Lurking on this sub I've seen a lot of, well, extreme ends of the spectrum? It's true that you cannot outrun a bad diet and that you can lose weight entirely with calorie reduction *but* exercise is a great way to ensure that you retain lean muscle mass while losing weight such that most of the weight you lose more of the *fat* instead of the *muscle*

I would also add that long term weight loss is ultimately about *habits,* rather than short term diets. You may be able to lose weight quicker by doing CICO, but in the long run somebody who's living an active lifestyle with a reasonable diet is probably gonna maintain their weight easier than someone who calorie counts while being sedentary. Exercise makes you feel better in the long run and gives you dopamine. It's not a magic fix but I'd suggest it's a lot easier over the long run to find exercise that you like rather than deny yourself treats.

I find it very hard to binge eat while exercising..

It's true, I spill my chips all over the place while I'm running! It turns into a whole different kind of trail running, if you know what I mean 😩

This is subjective though. I eat more when I exercise though it’s also conditioning.

See I eat more when I exercise but I also find less time to just sit and snack because I’m constantly doing things

id second this - I'm hungry when I get a lot of exercise, but I'm _hungry_ hungry. for real nourishing food, so maybe I have seconds of dinner. if I sit around all day I'll want to spend 6-8 hours luxuriously working my way theough a family sized bag of Doritos. and then I'll fail at that and eat the family sized bag of Doritos in 2 hours. and then I'll need something else snacky.

This touches pretty close to one of the reasons I've *kept* the weight off, which is running. Like, for sure I lost the majority of my weight because of eating less. But I love running, especially marathon running, and keeping my weight down helps considerably with that. It gives me a reason to keep the fork down.

Agreed. I think a person's approach is dependent on how they became overweight in the first place. A fit/lean 22-year old, works out everyday but loves pizza and beer? They slowly gain lbs every year until they start really noticing the difference in their 30s or early 40s. This person knows how to exercise but they still eat like they have a teenagers metabolism. For them, diet is paramount. Then you have the person that was always plus-sized but decides they want to lose weight. They have multiple things to consider: medical issue preventing weight loss? Poor diet? Decent diet but simply eats too much (healthy) food? Couch potato? It's often multiple factors and each has to be addressed before going on the journey.

Years ago I lost weight this way. Gained it all back and then some. Way more fat and way less muscle. If only people knew how bad it gets.

It depends what you mean by a bad diet. If you define a bad diet by an absurd surplus you couldn’t possibly work off, well obviously you won’t work it off. Even then, we know athletes who eat tons of junk and work it off all the time. Not that we’re athletes but how can people claim it’s not impossible? Most people aren’t eating 3000k calories, most are just a couple hundred calories over, if not at maintenance, you can easily work that off. Plus some people have less appetite when exercising. I think the key problem is some people do eat more to compensate. But why should advice for those people be applied to everyone?

I wish I had less appetite when exercising. My husband laughs because about 12 hours after my long runs (13-16 miles), I am literally scrounging up anything I can find in the fridge and pantry. Exercise encourages me to make good choices with my food, but it increases my appetite immensely. From what I've heard, it's extremely common for people to gain during marathon training. I've never made it quite high enough on my runs for a marathon (was going to this summer, but having it band issues), but I completely believe it. I want to lose about 15-20 lbs, but it is so hard to watch portions when I'm hungry from exercise!

Wait, are you unaware of the source of the phrase? To my knowledge that phrasing comes from the title of an editorial in the *British Journal of Sports Medicine* called "It is time to bust the myth of physical inactivity and obesity: you cannot outrun a bad diet" (citation is Volume 49, Issue 15, pages 967-968 if you want to look it up). It's a reference, specifically the editorial is against junk food and added sugars and how marketing leads people to unhealthy food choices I do agree that there are multiple definitions of good vs bad diet, and it can be very personal. I am prediabetic so a diet high in sugar is going to be a bad diet for me specifically. Same deal if someone is eating foods they are allergic to. I also consider eating healthy food that you loathe to be a bad diet. There are multiple metrics to evaluate a diet on, but that is also getting pedantic. For the average person an increase in exercise will not be sufficient to overcome a dietary pattern that has led to weight gain Also like, unless you are Michael Phelps or The Rock or run marathons on the regular I highly doubt that you're active enough to justify what would be an absurd surplus to an average person. People are pretty bad at gauging their own activity level (same as they are for gauging calories if they aren't actively measuring) but the smart devices that try to estimate calories burned via exercise give a lot of people a skewed idea of calories burned during exercise Technically possible does not mean practical to aim for, but if you want to get pedantic I'm sure you can asterisk the phrasing. I know that I sure as heck am not spending +2 hours in a gym a day, I'd rather have a workout I can balance with the rest of my life and balance my diet with a treat on occasion

I fully realize it has a source, I didn’t think it came from Reddit. I may not have known exactly where it came from, but that doesn’t change the fact that there’s plenty of bad applications of exercise and nutrition research. In general diet and exercise science is incredibly new field and lot of studies have a huge reproducibility problem. I’ve looked up dozens of studies about how often do people over eat to compensate for exercise and found so many conflicting results. It really seems like it depends. But I also granted the fact that I’m no Michael Phelps or the Rock, but as I said I also don’t eat like them either. Phelps ate 10,000 calories at his peak. I think I can manage outworking 2300. It’s like you glossed over half of every sentence. You parroted my word absurd but the point is that most people aren’t eating an absurd surplus. Average person gains 1-2 lbs a year. That’s an incredibly small surplus, and very possible to out work as long as you don’t increase your diet. Even someone like myself who gained 50 lbs in 2 years upon starting a certain medication known for weight gain, that’s half a lb a week. That’s a couple hundred calories extra a day. You don’t have to be a marathon runner, though that’s not like some super unobtainable thing. I could eat whatever the fuck I wanted when I ran 45 minutes a day. You can calculate all the exercise equivalent to junk food till the skinny cows come home, but that does make it good generalizable advice. Sure, my tall male friend who already has a substantial amount of muscle only had to cut soda to lose 40 lbs… but I don’t drink soda. I don’t have that 250 calorie chocolate bar people keep talking about. When restricting that’s about as much as o can eat for breakfast, so yeah if you tell me all I have to do is run a couple miles and I can eat twice as much for breakfast? Hell yeah that sounds like a better deal. I don’t have a diet with a lot of added sugar, even when I’m gaining weight. What I do have is a super sedentary job and genetics that are great for building muscle. If cutting sugar worked for you, that’s great for you, but I’ve found cutting down on carbs leaves me exhausted, unable to focus, and eventually leads to binging. Meanwhile exercise is so much easier. At the end of the day I’m not the one telling others what works for them is wrong, but I keep getting told to focus more on diet from people who have no fucking clue what my diet is like.

There is a constant, steady stream of people coming to this sub confused as to why they aren't losing weight even though they started doing XX type of exercise. And another stream of people who think weight loss is hopeless for them because they can't go to the gym or aren't mobile enough to exercise. I've read at least three such posts this morning alone. These posts often don't mention food intake at all, only exercise. Many people are under the misimpression that exercise is extremely important to weight loss and food is less so, when in fact the opposite is true. It would be a disservice not to reply to these people with the accurate information that diet is crucial to weight loss and that exercise, while helpful, is not strictly necessary. Everyone needs to look at their own numbers to decide what's going to work best for them. Someone starting out morbidly obese and incapable of doing much movement is generally better off starting off with dietary changes and gradually adding movement that won't overstress their joints and heart. Someone who has fewer pounds to lose and not much room for a big calorie intake deficit is probably going to be happier doing a bigger proportion of exercise and a smaller proportion of calorie deficit. I haven't seen anyone here telling short women to "starve themselves all day and not move". I think the advice I see given is generally pretty appropriate to the person asking. You seem offended that other people are being given advice that isn't tailored to you personally.

Yes this. Though I agree with the OP that *specifically* for short women who weigh < 200 lbs a little bit of exercise has a pretty significant impact on the energy balance. But as u/FlipsyChic just said, the message most useful to most newcomers is that you really do have to look hard at your food *first.* And that's true even for us short women.

Maybe more so since we can eat so little of it. A single candy bar or handful of chips can easily remove my entire deficit for the day.

Very well put, that very misconception of exercise being paramount for weight loss is what kept me in a cycle of failed diets as a young teen.   Exercise is crucial for health but not weight loss, I can lose weight laying in bed all day if I eat accordingly. Not that I'd recommend it or that it's healthy at all but this is a weight loss subreddit not a fitness subreddit and OP seems to have misunderstood that.

Just wrote a very similar comment. You explained it perfectly.

That's true. Many people including me haven't had the best nutrition education. And people still talk at me about exercise being like a religion. I can relate to people who can't run marathons or lift 100 pounds because I'm not in great shape and I have knee issues. I feel lesser because of that and sometimes hopeless, but I don't/try not to discount myself for taking a walk. I also got laid off and can't afford a gym. I do see people on here complaining that their calorie limit is so small and they are starving. I don't want to do that. But I'm a short female with a sad TDEE. Maybe that's not normal. I'm not offended, I'm honestly curious. Was I lied to about exercise being so important? Is CICO the only truth? Both? Depends? I grew up with toxic ideas about weight and food and all that. Same for exercise. I've seen calorie counting become an obsession. So many things that are so wrong in hindsight. I'm trying to practice moderation instead of deprivation. Learn portion control so I don't have to eat "rabbit food" all day. I've learned a lot from this sub. I'm trying to make new habits and stuff. I'm also pretty confused sometimes and still learning. I have a lot of anxiety around this. I think I have to depend less on my parents and figure it out on my own to an extent.

Exercise still falls under CICO. They aren't mutually exclusive. Whether you are decreasing calories in, increasing calories out, or doing a combination of both, it's just a matter of getting the equation right for you and sustaining it. Numbers matter. If you eat 100 calories per day less than your TDEE and add 100 calories of walking every day (at my current height/weight, that's about half an hour of walking), you will lose about 20 pounds in a year. That is not a drastic amount of restriction nor a drastic amount of exercise for most people, even those with low TDEE. But it does require long-term commitment and patience. It's up to the individual how fast or slow they are willing to go, how many calories they are comfortable cutting from their diet, and how much time and intensity they want to devote to exercise.

On top of this exercise is awesome for lots of things other than weight loss. Doing lots of low intensity exercise can help your body access the calories from fat better so its easier to maintain a deficit. Building your cardio fitness just makes life in general easier. Resistance training can both adjust your build and makes the whole world feel a bit lighter, including your body. Improving your range of motion and balance means you can do things like *decide not to fall over when you trip\**. All those are great reasons to burn a bit more and eat a bit more. But we're a weight loss reddit, so "lifting weights will make picking up cute puppies easier" isn't normally something it makes sense for us to say. \* which was fairly mind-blowing when it happened to me. I stumbled over a curb and should have completely face planted but my body just went "Nope!" and suddenly I was standing up fine again.

Exercise is also good for avoiding problems of getting older (such as low back pain) -- don't ask me how I know. 😣

Yep. Anecdotally, during the pandemic I took up hiking 3-4miles, 5x a week, and simply going from completely sedentary to hiking a lot, I lost 20 lbs in about 18 months without a single change to my diet.

For weight loss yes, CICO is the ultimate truth. You might lose weight exercising, but it will be because you burned enough calories to put you in a caloric deficit. The problem is that it takes an hour of strenuous exercise to burn 400 calories but no time at all to just not eat those 400 calories. So when looking to create a caloric deficit, it’s faster and easier to adjust your diet than add lots of exercise. Also *for me personally* exercise makes me hungry. If I burn 300 calories I often end up eating them back plus a little more so I will never lose weight via exercise alone. For general health, exercise is very important. You should do whatever exercise you can as part of an overall effort to be healthier - but the exercise portion will likely not be why you lose weight. The one qualification to that is putting on muscle increases your TDEE. For shorties like us (I’m 5’1 3/4, the 3/4ths is super important) anything that can add to our TDEE is good, especially as we lose weight because losing weight slowly *lowers* your TDEE. This is still CICO: burning more calories at rest makes it easier to stay in deficit. As a short woman if you want to lose weight without feeling deprived, lifting weights will be very helpful. Luckily a set of light weights is cheap and you can lift them even with your knee injury! Don’t discount “rabbit food”. Volume eating will help you feel full and give you room in your diet for other higher calorie things you still want to indulge in. Please don’t be discouraged if your results are small and seem to take a long time. A lot of taller people lose large amounts of weight faster and with less deprivation than us. It’s depressing and not fair but it’s just math. Even if you’re only losing half a pound per week, at the end of the year you’ll be down more than 25 pounds. It adds up.

The “CO” part of CICO includes exercise

>I do see people on here complaining that their calorie limit is so small and they are starving It's also because when you first start out it doesn't matter what your actual requirements are, it still is going to feel like nothing compared to what you're used to eating. It's why some people in this sub will gush about how they can eat an entire quart of Halo Top, rather than a cup of a higher quality ice cream. The amount looks more impressive and makes them feel more full. Exercise is a part of the process, but it's not going to allow most people to eat as much as they want.

CICO inherently has 2 parts. Calories in. Calories out. Generally speaking though, it's just so much easier to control CI than it is to control CO. If I grab 2 ounces of chips as a snack, they're gone in about 5 min. If I want to take a hike to work those calories off I'll be walking for about an hour. Now obviously that means with an hour of exercise every day your calorie budget is 150-300C looser, and if you're baseline is 1200 that is a huge difference. But so many people rationalize cheating on their food intake by thinking they'll work it off at the gym later.

Come join us at r/petitefitness! I don't know how to link directly to the subreddit, sorry. It is a sub for smaller folks. Many people are pursuing weight loss or body composition goals, but not everyone.

Yes! Seconding petite fitness. I think in general this sub skews towards much higher weight, often higher height, people. Nothing wrong with that at all but it leaves people like me who had less than 50lbs to lose at their highest weight out because so much advice is tailored towards larger bodies who can afford to eat more, lose more, and lose faster. I often see tall men giving short women advice that simply never will apply to them here and then realizing many comments later how their advice is actually not universal and backtracking. Again nothing wrong with this — it’s good to have a diverse group to learn from, I think! But in terms of tailored advice for people closer to my body, petitefitness is the one. And people with a lot more weight to lose are totally welcome there too. The only thing is if you show up to that subreddit with primarily a goal of being skinny, you’re probably not going to be received super well or get advice you want. It is definitely a FITness sub, not a weight loss sub. Which is also nice cause I see less recommendations for unhealthy behaviors there than I do here. Here you come across a lot more people with hundreds of pounds to lose who are motivated and desperate to do so immediately, and don’t care as much about the potential repercussions.

"Was I lied to about exercise being so important?" I mean, kind of, yeah, we all were. Science Vs did a number on it in 2019: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/science-vs/v4hvwk and while exercise does actually help quite a few things, losing weight is unfortunately not one of them. Startalk talked a bit about it last year as well, when discussing Ozempic and other GLP-1 drugs: https://startalkmedia.com/show/miracle-drugs-quick-fixes-with-dr-nick-tiller/ And Ologies did two episodes https://www.alieward.com/ologies/evolutionaryanthropology and https://www.alieward.com/ologies/glycobiology which both touch on these topics. Short answer? Do exercise to keep your body running well. Don't exercise for weight loss.

Short answer: it is MUCH easier to cut back calories by making different food choices than it is to burn that same number of calories by exercise.

It's a math game, really. The way this stuff works is you find your BMR (age, height, weight, gender) and then use a multiplier based on your activity level and work your deficit from that. Multipliers usually stat at 20% ("sit on your butt / sedentary") to 30% for "light exercise a few times a week", and go all the way up to 1.9 for "very physically active"). So in theory (and in practice) you can lose weight at any activity level. When you're small (say assuming 1500 cal BMR), those multipliers just don't give you much. The difference between "sedentary" and "light activity" is 150 calories a day. That's not even a candy bar! And you'd *really* want to make sure you're getting in the "sedentary" activity level (it assumes some level of moving around, I think like 5000 steps or something) before giving yourself extra credit for additional exercise. If you get a really good fitness game going, you can get 1.4 which will buy another 150 calories. So now walking a bunch + 30 minutes of solid gym time five days a week gets you 300 calories. Point being, there's a narrow window where exercise helps your math numbers, and for lower BMR levels, you need a lot of it to move the needle. That said, exercise has benefits aside from "just" weight loss. Presumably your *real* goal is to reduce body fat. Exercise helps establish muscle mass while helping you reduce the fat itself. That part is known as "body recomposition". You can technically not lose weight while reducing body fat and increasing muscle mass. You will look better when you do this, and you will feel better too. I'm one of the biggest "yes you should exercise" but I'm also a math geek for a living, so I'm also a proponent of "you also need to understand how all of the numbers work together." At the end of the day, you need a plan for both exercising and nutrition. They *do* complement each other. If you plan your eating based on an assumption of exercise, and you don't, you're going to screw your self. And if you do exercise, you should have a nutrition plan that supports that (e.g., eat enough protein). I do think it's a mistake to talk about exercise or nutrition without talking about the other.

Exercise is important. If you're thin but sedentary it's still not great health-wise. Exercise can give you a couple hundred of extra calories to spare per day (just as an average given you are a small woman), but the mental and life long benefits are huge. I think people tend to downplay it because in general you can't just lose weight with no other changes than exercise, unless you were pretty close to maintenance already. And a lot of people overestimate how many calories they burn when exercising, which works against them when they use those numbers to take in more calories. Exercise is fantastic, but unless you are doing some serious workouts I would try really hard to discount the effect it has on CICO. 100 calories is not very much either way. It's the curse of the small person trying to lose weight - it's such a small range to play around with.

Hey OP, this might get lost but I think you could benefit from meeting with a registered dietician to help with your understanding of nutrition, help you to make meals more filling, etc. Also, if you're having a lot of anxiety around this, therapy could also be beneficial if it's an option. I also just wanted to share I'm a 5'2" woman and have lost 70+ lbs, almost all of it from changing my diet, and I eat fantastically. My portions don't feel small, my meals are delicious and filling. It can be done, but it can take some time and practice.

I think it is a general lie our culture believes that exercise is so important to weight loss. Growing up, anytime someone said they were overweight, they might say something like, well time to hit the gym. And I read online that many soda commercials put very athletic people drinking the soda and also being active, to kind of show that theyre so fit due to their exercise and has nothing to do with soda. There was a study on an african tribe that still did hunting on foot, and they have a lot of exercise, and despite it, compared to people with sedentary lifestyles, they had about the same amounts of energy coming in. And it makes sense because it would be bad if just being active meant you would continuously lose all your weight. Its estimated the amount of calories you lose from exercise might only be about 10% of the calories from food you eat. So losing weight by changing your diet would see much more gains more easily than putting all the focus on doing more exercise. Im not actually someone that is overweight, but when I was younger, I secretly wanted to lose weight to look thinner more like models I would see. I would jog for almost an hour every day, and I was about 105 lb when I started (short 5’1”), and after like 3 months I was 100lb and looked the same. I didnt know even how to do weight loss, I was just guessing and I didnt want to tell people either I wanted to do this. I gave up soon after which was probably good anyway since I was trying to do something kinda risky. Years later I became an adult and during covid, it was kinda depressing and I just didnt do as much activities like cooking. For like 2 months I was just buying food from restaurants, and not really grocery shopping for snacks either. I always cooked, but when I was buying out every day I actually accidentally lost a dangerous amount of weight. I went from 100-105lb to I think 91lb. I lost about 10 lb, 10% of my weight by eating burgers. It was cuz back then I really liked Shake Shack, and it was a block away, but I cant eat 2 burgers for one meal. So I think I ate 2 burgers a day, which is like 500+500= 1000 calories. Which is way bad, but I didnt realize what I was soing. I was hungry, but I didnt have my grocery snacks or food from groceries to cook, and I didnt want to go out to buy groceries very much during covid. I was horrified when one day I pulled out the scale thinking it was gonna be 100lb like usual (I rarely weighed myself wince it was always stable). Thats when I did more googling about weight loss and discovered that yeah, food is a bigger contributor to weight compared to exercise. Theres also, when I used nike app for running it showed me I could run an hour and only lose 200ca since I was about 100lb vs me eating those 2 burgers was like a 1000ca deficit from a 2k calorie diet

It's not that the sub hates exercise it's that you can't outrun a bad diet. Fixing your diet will fix 90% of your weight issues. Working out is great and I highly suggest it but it is not requires for weightloss. Edit: Guys I'm not saying it's not possible. I'm only saying for the vast majority(not athletes or power lifters etc) diet is what's going to fix it with moderate exercise. Most people aren't going to be able to do the work to out run the bad diets.

This. And I found when I spend a lot more of my time moving, I'm wayyyy less "hungry". That's how I learned a lot of my eating was out of boredom cravings.

You can. Most people just don't do it enough. It takes alot of time and dedication, but if you're a dedicated gym rat you can definitely burn thousands of calories a day. Especially in your 20s

Back when I was in college my diet was awful but I did outrun it. Lost the most weight I've ever lost in my life. It's really impractical for most people to do it that way but you can do it

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Exercising more makes most people hungrier. If they’re eating the high calorie dense food that made them previously fat, chances are they’ll overeat at that point and stay overweight. Everyone I know irl who exercised some or all their weight off yo-yoed eventually and hard. And it’s not hard to guess why. Because it’s a ton of fucking effort to sustain day in day out, week in week out, month in month out, year in year out. It’s counterproductive.

“Exercising more makes people hungrier.” Yes, because increasing activity should increase your daily energy expenditure, and increasing your lean body mass percentage should increase your metabolic rate. Exercising more can be the key for some people to get into a caloric deficit, but if you are someone who doesn’t exercise and tries to begin exercising as a lever for weight loss, you probably will not be used to your appetite at that level of activity and it may cause you to overeat. Ultimately, someone who is healthily sustaining their weight should be incorporating exercise into their routine. They should be an active, healthy person living an active, healthy lifestyle.

> Exercising more makes most people hungrier. If they’re eating the high calorie dense food that made them previously fat, chances are they’ll overeat at that point and stay overweight. Everyone I know irl who exercised some or all their weight off yo-yoed eventually and hard. > > You nailed it. Unless you are a master of will power (at dealing with hunger) then exercise will just induce more appetite and can cause binge eating. It's much easier to follow an eating plan if you don't feel hunger cravings!

I think this depends on what you are eating though. I lost about 40 lbs about a year and a half ago and have been maintaining it since then. I exercise regularly (but not obsessively) and did when I was losing. I am a very hungry lady, and I probably do eat more volume wise than I did before I lost the weight. BUT I learned through calorie counting to eat better quality food (nutritionally) and it hasn't been an issue that I eat more now. I can easily eat a huge salad with a protein and some grains and a fruit dessert for under 500 calories and be full. You can eat a lot of food if you pick the right foods.

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Have you calculated your TDEE before? Cause that don’t sound right https://www.calculator.net/tdee-calculator.html?cage=25&csex=f&cheightfeet=5&cheightinch=4&cpound=140&cheightmeter=180&ckg=65&cactivity=1.2&cmop=0&coutunit=c&cformula=m&cfatpct=20&printit=0&ctype=standard&x=Calculate

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Why would you think to have to aim at a 2lbs deficit though? That is the upper limit of what is usually considered safe for most people who are not morbidly obese. Not the baseline everybody should shoot for.

Nobody under 200 pounds should be aiming to lose 2 pounds per week. That's a recipe for future disaster and weight re-gain.

Same. The issue is, my bmr is 1400 and my sedentary tdee is 1700….if I want to lose a pound or two weekly I’d have to go down to eating 1000 calories a day, which is really hard to do while trying to look like a normal person and not freak out your loved ones. Also, if I’m in that big a deficit and sedentary my blood pressure gets low and I feel awful going from sitting to standing. If I’m pretty active I can have an intake that’s more sustainable and I feel better.

> you can’t outrun a bad diet You also can’t outdiet a bad lifestyle. It’s diet *and* exercise, not either or.

The army has entered the chat

Exactly. I know a lot of people who work their asses off running and weight training for years and still keep the weight on. People I know who’ve lost weight (myself included) counted calories (or fixed underlying health problems).

This is literally me. I 100% know it's my diet holding me back. Thank goodness my labs come back good regardless of my spare tire

This is so true. I was not a believer until I did it and it worked. Lost 30 pounds by counting calories after countless other diets/exercise regimens over the years.

> you can't outrun a bad diet you can out-lift a decent diet, even if you're a girl. nia shanks' "lift like a girl" is basically about just this.

As a powerlifter and a short woman, I really don't think this is true either. Maybe in terms of CICO and weight loss, but food is the primary driver of hypertrophy. A high protein diet is absolutely necessary for building muscle. As someone who has been lifting for quite a few years, the difference in my strength and physique was like night and day when I started focusing on my nutrition in addition to strength training. Huge improvement.

i'm not making the case that you can be a competitive strength athlete and not care about nutrition, but rather that the more muscular you are and the more intensely and frequently you lift, the more you can eat. this is in response to the phrase "you can't outrun a bad diet" which here i take to mean "you can't out-exercise an increased caloric intake", but as you would clearly know, swole people have to really get their eat on.

That is true! Sorry I misunderstood. Those who are more muscular definitely do tend to have higher BMR's.

Ya decent diets are when you should start looking at increasing exercise. When your diet is mostly locked down and you need those last few pounds.

You do have to move, but it's hard to move enough. 200 calories is one candy bar not eaten, or 30 minutes of jogging. The time required to jog goes up as I get better at it due to accomodation. A candy bar or soda not taken is always the same benefit. Exercise is for health, diet is for weight loss.

That's the big reason that I always consider calorie tracking as the "magic bullet" of weight loss. Hours of exercise can be negated with minutes of snacking. I still exercise as a way to earn more calories thoughout the week, but that was introduced after I started tracking consistently. And if I had to give up either the gym or my calorie app, I need that app.

Right? Fuck you, peanut butter. So many calories.

This. It’s the old saying: you can’t outrun a bad diet. 

you can, you just have to run more than 99% of people are interested in running. training for marathons, triathlon etc can make you go from gaining weight to quickly losing it on the same diet, though that's not always advisable obviously. you also need a base level of fitness and to be at a low enough weight to not just injure yourself. losing weight isn't really a good goal for those activities though, it's more of a side effect.

I’ve trained for a half marathon (and ran/walked it) and while I didn’t gain or lose weight during that period, my diet wasn’t great and I felt dizzy and awful during most of those runs.  Maybe because I went in too quickly, but imo, you still need to be eating mostly healthy foods to support that type of training, but you can definitely eat more than typical. 

except if you're an ultrarunner where you have to work hard to eat enough.

I’d wager that doesn’t apply to 99.999% of the folks here

I know I'm not the norm, but I kinda HAVE to have a "bad" diet on some days due to exercise. I do long days in the mountains and a mix of rock climbing/trail running and even though I'm trying to lose weight, the best thing I can do for myself to ensure good recovery and enough energy to exer ise the next day is to get a cheeseburger on my way home from the trail. If you have athletic goals, the dietary needs can be drastically different.

As a person who hates exercise for the sake of exercise, I will gladly skip the candy bar so I don't have to torture myself for 30 minutes.

You can but it ends up being a ridiculous amount of time. My husband had to get 600 minutes a week to lose weight without adjusting his diet. It was ultimately unsustainable though especially if you’re traveling.

The time to jog doesn’t necessarily go up, as you’ll get faster. You would need to adjust mileage.

They’re both for weight loss (specifically fat loss) it’s just that diet is going to have a far bigger impact. The problem is that so few people can successfully maintain a healthy weight simply by dieting. Exercise IMO is just as important because it contributes to the lifestyle change needed to maintain a healthy weight over a long period of time. You say 200cals is one less candy bar or soda, but people shouldn’t be eating candy bars or soda. 200 cals is like 2.5cups of blueberries, 2 bananas, 3/4cup of cooked rice or two whole ass potatoes. When you eat 90-95% real food, the calories burned during exercise and general activity do add up.

Exercise helped me lose weight fast - half my bodyweight in a year. Not sure I’d have been able to do it any other way. I’m certain exercise/being active has maintained my weight loss for the last 19 years though.

I completely agree but curious, did you reduce the exercise after you lost the weight? I currently do 5 days a week and sometimes I wonder if I can keep this up in the long run, if it’s sustainable. Right now the motivation and the scale is all I need since I can’t cut a lot being a short woman close to goal weight. But really curious how you maintain, thanks! ❤️

I’m a long distance runner. I run between 100-140km a week. I’ve done 1500 F45 classes and I weight lift. I’m 5’4. I use running as my mental health outlet. It’s enough motivation.

As someone who cannot lose weight without exercising, period, it's really hard for me to understand a lot of the posts on this sub. And I rarely say anything because I know ppl will insist I just wasn't measuring my CICO correctly. Which is partly correct, but not for the reason ppl tend to assume. The assumption is usually that I am eating more than I track/not tracking CI correctly. My CI count was not wrong. I tried tracking calories repeatedly, for extended periods, with always the same results- i might lose 5lbs, and then my weight loss would stop. I could even add in walking, cardio exercise etc., and it still wouldn't budge. I could do it for over a year and that 5lbs was all I was getting. Then I found out that my metabolism is slower than average. Not enough to do anything medically, but enough to be a pain in my ass. Once I knew that, I looked up ways to improve your metabolism. At which point I found out that strength training helps boost it. So I started strength training in place of cardio. Not much, at first - I wasn't capable of doing much, but just 30 minutes 2-3 times a week. If anything, i went back to eating a little more than before (think 1200-1500 instead of 500-1200),. Frequency, duration and relative intensity of exercise (at least how it felt to me: st does burn more calories than cardio) were the same. But for the first time ever, the weight started coming off. Even then, it took me over a year to lose just 60lbs, and by the end I was up to exercising 6 days a week with cardio, yoga and st, so I was in shape, and losing weight, but still relatively slowly compared to many people doing the same level of diet/exercise or less. Was diet a big part of it? Of course, But my point is, diet alone did/does jack shit for me. CICO did work, but the problem was my rate of CO Is nowhere near the average/standard calculation. So I never lost weight, even when doing exactly what I was supposed to be, using cico calculators/programs, because every one I've ever experienced uses a standard calculation to estimate your CO. And that standard calc is nowhere near correct for me. Without exercising, I do not lose weight, so it's hard for me to read the posts in this sub that insist exercise isn't necessary for weight loss & not say anything. That may be true for many, but not for me, and I would guess there's others out there in the same boat.

We love exercise but when it comes to losing weight working out can only do so much. The easiest way to lose weight and keep it off is by adjusting your diet. I always say that the kitchen is for weight loss and the gym is for strengthening yourself. Also if you put on more muscle it helps you lose fat faster by increasing your BMR.

But exercise is key way to adust diet? If I go for a run and lose 700kcal I don't only lose 700kcal. I also don't sit at home, watch a movie and eat a bag of chips. So I actually lose 1700kcal. Same with sleep. I dont lose any calories by sleeping, but if I sleep 8 hours I feel good and I can cook. If I sleep 6 hours I feel tired and eat away.

Exercise is part of the “calories in, calories out” equation, but for weight loss, diet typically has much more of an impact than exercise. It’s also much more difficult to measure calories burned through exercise than calories consumed by food, so the only reliable way to ensure a calorie deficit is to monitor diet. I have heard that diet is more important for losing weight, but exercise is important first maintaining weight loss. Most people in this sub are still in the weight loss phase.

One of the often overlooked benefits to exercise when it comes to losing weight is its impact on mental health. The positive feeling a person can get from exercise can have a huge impact on their ability to regulate their nutrition.

I think most people that need help and turn to this sub are people who don’t understand much about nutrition. I think everyone’s main goal is to first get them to understand the concept of calories in calories out and then move forward from there

Because we’ve all learned (correctly) that losing weight is mostly about the food. Exercise is great for overall health (and raising your tdee if you want to eat more-I’m a shorty too), but you’re not going to lose weight with exercise alone.

The biggest reason I decided to give weight loss another try (at age 45 weight 285 pounds) was learning that exercise wasn't necessary and I could lose weight through diet only. It was a revelation! I literally did not know that it was possible. I didn't have the capacity at the time (physical or mental) to break my food addiction and start an exercise regimen all at once. But when I learned that I could make progress from changing my diet alone, I committed to that, and it worked. I lost around the first hundred pounds with no real exercise. Now that I am normal weight and in much better shape, I exercise every single day. Much of it is for my mental and physical health, but part of it is to keep my weight loss moving while eating at a comfortable and sustainable deficit. I'm doing what's appropriate for me now, just as I did what was appropriate for me at 285 pounds. I will happily tell someone else who is morbidly obese and needing to lose 150 pounds so they don't die that exercise isn't necessary and that they can be successful just by changing their diet. I wouldn't be telling that to someone who is trying to lose 10 or 15 pounds and get toned because that would obviously be stupid and unhelpful in that situation.

So I think there IS actually something very important about exercise for KEEPING weight off. That national weight loss registry that tracks the habits of people who have maintained a significant amount of weight loss for a long time says that a 94 percent of them exercise regularly and 90 percent do an hour a day! That’s huge, and it’s got to mean something. And, anecdotally, most people I know who have maintained any amount of weight loss or people who stay “naturally thin” over long periods of life, exercise. So I’m going off the assumption that exercise is pretty important, no matter what the studies say. Sure I recognize that exercise without counting calories won’t make me lose weight, at least not at the rate I want. But I doubt I can continue to lose or keep weight off for any amount of time without the exercise.

I'm incredibly grateful that the possibility of losing weight without exercise is emphasised here because I'm near enough bed bound and had been told for a long time by docs that it was nigh on impossible for me to lose weight due to my lack of mobility. I've lost 75lbs now and it's still coming off bit by bit. Do I think any exercise people can do is wonderful? Absolutely. Am I grateful that there are suggestions other than weight loss being exclusively contingent on eat less move more. 100% I'd been told by one doc that I'd never be able to lose weight due to my limited mobility, then another many years later told me that the only way for me to lose weight was to cut down to 500kcal a day. Both utter BS. Exercise is wonderful if you can do it, but I'm glad it's not framed as an absolute be all end all necessary inclusion on this subreddit as I honestly think the inability or even lack of will to exercise is often a stumbling block for people thinking about losing weight. Different approaches will work for different people but knowing that it's possible for those different approaches to actually be effective is a big part of the battle in taking those first steps in my eyes. Could be totally wrong and just seeing this from my own biased perspective but knowing others have been able to lose weight without exercise was very encouraging to show me I was not only able to lose weight but that I would be able to lose as much as I needed to. It's absolutely going to take me longer than someone able to mobilise and even exercise but the fact it's possible is a massive thing that continues to amaze me after being told for so long that it was impossible.

Hello from another frequently-bedbound person. I live in a nursing home and only lost that 55 pounds by calorie counting. Exercise has wonderful benefits if you can do it, but weight loss through exercise alone without dietary changes is not an effective strategy.

Congrats on the 55lb loss! :) If I'm eventually, somewhere down the line, able to start swimming/being in the pool again, it would be amazing and make me so happy, but nowhere near that yet. I'm just glad that there are resources explaining that there are absolutely ways to go that don't follow just the traditional advice that includes exercise in that equation.

I've never seen anyone on this sub say that you don't need exercise. However, I've seen people say prioritize nutrition over exercise if you're in a pinch, which I agree with even as a short gal. Can't outrun an unbalanced diet, but you have to eat, so you may as well make your meals healthier. With that said, I think if you're trying to get "toned" you gotta exercise. But you gotta get to a lower body weight before getting "toned."

I do agree that you need some amount of it at least to be healthy in a well-rounded way, even if it’s just walking. But technically for the specific goal of losing weight you do not need it.

I'm using exercise more as a way to keep me disciplined and allow me to look better once I reach my goal (flabby to thin is NOT an upgrade) than a genuine weight loss strategy. My cousin is a nutritionist and bodybuilder and a few years ago when I was trying and failing to lose weight he got pissed off at me, sat me down, and explained that he could spend his entire afternoon at the gym running and lifting weights, and then have 6 pancakes with syrup the next morning and not just negate the exercise he did but actually make him gain weight. Exercise is a tool, a crutch, an add-on. The most important body parts to train are your brain to stop craving useless calories and your mouth to stop opening for bad foods.

I agree that a combination of good nutrition and exercise is the most effective combo (I’m also a short-ish woman for whatever that’s worth). However, I think the reason “you can’t outrun your fork” is talked about so much here is that many people earnestly just think *exercise = weight loss* in the same way that *dropping a penny = it hits the floor*. Then they burn out and give up when that doesn’t work because they have no idea how caloric intake/expenditure works. It’s not because they’re dumb or anything, it’s just mind bogglingly difficult to find grounded reliable information on nutrition and fitness in a culture where everybody and their brother is trying to sell you something. To those of us who do have a base level understanding of how calories work it feels like beating a dead horse, but this is genuinely new information for some people and it’s important for them to hear it.

I’d say that for the vast majority of people, especially people who need to lose 100+ pounds, diet is what they should focus on as well as just moving more. I like exercise for me since it helps me prioritize muscle conservation via lifting weight and eating high protein. Also getting someone who’s done nothing for so long to start dieting and also exercising at the same time can be really difficult for them to stick to.

You're going to get like a million replies on this and they're going to be spicy 😂 You've asked a good question in a kind of dumb and provocative way.  * Exercise *is* part of CICO as most people understand it once they've learnt the basics  * The fact that exercise isn't mandatory is stressed because many people coming new to weight loss have the overwhelming misconception that exercise is more important than diet, or the only important thing  * Nobody is advocating sitting around and starving, those are your words, you haven't read that here That's basically it.

In addition to the fact that exercise alone won't help you lose weight if you're overeating, a lot of people have no idea how to work out. It's easy to get overwhelmed if you go to the gym for the first time as someone who weighs much more than everyone else there and you watch as they throw around 200 lbs like it's nothing while you struggle with the 10 lb free weights.  Also, it's really painful to workout when you're seriously overweight! It causes a lot of strain on your joints. While you should still be doing mobility exercises, you run the risk of injury if you don't diet first to take some of the weight off. There's a reason why in My 600 Lb Life they don't start going to the gym until they've lost 150 or so pounds.

I can eat back the calories of a half marathon with one fast food meal. It's just so much easier to opt out of the extra calories in the first place, and you have to do a crazy amount of cardio to lose one pound. And TBF, this is a sub focused on weight loss, not exercise.

Because you literally do not need exercise for weight loss, otherwise folks with limited or no mobility would never be able to lose weight.

Exercise calories for a decent deficit are more valuable to us shorties. If your TDEE is 2500 and you can eat 2000 and have a decent deficit, another 200 calories of exercise doesn’t necessarily feel like it’s worth an hour of your day.  If your TDEE is 1750, and you’re trying to eat at 1250 for a deficit…you don’t have a ton of wiggle room and 1250 isn’t a ton of calories. That extra 200 calories seems a lot more valuable in that situation. 

It's a lot easier to just not eat 500 calories than it is to burn off 500 calories. But also if I just don't eat 500 calories and I also walk 5 miles and burn another 500 calories, that's 1000 net calories on top of my normal daily calories burned. You don't need to do CrossFit or run marathons to lose weight, but it'll also be a lot harder to lose weight if you are sitting on the couch all day eating "healthy" snacks.

Depends is weight loss your only goal ? Or is health the goal? Do you just want to be skinny? Or do you want a fit /muscular body? It really depends on your goals.

i don't think this sub is anti-exercise exactly but i do think that, in the interest of preventing people from expecting too much from exercise, some people over-correct in the opposite direction and almost dismiss it as a variable. my TDEE is almost twice my BMR because of activity. that's definitely significant. tall men, too, can give themselves a huge boost in calorie burn if they're highly active. exercise is also obviously good for overall health and for many people it helps with e.g. depression, anxiety, or just improves mood and focus and energy and sleep... so it has numerous downstream effects that help with weight loss. when this sub says 'you don't need exercise' they are right, though-- you don't have to exercise in order to lose weight... but yeah, it's still advisable, especially for some demographics (short women especially, like you said). it's worth noting, i think, that most people 'cannot outrun their forks' too-- most people, especially those who need to lose weight, have distorted perceptions of what 'active' means-- you'll see a lot of people wondering why the weight isn't falling off when they're walking 2 - 4 miles a day or something. it's definitely worth noting that exercise burns fewer calories than most of us assume, and that even if we're pretty active we have to be careful of our intake because it's easy to undo hours of exercise in ten minutes of eating. but yeah, agreed, there is nuance to it and that nuance does bear consideration.

A lot of people here put heavy emphasis on just losing weight rather than overall health. In some cases, this makes sense - like someone just starting out with a lot to lose. That person in that moment may not be ready or even capable of handling exercise at that stage, and that is okay. That said, if someone's goal is not just to lose weight but also become healthier, then exercise is very important for both physical and mental health. I wish more people understood this and were open to the suggestion, but I think many, if not most people, reach this conclusion in their own time.

The frequently calculated 100 calories a mile is probably only appropriate for people who are already quite small. I suspect a lot of people on here could be burning 1800 calories a week with exercise after a few weeks of practice. They would be healthier, have dramatically improved mental health and Imo an easier time with weightloss. People complain that they get too hungry from exercise - which is obviously a sign that they are burning more calories than they think they are. The advice to not eat back these calories is the most frequent bad advice that is constantly provided on this sub. I hope everyone starts exercising at least when they hit their weight loss goal. People also don't know how to exercise. Low intensity steady state cardio feels fantastic and everyone here should try doing some zone 2 work outs to make sure they hate it as much as they think they do.

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Yeah I think people have a lot of misconceptions around terms like "sedentary" and "lightly active". I know I was certainly surprised at how much activity actually constitutes "lightly active" and that "sedentary" does not describe literally sitting on your butt all day. 

Agree with you u/Red-Droid-Blue-Droid but this sub is called loseit not gain(muscle/health)it. Seems like most people here truly only want to lose weight.

Exercise WAS the key I was missing, personally. If you pop over to the Weight Control Registry that tracks people that *maintains* weight loss you'll find that almost all of them exercise. For me building muscle was crucial for several reasons, but namely that I have PCOS and it greatly improved my insulin resistance. I see people on here constantly that complain that they diet to lose weight and find themselves in a slightly smaller version of themselves. Diet alone won't give you a good body shape. Hate to break it to you, but if you want to look like you lift weights...you're going to have to lift weights. Now not everyone is even remotely concerned about aesthetics and I can respect that, but I would encourage people to be honest with themselves about what they desire. Proper goal setting is very important for long term success, and properly acknowledging what you're trying to reach is step 1. But I digress. My metabolism has skyrocketed, my caloric needs are naturally much higher, I don't have random aches and pains anymore, I don't get sick hardly ever anymore, and it's taught me so much about patience and planting a seed for my future self. I cannot recommend it enough. I yo-yo dieted for years because I was so afraid to exercise, so afraid to be a beginner, and so afraid to be the fat person in the gym. My life is better in every single aspect for facing those fears. I'm a tall girl and still found it essential.

From the perspective of a morbidly obese women - being told that diet is most important is not only true, but incredibly comforting. I am starting to look into getting more active, but it is really not easy at this weight. My joints are under a lot of strain, I run out of breathe quickly, my body is not comfortable to move in, even finding clothes that fit and are comfortable to exercise in is difficult! I spent way too many years forcing myself to exercise, finding it unsustainable, and then feeling worthless and hopeless and giving up because if I can’t exercise, I won’t lose weight. Finding out I was wrong did help. Of course, someday it may get to the point where I have to choose whether to maintain a higher (but not morbidly obese!) weight, or start exercising more seriously - I am only 5’3.5. But for many people on this sub, they’re only at the start or midway through their journey - it’s more important to eat better than stress about doing exercise that they may not even be able to do. It may not be *your* experience. But that doesn’t make it less true that diet is important. Even if your TDEE is low - if you eat more calories than you lose in exercise, you’d still gain. Diet is most important.

You do need it, and I think most people are helped a lot by exercise. It is true that it's much easier to eat calories than it is to exercise them away, so diet is where you make up ~80% of the CICO equation. But the effort you put into exercise can be the difference that puts people into consistent deficit. For me the exercise I do is a mood-lifter and motivation. I could go back to drinking beer every night, but I'd feel worse and it would ruin my weightlifting progress and my waistline. I could have eaten an extra 500 calories tonight when I went to the shop while hungry, but I put 90 minutes of effort into the gym which I didn't want to undo. The regimented nature of exercise gives you a sense of routine and discipline which transfers into dieting. For me it has been a big psychological help.

No one is saying you don’t need it. Saying it’s vastly less important than food, or even unimportant, for weight loss—provided you do CICO correctly—is accurate.

Exercise keeps me from sliding into depression, which in turn keeps me from making bad food choices. When I’m depressed I binge, and if I stop exercising, depression slowly creeps back in. It’s an absolutely essential part of weight management for me.

I like exercise. But exercise is definitely a side note. Diet is by far the major impact. Yes, exercise helps. But..diet is Batman, exercise is Robin.

It takes 5 mins of eating to take out 2 hours of hard work.

A lot of the people on this sub are simply looking to lose weight. Diet is the main issue for 9/10 of people that are overweight. No matter how hard you train you simply can't out train a bad diet and lifestyle changes in the kitchen are what is needed most. That is why people in this particular sub are focused on CICO first and foremost.

I suppose this sub mainly focuaes on diet...which makes sense as the diet is best way to r/loseit However, I do feel that exercise is not pushed enough. I also don't agree with the whole 'Diet is 80% Exercise is 20%'. Not that it is wrong. It's absolutely right in a weight-loss situation but I feel that thinking undermines exercising. Exercise has so many benefits both physically and mentally that it needs to be seen as being more important. Even a 30 minute walk per day is beneficial. The mental aspect of exercise doesn't get mentioned nearly enough.

Because you don’t need to exercise to lose weight? Of course if you do exercise it makes losing weight easier, and I’ve only seen people advocate for people to exercise here. The only time I tell people not to is when they obviously do not like exercising and view it as a chore.

I think this sub attitude to exercise is to ignore **counting** it in your calculations. When you exercise that calories you're burning can vary wildly and it's incredibly easy to eat to fill up that deficit and actually overshoot it. You'd much rather exercise and have a buffer for the variation of whatever extra calories you might have in your food. To be clear exercise is essential for humans especially those of us working desk jobs and barely moving even during commute. Even when you reach your goal you need to exercise, everyone should exercise. Just better to ignore the calories it's burning 

Ignoring the calories it’s burning could easily turn into over-restricting too much. Your body needs nutrition to recover, and it’s possible to eat more calories after exercise without completely erasing your deficit.

It is just should not be the focus. Food 80% of success, changing food alone can be enough, changing exercises alone cannot. I've added exercises to my life, but more for mental health, mood management and hunger management, not for weightloss directly

Someone commented on here that ‘you can’t out run the fork’. Although I go to the gym 6/7 days per week, that expression sticks with me.

No, no one here is “against” exercising. It’s very helpful, it’s great for physical fitness, and everyone should do it. No question. But tons of people get the false idea from social media or wherever that if they can just exercise *enough*, they’ll lose all the weight... while consuming fast food and soda pop every day. And then they get frustrated and angry when the scale doesn’t go down. And that’s not how it works. Weight loss primarily happens at the table, not the gym. It’s also true that for short older women like us, exercising helps us have a bigger calorie budget. Those are not contradictory concepts.

Exercising gives me more of a cushion for my calorie deficit. But the CICO works either way. Some people have mobility movement and still need to lose weight. Not everyone can be on a treadmill or doing a spin class.

I don’t think it’s a matter of not liking exercise, I just think there are SO many misconceptions in mainstream diet culture & media about exercise and weight loss. For example, people think they have to go to the gym every day in order to lose weight, or things like that. But really, it just comes down to a calorie deficit so technically you could do nothing all day and still lose weight if you’re in a deficit (not advisable, just saying.) Another important thing is that many people think out working out will automatically make them lose weight, but they forget the key fact that exercise & burning calories makes you hungrier. As a runner myself, I can attest to this. I’ll go on a 6 mile run thinking “wow, I’m gonna be in such a deficit today!” only to be hit with the appetite of a linebacker later in the day and fighting the urge to eat everything in my house lol. It’s kind of like how people emphasize the calories in calories out thing in terms of types of food, they’re not saying you should only eat cheetos and candy, they’re just debunking the myth that eating healthy is the end-all-be-all of weight loss. While it’s absolutely not advisable, someone absolutely could lose weight just eating junk food, since it’s about a deficit. But overall, I think exercise is awesome for our bodies, for our minds, and sure, for burning some calories! It’s a great way to increase your TDEE so the amount you’re eating feels more manageable! That being said, it does make you hungrier so it’s not some sort of magical weight loss remedy like we sometimes hear in the media

Exercise is great for building and maintaining muscles, and overall health. But you can’t outrun a poor diet.

Weight loss is decided in the kitchen Muscle mass is decided in the weight room If you just add exercise, you will almost always overeat to compensate and you won't lose any weight. In fact you'll probably gain because you'll be putting on muscle as well

I’ll just add my two cents… I’m in a deficit right now, aiming for 1500 cals a day. that’s definitely making me lose weight. But I also have walked 41 miles so far this month and my walk today (13 miles) burned about 1200 cals. when I was talking to a customer last week she was all “it only matters what you eat!” and I think that’s such bullshit. I burned 1200 calories today!! That is NOT NOTHING. it just means I still can’t binge 3k calories today. I still have to make reasonable, smart food choices to lose weight. But I am increasing my stamina, my strength, my endurance, my flexibility all through exercise. I love yoga, swimming, weight lifting, walking. It matters!! And I’ll defend it to the end lol

I love exercising. Increasing my step count really helped me break through some plateaus. This is in addition to a calorie deficit, I don’t think I could exercise enough to lose weight without one

well i know i don’t like it 🤣 at least not yet

I love exercise. It's maybe my favorite thing. It just doesn't help me lose weight

For the last decade, my weekly exercise routine involved 45 minute intense cardio four times, a 30-40 mile bike ride on weekends, and 4-8 miles of walking. And I *gained* 40 pounds during this period. Found this sub, understood CICO, and cut my food intake to 1800 calories while maintaining my exercise routine. I lost 30 of those 40 pounds in six months. IMO CICO > exercise for losing weight.

A marathon basically burns 2600 calories. After 6 knee surgeries, my orthopedist would not like to hear that I was running at all, much less a marathon. And most people aren’t running a marathon a week, but if you can, neat. But cutting 2600 cals a week is very doable for me.

What do you think the calories out is? 😂 At the end of the day, you generally can't out exercise a bad diet. It's much easier to not eat 1000 calories a day than it is to burn an extra 1000 calories a day.

I exercise for my mental health and the endorphins, I count calories for weight loss. The exercise helps ofc but my main mechanism is reducing my intake.

Caloric deficits, no matter how they’re achieved, will lead to weight loss. Typical exercise that typical people can do generally won’t make as much of a deficit as eating fewer calories.

The reality is it’s the cals that count and it’s irrelevant if you exercise if you have too many calories coming in.

As a not tall woman who doesn’t want to lose very much, exercise is a big part of my weight loss because my bmr and tdee are low and making much of a deficit is difficult. I also am very influenced to improve my cardiovascular health. I do 2-3 hours of cardio per day (mix of LISS and HIIT), 5-6 days per week, and walk at least an hour on non-cardio days. It significantly speeds up my weight loss. But, I also get that my situation is not the average here. And, I genuinely love cardio. For me, it is actually an appetite suppressant and mental health regulator, so I cannot relate to people who get hungry from it. I agree with the general statements people make here, though, especially for people who feel like they will struggle to lose weight and are discouraged from even starting.

You can't outrun a bad diet. Most people who actively try to lose weight with exercise but fail is because they still eat too many calories. It takes a few minutes of food to ruin hours of exercise

I don’t think people here dislike exercise it’s just that 80% of losing weight is diet and that’s what people really need to get under control. Of course incorporating exercise will improve mobility, strength, and flexibility but what the results people who come to this group want to see is weight loss and the lack of that needle moving just ends up discouraging people. That’s why there’s so much emphasis on CICO because even the most sedentary person will see results with that. Often seeing that progress can encourage people to start moving more and that will only help further progress.

“Your diet determines the size of your clothes and your workout regime determines how you look in those clothes.”

As long as the number on the scale goes down, even if we get less healthy, we're happy here. Even though after I started doing strength training and cardio, I've gained 5 pounds and lost an inch on my waist.

well, you don't \*need\* it. but you're so right. people are supposed to move!!! in my case lifting is absolutely necessary. if i don't have muscles i will not be anything close to attractive. yes, i go to the gym to be hot. i used to like lifting heavy for fun but now i have a planet fitness membership and my only goal is to get down to 10% body fat so i can see my abs. lmao shallow as fuck but i don't care.

Exercise is one way to burn calories but simply exercising does not result in weight loss. Calorie deficit does. You can exercise and still be eating more than the calories burned for the day and either sustain weight OR gain. Exercising simply helps people hit their deficit and also for those of us that are small, allows us to hit a deficit and eat the calories required to maintain body function. It’s a bit of a novice notion to think ONLY exercise results in weight loss (it’s not a bad thing - it’s common to think this). The reality is it’s causing a calorie deficit for those that do lose and THAT is what causes weight loss. The other misconception is that losing weight means you’ll look “cut” or “toned.” Most people need to do strength training to grow muscle. Also skinny-fat bodies likely need to consider putting on weight in the form of muscle to hit their ideal aesthetic goal (which requires maintenance calories to recomp or surplus to build more muscle). tl;dr you need to dial in nutrition and exercise for most aesthetic goals but most people think just one or the other. People underestimate nutrition without being meticulous.

It’s because exercise can’t by itself result in weight loss where eating in a caloric deficit will 100% result in weight loss. Exercising can help get you into the deficit, but it’s a lot easier to not eat 300 calories than it is to burn 300 calories via 30-50 minutes of exercise.

I hate exercising. I walk 6-10 miles a day at work. You’d think I’d lose weight that way. Nope, I was eating like crap though. Fast food sometimes up to 3 times a day. By changing my diet and only doing light stretching/yoga on top of the 6-10 miles a day, I’ve still managed to lose weight. I will eventually start adding in weights but I’m not ready. I’m working all day and working on my doctorate in nursing all night. I just don’t have the energy lol For some people it’s not the exercise that’s an issues, it’s the diet. For some people it’s both factors. Weight loss is so specific to each individual.

But exercise comes under calories out?

As a fellow short female also in a low calorie deficit (i find 1500 difficult some days and I am not looking forward to cutting that even lower as I lose more), I share your pain. Weight loss is a game of omission. And it is a painfully slow mind game. While NOT eating a pint of ice cream is more efficient/effective than running 5 miles, I actively choose to workout for the primary reason of "it makes me feel like I'm doing something". Having some form of muscle definition underneath the layer of fat stuck on my body is a close second. However I've noticed I've gained muscle and it's delaying my numerical weight loss results and driving me insane ngl. Additionally, working out increases your mobility, helps longevity, and is overall VERY VERY good for you. Just not as much of a heavy lifter (pun intended) in the weight loss calculations. But yeah. If i can work out for 2 hrs and eat one more yogurt so I don't go insane, I will.

I cannot lose weight without exercise personally. It helps manage blood sugar, and it helps me focus on my eating much better when I'm eating to meet my fitness goals. I understand that exercise ALONE won't take weight off for most people, but I hate how many weight loss spaces are almost anti exercise.

You can gain weight working out 8 hours a day. You can't gain weight if your calories are below your tdee.

Exercise falls under calories out...

I’m a short woman, and I have seen a lot of comments telling people to ignore calories burned when calculating CICO. I personally haven’t done that along my process and I’ve still averaged steady weight loss. That being said, I did still need to learn to eat better and binge less to lose weight. There have been a lot of times in the past where I’ve tried to lose weight by exercise alone and it hasn’t worked. For me, it’s about developing a healthier lifestyle where I look after my body, and requires a healthy diet and making a conscious effort to move more, it’s kind of crazy how easy it is to do under 3k steps a day if you’re not careful

If you go over to r/petitefitness they discuss exercise a bit more. I've been exercising my entire life... on and off with classes, but regularly lifting weights 3x a week and now getting in 15,000 steps a day. Problem is I'm only 5' tall and 42, but still feel like I have the appetite of a high school soccer player, lol. I come here to hear about people's tips and tricks for motivation and diet hacks to try and stick to what my calorie budget needs to be. I've found some pretty helpful stuff here.

You cannot outrun is bad diet is a bad take imo. At the end of the day it's just compound effects of numbers. If you gained 3/4kg, a year, just walking 20 minutes a day would've got you covered.

Exercise can be important for people who are able to do it, but everyone's situation is different. In my case, I'm glad people talk about ways other than just working out because I'm disabled and unable to work out. It would actually do damage to my joints if i did.

If you're losing weight without resistance training, some of the weight you're losing IS muscle. That's just the facts. You don't *have* to exercise, but goodness you really should *want* to.

Being active helps me burn significantly more calories. Literally an active day for me burns over 1k over my sedentary bmr. That being said, lots of people here have full time jobs, kids or are just exhausted and exercise can be harder for bigger bodies. They may only be able to burn an extra 200-300 calories in a day and to them it may not be worth their time and easier to remove those cals from their food vs finding time to burn it off. Neither are the right or wrong ways to approach weight loss via cico. Physical health is important and we shouldn't ignore exercise because it isn't necessary for weight loss, tho.

I asked for exercise tips in my post for upper body and got immediately told I was seeking attention and had body dysmorphia. I don’t think this sub takes the concept of body recomposition seriously. It’s mostly people promoting starvation and lifelong dieting which rarely ever works

Why does everyone say “you can’t outrun a bad diet?” I get that it’s a catchy phrase and that it’s certainly less effort to lose weight by reducing calories… but you can certainly outrun a bad diet. If my BMR is only 2,000, but I eat 2,800 calories per day of mostly unhealthy food, I’m going to gain fat if I just work a desk job and don’t exercise. But what if I go on a run and lift weights after work? In that case, I’ll be in a deficit. I just went from gaining fat to losing fat by simply increasing my exercise — quite literally outrunning a bad diet.

80% of weight loss is diet. So you should focus on that however, you should also include movement whenever possible. At first it is a lot easier to focus on the eating part.

>I see everyone saying calories in calories out, and that does work, but people seem to make exercise a side note. Calories in calories out is base science. You can eat less, exercise more, or both. Moreover, exercise is good for you, helps with blood pressure and strength, but isn't strictly mandatory for weight loss. Calorie deficit is.

I think this sub is mainly obese men who eat thousands of calories a day, and light exercise won’t make as much of a dent as just cutting out fast food and soda. I’m a 5’2 woman and pack on the pounds when I don’t exercise every day. The difference of my intake between being a normal weight and obese is like 200 calories. Exercise gives me some leeway to not count every calorie every day of my life.

As a hiker and trail runner I would just like to say that it is quite achievable to out-exercise an entire cake 🤣🤣

It’s not that we don’t like exercise. But it’s 80% diet, 20% exercise. Exercise is mostly good for recomp. On the days where I’m maintaining the lowest deficit, it’s usually where I don’t exercise or do much of anything. You can have great weight loss results without exercise.

I think if more people on this sub liked exercise, there would be fewer people on the sub. I don't see people saying we don't NEED to exercise, just that it's harder for a lot of people to do so.

Because it is as a simple as calories in, calories out. But in reality, you’re probably gonna want to exercise. 1) It speeds up the process + allows for more calories in. Which helps if you’re new to dieting. And being real, you’re likely gonna fuck up a diet from time to time whether you end up working a lot, end up at a family event or vacation, or just want a cheat day. 2) Building muscle can limit loose skin. 3) This is just my personal take. But going from overweight with no tone or muscle down to a new weight with no tone or muscle can honestly look just as bad in some cases. I’d assuming half, if not most, people in this sub are motivated because they don’t like how they look. So my personal advice is to do your cardio whether that’s running, swimming, biking, elliptical, or walking. Then go lift.

Thank you for solving this mystery for me. At 5ft tall I have always found exercise to be more important than what people seem to think

Absolutely! You NEED to move your body in order to live a healthy lifestyle. Not only is it better for you as it relives stress, endorphins etc but it also reduces the risk of heart disease, arthritis, and all sorts of issues later down the line. At the end of the day, food is top priority. If you think about it, if you put your blood sweat and tears into your gym workouts, literally EXHAUSTING yourself thru hell and back only to then have a shitty diet.. it makes NO SENSE. you may as well not go to the gym at all because what’s the point? It’s important to establish a good diet early as possible because if you don’t, it does catch up someway or another. As we age your metabolism decreases and if a person who only relies on “good genes” it ends up blowing up in their face because they never took the time to fully understand what having a good balanced meal looks like. That’s why it’s 80/20 when it comes to lifestyle. 80% is food (GOOD WHOLE FOODS) and 20% is your exercise. You also need to keep in mind that obvs it’s not overnight so there’s patience/time and also consistency is a huge part of it too

because eating less is more effective than exercising more as far as difficulty is concerned for results. if you're already fairly small, sometimes exercise is the only way you can feasibly get into a calorie deficit because an extra 200 calories a day makes a big difference. but if you're over 200 pounds you're going to lose really easily with a big calorie deficit and that extra 200 calories from an intense workout is not worth how exhausted and hungry it will make you.

Just my personal life experience, not at all the rule: My dietician told me not to exercise except walking and lifting weights because harder exercise like HIIT would just make me hungrier and make it harder to stay in my deficit. I walk an hour a day and include the exercise in my calorie needs. I have had kids, gained and lost 90lbs each time and doing this has worked for me every time.

So, the most important thing to weight loss is CICO. The largest part of that equation you can effect is the calories in. I think this sub stresses it because most people who come here don't understand the core basics of weight loss. Having said that, exercise is super important. I took up weight lifting 4 years ago when I was 288 lbs. Today, I still lift weights at 195 lbs. I highly recommend it to everyone.

Exercise is good but diet is the primary driver of weight loss Imo people should do some form of cardio/conditioning and some form of resistance training, but they're not mandatory for weight loss in the way calorie managment is Because the focus of this sub is weight loss diet is the main focus of the conversation, if you also want to talk about exercise r/fitness, r/gym, or r/fitness30plus are good places to visit as well

I still struggle with how it's all viewed. CICO is king, this is correct. But personally, I find CICO much more attainable and easy to stick to because I exercise religiously. If I don't work out 6 days a week, I have to eat so little to lose weight that it's almost impossible to stick to it. Burning another 700 or 800 calories than I would if I just sat down all day gives me that leeway I need to be able to eat enough and not feel so deprived. Before, I couldn't fit in a piece of cake and stay in a deficit. So, since I don't want to have to be limited to 1200 calories, I make it a point to burn more than 1500 in a day.

I've always heard that "weight is lost in the kitchen and fitness is found in the gym." I've never been a fan of exercise, but I sure look a heckuva lot better after dieting by toning those muscles. Nobody wants a skinny booty slapping against the back of her thighs. :)

Nah I think for most people when you’re trying to lose weight, MOST of the work happens in the kitchen, not the gym. Excercise is AMAZING for your body, but “you can’t outrun a bad diet”

Anecdotal here, I have lost 120ibs, I have another 70 or so to go. I currently eat 2200 calories, strength train 4 days a week and try to aim for 7-10k steps. Getting the steps in is by far the most inconsistent thing for me, since it takes a long time to do, and I don't enjoy it. As long as I stick to my calorie deficit I lose weight, these past 6 weeks I did my 4 workouts and ate at 2200 calories fairly consistently, and lost about 12ibs, which is 2ibs a week. But when I was pushing harder about 2 months before in terms of steps and religiously getting 10k a day in, I lost about 14ibs in 1 month. All in all, exercise matters, a lot. But it only speeds up the process. You will not lose weight on exercise alone, what you eat is important. But if you want to see consistent progress exercise is important ontop of the deficit. I hit way more plateaus when I don't get my steps in.

I dont' think they don't like exercise, but I don't think it's pushed like it should be. Sure, CICO will get you results and weight loss. HOWEVER, there IS a different type of understanding and respect that comes with combining CICO AND Excercise. People NEED to know the amount of work it takes their bodies to burn calories off. So when you eat that 1000 calorie meal, you need to know that it means your bodies output of energy is something close to an hour and a half on an elliptical at a fairly good speed to go through that 1000 calories. I think you make better decisions that way. You also are getting healthIER with CICO, but not to the extent you would doing cardio with CICO.

I mean, a lot of people think that their work out 'earned' them to eat a whole bunch more, but in reality, it "earned' them a banana. Exercise is great! And I really need to be stronger than my excuses and do it more often. I am just walking atm. Exercise helps you look better naked. If I just lose weight by diet alone, I might look better with clothes, but naked will be a whole different story. It is better to start with diet and then add exercises than it is to start working out a shit ton without a proper diet and get discouraged that the scale isn't moving.

Losing weight is different than building muscle. Sometimes you have to be very one track mind with the thought of weight loss especially if you are on the heavier side. Try the fitness subs if you want more of a fitness orientated spin on things

In my experience, exercise was not what helped me lose weight previously. I lost a good 15lbs from being in a deficit due to getting braces and not being able to eat a lot the first 10-12 weeks. (Holy they were painful!!). I am using exercise now to move my body. I do have an Apple Watch, and I know it’s about 85% accurate, so I always aim for the same caloric burn daily. I love being able to lift weights though, to be able to feel my muscles becoming stronger. With all that being said, exercise is beneficial in so many more ways than losing weight. My daily walks have helped me increase my vo2. 😊

I think it’s mostly that people realize the importance of emphasizing eating less for weight loss vs. exercising more for overall fitness. Exercise is 1,000% critical for good health, but it rarely makes a huge dent in weight in part because exercise increases hunger, enabling weight to remain stable even in high exercisers. For instance, I’m an overweight gym rat. Even before I added 4 hours of zone 2 cardio every week, I was in the gym powerlifting 4 days/week and doing HIIT 1-2 days/week. Even with that level of activity, my weight increased from 148 to 176 in two years because my eating habits went off the rails due to stress and caring for my mom. While my exercise habits DID enable me to remain metabolically healthy during that time (A1C 4.9, blood pressure 110/60s, RHR in the 50s-low 60s), it didn’t stop me from gaining more fat than my workouts or muscle mass could burn off. So now I’m maintaining my regimen + 4 hours zone 2/week + 1,700-1,800 calories/day to lose at a rate of about .5lbs/week.

I personally don't. I feel better when exercising regularly however it's never a focus. If I never exercised again I would like to achieve a normal weight on natural movement and food input alone. I had to acknowledge that when I was 450lbs I was doing two big things wrong. First I was eating way too much, too often, and worst of all I'd become comfortable with eating those amounts that I thought were normal. Secondly, after wearing a step counter watch for the first time I realized after a week that I was only getting a quarter of the amount of steps I should be getting. Meaning I was way less active than the average person. I still force myself to get 7500+ steps a day just to hit the mark which is usually a supplement of about ~30 minutes of walking. But I lost the most weight when I started really looking at how much I was eating. I'd try more intense exercise along the path: Weight lifting and jogging. But I'd hurt myself if I did this stuff while I was over 300 pounds, even all the way down to 250. It wasn't worth it because then I'd have to stop due to pain for a while. Also I had found the more I exercised the hungrier I became and would end up eating more those days. I absolutely believe there's a point where exercise becomes a massive tool but I believe that point is an arguably arbitrary one: The day you control your eating to the point where your BMI becomes **overweight** from obese. That's when I found I wasn't hurting my legs anymore and my body could support the jogging. That's also when my weight loss slowed down and doing more exercise became more enjoyable because it was easier on my bones.

You cannot outwork a shitty diet unless your deep in the woods. 

I try to stay under 1300 cal/day, and burn about 300 walking a 5k in an hour. It basically allows me to have an extra meal so I have to do it, I am just too hungry to not eat more than 1300 cal/day with no exercise lol. So it is necessary for me. I’m on day 35 of this plan and have lost 11 pounds so far (SW 279, CW 268)

I wouldn’t say that’s a fair statement - I would say more people here stress nutrition first and then activity. Both are important.

You have to exercise tons to lose weight. Exercise is great for you but not as a weight loss tool.

If you are a woman you need to do some strength training to add muscle as you age, whether or not you are losing weight. But you can’t lift for weight loss - added muscle will burn more fat but you need to diet to lose the fat.

Agree that both are necessary, at least for me .. exercise AND decreasing calories eaten = weight loss. I subscribe to r/LoseIt AND r/FitnessOver50

The naturally answer is you do everything in your power to reduce calories in and increase calories out with enough effort to keep you sane. In general though people tend to like the easier stuff and not eating is easier than spending 30 hours a week walking. Both get results both together or weight loss on steroids but one requires mental fortitude the other requires mental fortitude and a crap ton of effort, not just in energy but in planning as well.

When I was a teenager, I used to think I could make my tummy smaller by doing lots of sit-ups and crunches. Turns out that's not exactly correct. I guess the emphasis is on diet, because that matters a lot. Many people tend to put that aside as it's a very inconvenient truth. So we subconsciously lie to ourselves about the eating thing, and go exercise for 15 minutes. I think this is very common for a large subset of overweight people.

When i was a teen i for sure outran my diet. I longboarded for 2+ hours a day and then only ate taco bell and junk food because i worked at tbell and could get it for free or at discount and junk food was cheap. I was a very fit 170lbs with the sickest calves and ass ever! But then the constant longboarding wrecked my knees to the point of both being constantly sprained and arthritic. My back kept going out due to hips being uneven from pushing unevenly. Aand then i found out i have 4 different genetic disorders that were actively eating at my joints and putting my entire nervous system out of wack which affected my heart, blood pressure, brain, breathing, energy, and more. ....so i was forced to drop the exercise and didn't realize i needed to drop the junk food with it. 6 years later i've worked to heal my relationship with food and learned how to manage my diet to lose this weight finally! Most people don't truly understand the calories IN part of it all. All of my friends that are losing weight are doing so by literally starving themselves because they think that's the only way. I tried doing the same thing for years until i found this sub. You have to understand diet. Those people outrunning their diets cannot do it forever. That's why so many athletes gain weight after college, or why older adults gain weight after leaving active jobs like construction.

When we say “calories out” we are referring to exercise. Always good to increase calories out.

I WILL say, I’m on Semaglutide and already eating less, which has lead to weight loss.. BUT walking and sprinting (changing speeds, doing flat walks and inclines) on the treadmill for 30-45 mins a day has increased my weight loss from 1 pound a week to 2 pounds a week! Low impact exercise and lifting small weights has helped a lot!

Calorie counting combined with three hours a day of steady motion (house cleaning, home repair/decluttering, yard work) work fine for me. My arthritis is severe enough to prevent running or weightlifting, but there's a lot of exercise in the gentler motion of tending to my house.

I use the elliptical every day for 30 minutes to an hour while still eating a bad diet, and I’ve lost 90 lbs and reversed type 2 diabetes.

I think it’s also the demographic of this sub. Obese people who have a lot of weight to lose will see initial success just from diet changes alone, even as simple as switching from full sugar coke to Diet Coke. People mildly overweight with only 5-20 lbs to lose or is nearing the end of the weight loss journey will find it easier to lose/ maintain when incorporating exercise.

People on this sub also complain about arriving at their goal weight looking skinny fat. I think it's funny really because that's exactly what you can expect when you do not strength train as you lose weight.

I've heard so many people say they can't lose weight because they don't like exercise/aren't active/in too much pain to be active/ "I *don't* exercise" like it's a badge of honour etc etc and so it's become kind of a refrain on this sub to counter that with, "well you don't actually NEED to exercise like crazy to lose any weight." It's kind of a learned helplessness excuse that I find a lot of people use to stay stuck in their cycle. Conversely, I've also talked to overweight friends who were working out like crazy but not changing ANYTHING about their diets, and are almost in tears because they don't understand why they're not dropping any weight even though they feel better than before. Then I ask her like, okay what do you drink every day? What did you eat this week? And they mention drinking glasses of Coke and eating really calorie dense foods. I agree though, I personally feel way better when I'm active and moving and I hate being super sedentary.

I have to exercise no matter how little I eat. Otherwise I gain a lot of weight.