

Yes, but confusing new people with gooseberry fool like fat burning zones and that makes it unnecessarily complicated.

Cuban Pete wrote:Be careful with the whole "less calories means losing fat". As your body adapts to the lower intake, it can start storing more of it as fat because may have to go long times without much food.

If you're eating fewer calories than you're burning, where will this fat come from?

Just replace some of your intake with celery. You satisfy your stomach's need to be full, while denying it the excess calories.

Disclaimer: this is not medical advice.

Karlprof wrote:

Cuban Pete wrote:Be careful with the whole "less calories means losing fat". As your body adapts to the lower intake, it can start storing more of it as fat because may have to go long times without much food.

If you're eating fewer calories than you're burning, where will this fat come from?

From your food, but your body acts differently in starvation mode. You won't burn as many calories, you'll feel tired and your body will start hoarding more fat than it usually does as a response to being starved. You could counter this by eating even less, but then you get into anorexic territory.

Fatal Exception wrote:The extra exercise doesn't make you eat more, your lack of willpower does.

What are you banging on about?

Floex wrote:

Fatal Exception wrote:The extra exercise doesn't make you eat more, your lack of willpower does.

What are you banging on about?

Willpower. To eat anything you have to put it into your own face. You can easily 'not' do that if you're prepared to put up with some mild discomfort.

Saying that sometimes I have to eat straight after a workout just to stop myself from puking.

Fatal Exception wrote:

Karlprof wrote:

Cuban Pete wrote:Be careful with the whole "less calories means losing fat". As your body adapts to the lower intake, it can start storing more of it as fat because may have to go long times without much food.

If you're eating fewer calories than you're burning, where will this fat come from?

From your food, but your body acts differently in starvation mode. You won't burn as many calories, you'll feel tired and your body will start hoarding more fat than it usually does as a response to being starved. You could counter this by eating even less, but then you get into anorexic territory.

Do you have any facts and figures to back this up? I'm having a hard time believing that one would have to go into "anorexic territory" to keep one's calorific intake below one's energy expenditure, even when the basal metabolic rate is lowered via a starvation response.

On how the body responds to total starvation, which seems to suggest a 7:1 ratio of fat to protein burning for energy:

After 2 or 3 days of fasting, the liver begins to synthesize ketone bodies from precursors obtained from fatty acid breakdown. The brain uses these ketone bodies as fuel, thus cutting its requirement for glucose. After fasting for 3 days, the brain gets 30% of its energy from ketone bodies. After 4 days, this goes up to 70%.

Thus, the production of ketone bodies cuts the brain's glucose requirement from 80 g per day to about 30 g per day. Of the remaining 30 g requirement, 20 g per day can be produced by the liver from glycerol (itself a product of fat breakdown). But this still leaves a deficit of about 10 g of glucose per day that must be supplied from some other source. This other source will be the body's own proteins.

On the lowering of the basal metabolic rate in "starvation-mode" diets:

In general, it's true that metabolic rate tends to drop more with more excessive caloric deficits (and this is true whether the effect is from eating less or exercising more); as well, people vary in how hard or fast their bodies shut down. Women's bodies tend to shut down harder and faster.

But here's the thing: in no study I've ever seen has the drop in metabolic rate been sufficient to completely offset the caloric deficit. That is, say that cutting your calories by 50% per day leads to a reduction in the metabolic rate of 10%. Starvation mode you say. Well, yes. But you still have a 40% daily deficit.

It seems to me that, as one might expect, while the body's metabolic rate slows during a period of caloric deficit, the effect isn't strong enough to reverse the weight loss associated with such a deficit.

The only issue I'm seeing is that one might have to be careful ending the diet, as jumping back up to the recommended 2,000 to 2,500 calories a day while your metabolic rate is reduced will provide you with an excess of calories which, I would posit, may well then be converted to fat.

Karlprof wrote:

Fatal Exception wrote:

Karlprof wrote:

Cuban Pete wrote:Be careful with the whole "less calories means losing fat". As your body adapts to the lower intake, it can start storing more of it as fat because may have to go long times without much food.

If you're eating fewer calories than you're burning, where will this fat come from?

From your food, but your body acts differently in starvation mode. You won't burn as many calories, you'll feel tired and your body will start hoarding more fat than it usually does as a response to being starved. You could counter this by eating even less, but then you get into anorexic territory.

Do you have any facts and figures to back this up? I'm having a hard time believing that one would have to go into "anorexic territory" to keep one's calorific intake below one's energy expenditure, even when the basal metabolic rate is lowered via a starvation response.

Well, what I mean is you're reducing calories as a response to your body reacting to you doing just that. If you get to a point when you plateau and stick to that then I'm sure you'd be fine.

If you can stick to a low calorie diet and still get all the essential nutrients you need then you'll be OK, in fact you'll probably live longer:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorie_restriction

If you look at the negative effects you can see some of the bad points too. Muscular and skeletal loss, fitness reduction and reduced immune response. Compare that with being a fatty mcfatfat and and it's still probably better.

Fair enough.

Two years ago, before I started exercising regularly, I weighed 65kg, these days it's more like 76kg. When you build up more muscle you weigh more.

I do not really pay much attention to my weight; it is a poor indicator of fitness. If I paid attention to my BMI then I would stop doing exercise and just let myself go back to my old weight.

So today I started a new eating plan to try and get out of unhealthy habits, all I've eaten today is Breakfast, Lunch, tea and a Banana which is a big difference to what I was doing before where I'd get up have cereal in a massive bowl which I fill to the brink, then I'd have a snack between breakfast and launch then I'd have like a big lunch and then have a snack between lunch and tea and then I'd have tea and have a monster meal or what ever and then have desert afterwards and then a couple of hours later I'll have snacks or something and like an hour or 2 before I go to bed I eat another strawberry floating bowl of cereal.

I need to get back to eating good like I use to, the change today is doing funny gooseberry fool to my head, my brain is telling me I'm hungry when I'm feeling ok, I just brushed my teeth and had an urge to eat the strawberry floating toothpaste and end up brushing twice.

What I was eating before is bad though, only reason I wasn't putting on fat was because of exercise I guess but I need to get real and realise that gooseberry fool catches up with you. Doesn't help when your family members come come with boxes of cookies or bake a plate full of strawberry floating rock buns (love that gooseberry fool), I'm taking steps in the right direction, was offered extra food after my family went to the chippy and I just straight up said "no I don't want it" which is a step in the right direction.

Lets see if I can keep it up and see if it gets easier as time goes by (I've managed to go 2 months without junk food in the past so it is doable I just need to get my gooseberry fool together).

Dig Dug, I've found a cup of hot green tea has been a lifesaver with regard to stopping myself feeling hungry.

Also, you may not want to do this, but logging EVERYTHING you eat with an app like "myfitnesspal" is a great way to stay accountable, and lets you see where you might be sneaking calories into your day. It even has a barcode scanner so you can scan most of the stuff you eat easily.

If you're trying to gain/lose weight without counting calories you're already doing it wrong.

I think in my case I don't really need to count calories because I'm going from what it clearly over eating to eating what a normal person would eat in a day, either way it is a lot less food than I was eating before.

But you could still be eating more than you should, or even just maintaining.

There is no reason not to count calories really. It's so easy with the apps they have.

blackoutHERO wrote:

Cuban Pete wrote:

blackoutHERO wrote:'fat burning zone'

Well that is a thing.


Be careful with the whole "less calories means losing fat". As your body adapts to the lower intake, it can start storing more of it as fat because may have to go long times without much food.

People worrying about 'fat burning zones' and gooseberry fool when they are trying to lose weight is ludicrous.

It's science - don't be ridiculous

Eat less, move more.

aayl1 wrote:But you could still be eating more than you should, or even just maintaining.

There is no reason not to count calories really. It's so easy with the apps they have.

Last time I tried counting I had already hit 2500 calories by 4pm. If you are living on your own and buying and making your own food then it works but when other people are making your meals in won't work.

Dig Dug wrote:

aayl1 wrote:But you could still be eating more than you should, or even just maintaining.

There is no reason not to count calories really. It's so easy with the apps they have.

Last time I tried counting I had already hit 2500 calories by 4pm. If you are living on your own and buying and making your own food then it works but when other people are making your meals in won't work.

Why not? Just ask them what they've used or tell them beforehand you'd like to know. There's no shame in wanting to lose weight.