I have found that it is possible to change.
Becoming lighter has encouraged me to exercise but what I eat has always been the main factor in what I weigh.
There's approximately 3500 calories per pound of fat and the average human will burn about 100 calories per mile of sustained running. If you want to lose a pound a week (a pretty healthy weight loss rate) you can either run 5 miles a day without changing your diet or skip 2 energy drinks a day without changing your exercise regime. Unfortunately many people that think a big workout is burning huge amounts of fat often indulge in excess eating as a reward which leads to even less weight loss (or even weight gain).
Again, exercise has a ludicrous number of benefits and absolutely should be encouraged for those benefits but weight loss shouldn't be included among them.
It surprises me that this invalid logic is continually reinforced by the media and even health professionals.
The most weight I ever lost was during 2020 lockdown when I made the consious decision to eat a bit less. I did virtually no exercise, one 30min walk each day, and I had no access to fitness equipment at home.
Many folks gain weight very slowly. It creeps up on them. Typical scenario is a sedentary office job, family responsibilities, and little time for oneself. Calories are very much cumulative, so all it takes is some regular snacking (or stress-eating) to get the weight trend going up and, whoops, 20 extra lbs can easily appear in a year. A lot of this happened during the pandemic.
Losing that 20lbs, in such scenarios, can be done with a simple exercise regimen (or even some thoughtfully increased physical activity). One thing that's interesting is that you DON'T have to RUN a mile to burn 100 Calories. You can burn the same amount, 100 Calories, by walking a mile. It takes longer, of course, but it's easier on the joints especially for overweight people.
While the act of going to the gym won't burn many calories, putting on muscle can drastically increase your baseline metabolic rate. 10lb of muscle (easily gained by a "newbie" who is eating well) will add about 1,500 calories per day to your baseline metabolic rate. That's a whole meal! (and that's just the calories burned by existing, not by recovery/muscle building, the workout itself, etc).
The body is remarkably good at maintaining homeostasis when losing weight. So as one gets lighter, the body becomes more efficient and burns less calories, requiring deeper and deeper reductions in consumption. Increasing muscle mass negates this.
Edit: @gduffy has a better source for how much energy a lb of muscle burns, which is "4.5 to 7.0 kcal/lb per day". So adding 10lb of muscle will increase caloric consumption by 450 - 700 Calories. So not quite a meal, but a solid 5 mile run.
Per month?
https://www.unm.edu/~lkravitz/Article%20folder/metabolismcon...
It’s still helpful: even 50-70 Calories per day is 18k-25k Calories per year. At 3500 Calories per pound of fat that’s 5-7 pounds offset each year, but it’s not a panacea for someone with 100 pounds of body fat.
You can’t out-lift your fork!
It's not just about calories and metabolic rate. Lean muscle tissue is also a crucial component of the endocrine system, and it acts as a glucose sink to prevent the energy in that glucose from being stored as fat.
https://www.gabriellereece.com/muscle-as-the-cornerstone-of-...
Taking the numbers from @gduffy you end up with (4.5 to 7.0) * 10lb = 45 to 70 Calories.
So more like a half mile run for most people.
Unless I’m missing something?
So 4.5 kcal/lb per day * 10 lb = 45 large calories per day, not 450.
> The small calorie or gram calorie was defined as the amount of heat needed to cause the same increase in one gram of water. Thus, 1 large calorie is equal to 1000 small calories.
> In nutrition and food science, the term calorie and the symbol cal almost always refers to the large unit. It is generally used in publications and package labels to express the energy value of foods in per serving or per weight, recommended dietary caloric intake, metabolic rates, etc. Some authors recommend the spelling Calorie and the symbol Cal (both with a capital C) to avoid confusion; however, this convention is often ignored.
> In physics and chemistry the word calorie and its symbol usually refer to the small unit; the large one being called kilocalorie.
A fun myth, but obviously false. Most human hunting was team oriented using javelins, or even stones and spears. Only a small number of human tribes have ever seriously practiced running to exhaustion. It's just easier to cut them off with a large gang and stab them with spears as you corner them.
That's exactly what I've found. I can exercise two or three hours a day; means nothing if I'm not watching my calories. Congrats on the weight loss!
I myself have lost 15kg over the past couple of years, after going from zero high-intensity physical activity on a normal week to a few hours of running and swimming every week.
I'm sure there are some unconscious changes to my eating, in particular afternoon/evening snacking. But that just happened without me trying or planning for it. I still eat at the same lunch restaurants and it is still my wife making me dinner most evenings.
For me it was a crazy little thing, nothing to do with being fat-shamed or even feeling guilty about my weight.
I heard a radio journalist doing a show at a UK Slimming World meeting (or Weight Watchers). He was essentially poking fun at those attending, saying they would never keep any weight losses off. I thought was pretty mean, so I went to my local Slimming World meeting and signed up. I lost weight, learnt about healthier eating, tracking my weight etc. I don't go to Slimming World now but the good habits started there.