Exercise is good: But it won't help you lose weight

[loch eck steve]

What you must also remember is muscle weighs more then fat ! So you could look leaner but actually weigh more !

[Annoying Twit]

When I lost weight, I counted calories. To the number. It worked absolutely brilliantly for me. Once I had established how many calories I should eat daily by a process of trial and error, I think lost 1lb a week like clockwork. I've kept the weight off since then.

In my opinion, losing weight with strict calorie counting is an entirely different kettle of fish than losing weight without limiting calories. If calories are limited, then exercise will burn additional calories leading to a faster loss of weight. As soon as you don't limit calories, then variation in calorie intake becomes an unknown which could easily wipe out other factors such as exercise. As mentioned before, it's easy to 'reward' yourself with far more calories than you have burnt.

I've had a look around at research on exercise and weight loss, and the majority of it doesn't blame a decrease in resting metabolic rate. E.g. here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... edMessage= This research suggested that limited weight loss due to exercise intervention was due to small amounts of exercise and increased calorie consumption. If calories are limited, the increase in calorie consumption doesn't happen. Here's more showing that an exercise intervention did help a group lose weight: http://downloads.hindawi.com/journals/j ... 480467.pdf Here's more research showing that High Intensity Intermittent exercise has a minor and transient effect on resting metabolic rate. https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/dspace-jspui ... 0IP%20.pdf

If you have a reasonably static exercise regime, then trial and error will establish a daily calorie intake which will lead to sustained weight loss. If calorie needs change over time (which they do when you get lighter), then weight loss stopping (or increasing due to additional exercise etc.) will be noticed with regular weighings, and calorie intake can be adjusted.

if there are inaccuracies in calorie labelling, then again this will be accounted for in the trial and error part of choosing a daily calorie limit.

If your resting metabolic rate goes down with dieting (which it can http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... edMessage=) then trial and error and updates of the daily calorie limit will account for that.

It seems to me that while what's going on under the hood of the body and it's metabolism is complicated, the solution is simple. Make an initial estimate of how many calories to consume. Count calories. Measure weight loss. If weight loss is too slow (or doesn't happen) eat fewer calories. If weight loss is too fast, eat more calories. Continue until target weight achieved. Make sure you use a proper maintenance strategy for keeping the weight off once lost. There are lots of these, but for me it was learning how much I can and can't eat and not eating too much. (Without calorie counting.)

EDIT: Interesting one here. Exercise didn't help with weight loss compared to dieting alone, but exercise was significantly associated with success in weight loss maintenance post-diet. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4293637/ EDIT: This one says the same thing. You can lose weight with or without exercise, but with exercise you're more likely to maintain the weight loss. http://link.springer.com/article/10.100 ... 014-0481-9

[Manc33]

It isn't even "calorie reduction" it is "bang for buck".

For example you'd get ill eating "only 1600 calories" a day of chips and burgers. You probably wouldn't even lose weight either because there's hardly any nutrition to the food and you;re hardly eating any of it so you'll store fat from it even at 1600 calories.

The dieting industry just has people running on the spot decade after decade. Thats the whole aim, if you got thin they couldn't keep you subscribing to 20 and 30 years like some people with "WeightWatchers", or whatever else, exploiting people's lack of knowledge.

At one time they were saying "just reduce calories", so you could eat 1600 calories of Mars bars every day and you'd lose weight... yes you'd also probably be annoyed, feeling feint, getting a headache and going on the toilet once a week.

All you have to do is eat tons of green veg and throw some fish in with it or lean steak, just not loads of it.

Isn't this what people used to tell children back in the 1800s? Eat your greens? It isn't said for no reason.

We're going backwards and provably so. We knew the answers to these things 150 years ago.