I am constantly arguing with all of my friends and family who believe primary way to loose weight is to exercise more.

Exercising is great, absolutely, but eating less is the actual primary method. While acknowledging complications of metabolism and psychology and weird states body goes through when it's hungry, primary part is to reduce calory intake vs expenditure.

So as snide and silly as it may be, in my neck of the woods, I would agree, lots of people don't believe eating less is the primary method of losing weight.

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JohnMakin 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It’s just physics, really.

A bag of doritos is 200+ calories. The exercise involved to burn that off is running or walking multiple miles. It’s way easier in terms of physical expenditure to just not eat the doritos, or skip the sugary soda.

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mnw21cam 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

When I go hiking for a couple of weeks (with significant elevation gain each day), I eat like a pig. I mean, something like 5000 calories a day. I lose weight over that time. So it's possible to lose weight through exercise, however you really do have to spend a very significant chunk of each day doing it for it to work.

Not eating as much takes much less of your busy day.

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JohnMakin 2 hours ago | parent [-]

If you are exercising on a caloric deficit, you are going to feel constantly tired and shitty. I find it way easier to just be on a caloric deficit.

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nemomarx an hour ago | parent | next [-]

it's so much faster to do both at once though, and you retain more muscle mass during it and so on

so long as you can live like a monk and hit the gym every night for a few months it's pretty good. this is dependent on you being able to stand being hungry and cranky and going to bed exhausted for all that time though

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skeeter2020 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

this is not true; I do extended bikepacking trips nutrionally similar to the GP's experience and you feel amazing. Maybe your first time or the first day can be tough but the human body loves to move and consume. I think a good frame of mind is you're a high efficiency furnace pumping out the heat on a very cold day. but this machine actually heals & improves the more it's used!

	▲	Retric an hour ago \| parent [-]
		That’s only true over a relatively short period. Stuff you can do for a week doesn’t automatically extend to maintaining that over the next 50 years.

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skeeter2020 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I do agree that losing weight is easier at first with just eating less, but to play the advocate role: you need a gap of about 3500 calories to lose a pound, but there's a hard daily floor of zero calories. You need to eat less over a long period of time (ideally the rest of your life) and exercise (or medication more commonly) is what keeps you going.

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watwut 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If I eat less, I feel shitty, tired and passive. I move less naturally, because it sux. When I exercise, I feel good, eat as much as I feel like and am keeping/loosing weight.

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chistev 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

"you can't outwork a bad diet"

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bonesss 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

“You can’t outrun the fork.”

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aeturnum 30 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I mean, these things are multimodal. For most people it's easier to cut enough calories to lose weight than it is to exercise enough to lose weight (though both are physically possible). But, of course, if you are losing weight you should be exercising! It's the best way to retain muscle mass, which is vital for health.

I am sure that when I've lost weight it's more the portion control than the exercise - but the exercise is a critical component. When you go from being sedentary to doing even casual exercise you feel better and get more energy - which you can then use to be more active. Without some kind of virtuous lifestyle-change cycle you are likely not going to shift your body mass, kind of no matter what ultimately puts you over the edge.

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mrguyorama 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The problem, as it is for a shitload of women, is that the delta between "Minimum amount of calories needed to not be somewhat malnourished" and "calories you eat now without losing weight" is sometimes zero. Short women working desk jobs are fucked

I was with a girl that barely ate, and couldn't get her weight down for about a decade because of that. Eventually she got really excited about a local dance studio and suddenly her weight dropped like a rock. She had to exercise more, but that was miserable until she found exercise that was effective and actually clicked, then it was trivial

Meanwhile it was trivial for me to eat less, because my budget should be around 1800 calories a day, and I was eating 3000. It's easy to cut out an entire bag of doritos. It is less easy to literally starve yourself.

People seem to forget as well that when you cut calories, your body will scream bloody murder until it re-adjusts. My body was convinced I was starving while I was 50 pounds overweight and eating 2000 calories because I had previously eaten more. Your body did not evolve in an environment where that was ever the wrong thing to feel! "Please eat more or we die" is one of the most powerful biological signals.

That these medications cut that signal is entirely why they work! If people just "couldn't stop eating" then not having hunger or appetite signals wouldn't have worked either.

	▲	nemomarx an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Getting down to 1200 or 1400 calories is pretty restrictive yeah. You can't do it without counting and meal prep the same way you can go from 3000 to 2000 by skipping snacks As soon as the diet requires cutting out a daily meal or changing the contents of meals in really harsh ways (like no bread) it's going to get on your nerves and make you neurotic.
	▲	watwut an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> People seem to forget as well that when you cut calories, your body will scream bloody murder until it re-adjusts When the body does not scream that murder, it is called anorexia. And it is much worst for your health then obesity.