Want to lose weight? Don't exercise.
Speak for yourself. I don't exercise, I gain weight. And based on my experience during my periods of greatest weight loss, I'm gonna go with diet composition being way more important than anything else. Basically simple carbs are the enemy.
And welcome to the bad back club. The good news is, deadlifts will actually end up being good for it in the long run (as long as you're not an idiot about it).
his bad back went into occultation
I've been doing the 5:2 fasting plan on and off for a couple of months and have dropped 8 pounds. (You fast two days out of the week - in my case I eat dinner the night before, then don't eat anything until dinner the next day). I like it. I don't do it on days I work out for the reasons you talk about. But I still work out several times a week because, health, mobility, etc.
Why were you deadlifting with bad form and without warming up? 2 gets it right.
On the OP, it's definitely true that diet, and as Josh says, DIET COMPOSITION, is the most important factor in losing weight qua losing weight (which is different than looking good or being healthy). And it's also true that some exercise, especially chronic cardio and especially especially swimming, increase appetite sufficiently so that for a lot of people there's no weight loss at all or weight gain even with a lot of exercise. On the other hand, for most people adding in exercise to the right kind of diet helps a lot, both because exercise is an anti-depressant and because it gets people more body conscious and less inclined to just eat whatever.
The way I've heard it phrased is "you get healthy at the gym, you lose weight in the kitchen." Which is slightly different, but makes the point that weight loss isn't the same as exercising and being fit.
This Time magazine article (Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin) is behind a paywall, but I'm pretty sure it's along those lines. The caption by the picture reads: "Whether because exercise makes us hungry or because we want to reward ourselves, many people eat more -- and eat more junk food, like doughnuts -- after going to the gym." Anything that gets into an outlet like Time seems pretty mainstream, and I'm pretty sure I've seen other articles along these lines.
with bad form
Fuck you; I'll crush your skull with my ass cheeks. My form was fine, but it's true that I'm way too old to be doing deadlifts without being properly warmed up.
To answer the general points: yes, it's a diet, and what and how much you eat matters. And of course people should exercise, but not while they're actively trying to lose weight. Such, at least, is the thesis of my book.
Shucks, I guess I'll just stay here and be your little bunny.
I feel like I'm missing a reference to something in the archives.
Nah, Runaway Bunny. It ends with that dialogue, or sort of.
One more data point in support of my belief that lifting heavy things is a good way to get badly injured.
A key element for the success of your plan is this, which isn't true for me:
If I don't eat on a day that I haven't exercised, no big deal.
I still can't tell if I've offended the Heebster of Heebville (probably anti-semitic, I know). 11 was a generic "if weight loss is depressing, have a cookie, harhar" joke. Nothing more or less! Bunnies are are also delicious. Don't confuse me further.
a good way to get badly injured.
I was kind of shocked at how badly I managed to hurt myself. A pull, or a strain, or even a tear, I feel like I understand, but losing feeling/strength in my foot? Was not prepared for that!
which isn't true for me
So, in fairness, the low-starch thing also makes a big difference there. Those horrible hunger pangs go away on that kind of diet (at least for me, and several friends).
"Don't exercise" is a good weight loss plan in more or less exactly the same sense that "start smoking" is a good weight loss plan.
Oh, I was just riffing. No harm, no foul.
That said, my weight loss biology is so wildly different than it was six years ago, and in all the wrong ways. Ugh.
I just ate a big handful of licorice without warming up. No injury, but not sure I'm losing weight.
I was kind of shocked at how badly I managed to hurt myself.
Preach it fellow deadlifting old man.
At least I have great form for dead lifting.
My licorice eating form was pretty unimpeachable. Sucked in my gut to look better while throwing them down my gullet and everything.
24: I bet the salty kind is a diuretic.
Oh probably. These aren't salty. No iodine either, which I assume is really good for you because otherwise why the fuck would any conscious being consume those?
For me, no exercise means deep depression means Dove bars means weight gain. I have to exercise to live, it's that simple, and I'm not quite ready for a deliberate exit.
What's complicated is portion control and my genius-level ability to rationalize more in the portion or a totally harmless snack before lights out.
If I'm exercising, I'm sore and so have a constant reminder to be virtuous. If I'm not, I have no goad and so eat to fill the emptiness.
I only ever lost weight easily after a bad breakup. Very, very effective, that was. Also, I had time to go to the gym! But that was a long time ago. Now I'm fat and happy again.
Same, if I can't exercise for even a short period I'm not motivated to eat very much and end up losing weight on balance, not that I want to lose weight. I'd smugly theorize this is a good thing and indicates that you're good at listening to your body's needs.
My one week in the hospital not being "sick" --weight loss 10-12 pounds.
I hate to be associated with causing injury. Don't get hurt again, is my suggestion.
I fucked up my knees by doing squats with heavy weights. Your tendons and your joints are not like your muscles. They don't get better with heavy use. I somehow have tennis elbow from lifting as well.
I don't seem to get much hungrier when exercising, although I often hear people say they do. I lose weight rapidly when, and only when I'm going all out regularly. In this winter, when there's no riding many days, I'm on an exercycle for half an hour, with three intense minutes spaced five minutes apart after 15 minutes warming up. The last five is cooling down from the final sprint. It's enough.
27 confused me because at first I thought you were eating soap.
I'd smugly theorize this is a good thing and indicates that you're good at listening to your body's needs.
It's always good to be smug about losing weight. It's both gracious and sure to be well founded!
To be fair the year I didn't really eat regularly I lost like sixty pounds. I listened to my body scream and weep, and I laughed. Hah hah hah!
Coincidentally my wife had just sent me this article in the Times talking about how to get the most out of high-intensity interval training, which apparently is to not do it too frequently. (I found the article to be poorly written and hard to follow, but it has links to the two studies.) I have no coherent position but thought I would introduce it into the thread (assessing potential relevance left as an exercise for the reader).
Less is more!
I'd believe that you're losing weight, but I'm surprised that you're not losing muscle and/or bone density.
For me the nurse-the-baby diet has worked really well, but it means I'm going to be totally screwed when he weans after so much time spent in this fantasy land where I can eat everything and still lose weight. (It's not actually all that great, because I'm half-starved about 75% of the time.)
39: The improvements appear to be pretty small. I'm not seeing that it's worth the pain unless there's a big $ payoff somewhere down the road where winning is determined by hundredths of a second.
I'm not seeing that it's worth the pain unless there's a big $ payoff somewhere down the road where winning is determined by hundredths of a second.
And in that sort of context you're probably better of just going with xenon.
I wish the article explained the mechanism by which xenon has physiological effects.
That seems like asking a lot of Slate. The Economist article it relies on has a little more information, and implies that a lot of the details are still not well understood.
Sounds awesome! Hit it twice just to make sure!
The only thing I've started to do because of Megan's malign influence is to not let the water run continually while I shave or brush my teeth.
It's a bit of a pain, but I've never needed physical therapy.
For me, no exercise means deep depression means Dove bars means weight gain
This is confusing because to me Dove means soap.
For me the nurse-the-baby diet has worked really well, but it means I'm going to be totally screwed when he weans
Change of career: professional wet nurse?
Next can I get you to stop killing snakes?
Well, I won't be drowning them except in a rain barrel.
That's a good first step. Can we talk about other ways for you not to kill them?
You guys have zero calorie soap?
I am pretty sure that you wouldn't gain weight by eating soap, yes.
And using the soap externally, of course, would result in weight loss, because dirt has weight.
35 now independently corroborated by 49.1. As a scientist you should thank me, essear.
Query: Does this post, stating that the sure route to weight loss is eating reasonably and eschewing exercise, supersede your earlier post, stating that the sure route to weight loss is eating reasonably and doing cardio for at least a half hour every day? Because I'm pretty sure you're wrong about both of those (at least in implying that they're generally effective).
60: Not regularly. I used to kill them out of habit whenever I saw one and I had a gardening tool to hand. I hardly see them any more.
"I fucked up my knees by doing squats with heavy weights."
Me too, and I don't even think it was due to bad form. At least I hope not. Maybe others who've done the same thing can chime in so I feel less like it was my fault. I miss squatting a lot.
I don't think I've seen a useful-sized* snake since I've been in Pennsylvania.
* Big enough to keep down the local Pug population.
LB, there's actually no conflict. Sometimes people just want to lose a little weight. In that case, I think not exercising is the way to go. If you want to adopt a healthy lifestyle where weight loss is a secondary goal, a reasonable diet and regular cardio is the way to go.
Centuries hence, Pennsylvanians will have parades and drink rusty nails on March 17 every year, and tell tall tales about some sciency guy from the Great Plains.
We saw rattlers pretty regularly in NM (and black widows; so many black widows), but never had occasion to kill one. Some neighbors finally had to do one in, after it seemed to take up residence on their porch. It was a different place to have a little kid. I'd have to take a stick and beat the bushes every time he wanted to play in the yard. Our dog almost died from a bite, and a different neighbor's dog actually did die. It's a sad doggy death.
We didn't have that many around and I've never tried to kill a rattler, but it is a bit unnerving to be swimming in a river and see one drift by.
OP is definitely conventional wisdom amongst eating-disordered teenage girls.
We saw copperheads now and again in Missouri. My grandmother and I once ran across one in her driveway, and she neatly chopped its head off wtih a hoe, no fuss at all. I asked if we should move it and she said no, the cats would get it.
I only ever lost weight easily after a bad breakup.
I got divorced and fired in the space of a couple of months and lost 45 pounds, which I largely kept off for more than a decade.
I took it off and kept it off by eating a very, very low fat diet - this was back before we understood that you can't take weight off that way. I also used exercise to suppress my appetite - I'd get hungry and go do something active instead of eating.
I saw the actual W. J. Clinton while getting him to sign a book. He looked really puffy and exhausted. Then a few weeks later, he had to get heart surgery. Now he looks much thinner.
I took it off and kept it off by eating a very, very low fat diet - this was back before we understood that you can't take weight off that way.
Good thing you did it before we knew it wouldn't work or it might not have worked.
ogged, I would note you weren't just not exercising, by your account you were "laid up", which I take to mean doing very little moving at all. Might that not have just as much to do with it? Body kicking into lean-seasons mode or something?
My weight is as stable as a very stable thing. Not where I'd like it to be, but stable. Since I've had kids, it has spent the vast majority of the time between 160 and 165. On rare occasion, it drifts up as high as 170, and on rarer down to 155, but those are pretty much self correcting.
That's been over periods of heavy cardio, heavy weight lifting, no exercise at all, attentively healthy eating, and completely unconsidered wallowing in ice cream, cookies, and beer. I've never actually dieted in a seriously organized fashion (low fat, low carb, the kind of calorie counting that involves actually weighing your food and measuring portion size); what I mean by attentively healthy eating is more vegetables, less starch, and much less sweets. So genuine, committed, organized dieting might work. But nothing within the broad spectrum of lifestyle changes I've made has had any significant effect on my weight at all.
Everyone else's mileage may vary, but that's how mine works.
I keep plateauing higher and higher, and presumably looking worse and worse.
However! Crossfit has made me feel much better about myself than jogging did, which is the main reason I'm sticking with it. I like feeling strong and powerful and much, much less creaky.
My sense of vanity has plummeted, though. At least I've had to mature or something.
re: 75
That was me from about 22 or 23 through to about 31 or 32. My weight drifted up and down within an approximately 10lb range, but it was largely independent of anything I did. My waist measurement went up about 2 inches over that 10 year period, as I've never consistently exercised as much or as hard as I did from about 19 - 22, but my basic body shape didn't change much.
Since my early thirties my weight has been fairly consistent, too, but about 40lbs heavier than it was through the previous 10 years. I've never pinned it down exactly. I exercise more now than I did in my late 20s. I drink _much_ less. I probably eat more sugar than I should, but my general diet is healthy. I do only have part of my thyroid now, which I suspect is a partial cause, but it's basically a fucking mystery to me.*
* I mean, it's not a mystery that I am obviously consuming more calories than I'd need to be to be 180lbs. The exact mechanism through which my current lifestyle makes me 40lbs heavier than my much less healthy 20-something lifestyle remains mysterious.
My vanity was deliberately plummeted. That is, for some reason the vanity in our main bathroom is about three inches lower than the vanities in other houses. We were going to replace the vanity, but got lazy. Then we had a kid and having less vanity became adaptive.
I keep on thinking about Crossfit, and rejecting it as too inconvenient. If there was a gym either right by work or right by home, but everything is a whole separate commute.
My latest thing is jumping rope for intervals -- it's been so icy that running is awful, so I can do 10x1min with 30 second breaks either up on the roof or down in the basement, and feel as if I did something for the day. I'm an incredible klutz, though. Getting through a full minute without tripping is exciting and rare.
77: Yeah, I blame having kids, but of course I had Newt within a week of my thirtieth birthday, so it could just be aging for me. But before Sally, I was stable between 135 and 145, and now I'm stable twenty/twenty-five pounds higher.
And when I did a fairly rigorous calorie counting regime, I found I had to be consistently eating really quite a bit below my supposed basal metabolic rate to actually lose weight.
I keep on thinking about Crossfit, and rejecting it as too inconvenient. If there was a gym either right by work or right by home, but everything is a whole separate commute.
If it were inconvenient for me, I wouldn't be able to hack it. Pre-Ace, the local Crossfit was full, and I could only attend the one in SadTown where Heebie U is located. It was super inconvenient on any day where I wasn't going into school, and so I quit over the summer.
And when I did a fairly rigorous calorie counting regime, I found I had to be consistently eating really quite a bit below my supposed basal metabolic rate to actually lose weight.
Oh yes, this.
My basil metabolic rate is excellent, but I couldn't stay on the all pesto diet.
I guess the OP means I don't have to yet again feel like the only person here who doesn't work out. My weight's been pretty consistent through my parenting years after an initial weight gain in my late 20s presumably related to starting to drink regularly and eating more like Lee than like I had before. I've lost 10 pounds or so since the baby arrived and am working to keep them off because it gives me more options in what I can wear from my closet, but I'm not actually working in a working-out way.
I did like the fasting diet and want to go back to it when I'm not so stressed out and miserable too much of the time.
I would like to try the fasting thing too, but I'm not going to bother until I'm done being an incubator.
I think fasting would make me stressed out and miserable.
I was just thinking yesterday that part of the reason that, when I've lost weight, it hasn't seemed to be such a huge effort, is that my basic diet is so unbelievably fucked up and unhealthy that virtually any change is going to be a positive one. That's why it was easy to lose weight on a spaghetti-pancakes-apples-Kool-Aid-and-onion-rings diet when I was 20.
I was afraid fasting was going to make me feel morally superior and like I was falling back into old anorexic thinking, but it didn't. I did the version where you eat small-calorie-amount meals throughout the day rather than the 24-hours-of-nothing version for that reason, though.
I find that I can't sleep on an empty stomach.
I was afraid fasting was going to make me feel morally superior
Crossfit is not for you, then.
The whole nil-by-mouth deal when I was sick was great for weight loss too. I don't think taking out my diseased gall bladder actually had much net effect on my weight though.
84: you actually ought to, nearly, though.
Please keep killing the snakes. Evil, nightmare inducing creatures.
91: I've never done exercise that made me feel morally superior or superior in any other way, since I've really never been the best at anything. But starving is different mentally, for me at least.
Geneva has two special fasting holidays, one in honor of the canton, one in honor of Switzerland. For my first few years there I thought it was cool that they had special holidays in honor of kids. Then I realized it was just another way the natives were weird.
The whole weight loss thing is age-dependent; when old people really push the effort the resulting nausea and chest pain keeps them out of the kitchen.
I lost a few pounds while unemployed because not drinking or eating sweets for a month seemed reasonable when I wasn't setting an alarm for 6:30. Now that I have the world's most depressing job, well...anyway I read the sentence "Basically simple carbs are the enemy" with a mouthful of apple fritter. My diet book will suggest that not working is the best way to lose weight.
You've actually managed an upgrade in depressingness from your prior job? Neat. Or, I suppose, depressing.
(One of my volunteers just got a job offer! Working for ACS, which she's a little worried about on depressingness grounds, but it's a paying job! I am so happy for her, although I'll hate to lose her.)
ACS would be worse. I would never, ever do that, even if I gave a shit about children. Emoticon.
This is probably an appropriately depressing question, then - are you staying on the job market?
There are too many organizations with the acronym ACS. Eliminate two, please.
What I actually told her is "Look, once you're indoors in a city agency, you can jobhunt from there. ACS has to be used to fast turnover as people lose the will to live." But I'm just so happy to see her employed -- I think she was really about to give up and stop trying to find lawyering jobs, and just try to pay off her student loans doing something else. And she's really quite good; maybe not the absolute pinnacle best junior lawyer I've ever seen, but works hard, learns fast, and is a pleasure to teach things. Giving her a reference was the high point of this week.
Why is working for the census so bad?
104: Yeah. I'd consider waiting tables but I don't think anyone would hire me to wait tables. I was already rejected by a temp agency.
There's a children emoticon? Does it have a Jewish filmmaker's hand between its legs?
I'd be open to any job where the phrase "feces everywhere" came up less frequently in training.
Yes, I know: that wasn't funny enough to be worth the grossness.
"Why did the Jewish filmmaker cross the road?"
Training just included a trainer talking slightly ungrammatically about documentation saying "you have a sheet show that [etc.]" and yeah some non-native phonologies merge "ee" and "i" so that was kind of a moment of unintentional candor. (I hardly KNEW 'er.)
What I actually told her is "Look, once you're indoors in a city agency, you can jobhunt from there. ACS has to be used to fast turnover as people lose the will to live."
That's good advice but one that I would have a difficult time following. Something that I've learned about myself is that if I'm trapped in a depressing job it makes me give up on the idea that things could be better -- I just mentally hunker down and try to get through it and don't have the energy to look for something else.
110: I see you're a man who likes surprises.
114: I agree that that's a common reaction, and one that I have myself. But this would be this woman's first paycheck since she graduated from law school almost two years ago -- she's been working full time, but not getting paid. She needs a paycheck more than she needs to hold out for a less grim job.
Anyone here read much David Katz on nutrition? He seems very smart and reasonable, even if his writing is precious sometimes. But if you're going to be serious, just read him. I don't expect you to follow my advice, I just expect to make a million dollars selling it. Here's a good intro.
Looking over at L/G/M today, I see that C/ampos has his first obesity/BMI post in some time. If I didn't know better I'd blame you for summoning him, ogged.
Did he (C/ampos) do that often in the past? Because, the fuck?
Yay for a good lawyer at ACS! (I'm sure there are a lot of them, but unsurprisingly NYC and LA child protective services seem to be among the fuckedupest possible.)
Yeah, LGM used to be a blog that was 95% about politics and history, and 5% about the insane evils of fat-shaming. Then PC switched to the law school scam beat.
Isn't that his thing -- there's no evidence that obesity is a health problem at all, so everyone should just shut up about it? I've got a lot of sympathy for the proposition that any individual person is probably best off by eating reasonably healthily and staying active and not worrying about their weight, and that anyone being condemnatory about anyone else's weight should shut up, but C@mpos seems a little beyond that.
More than a little, prompting my exclamation.
It reminds me of another blog where the content is 95% about biomedical academia, and 5% about how pit bulls and pit bull owners are evil monsters.
Sure, use your megaphone to try to get your various messages out there, I guess.
pit bulls and pit bull owners are evil monsters
He probably hasn't seen mine when he's wearing a sweater. Everyone loves a pit bull in a sweater.
No lie, you seem tougher to me now, Eggplant. Even with a sweater on a pit bull is, though loveable, a badass, much like how Arnold Schwarzenegger appearing in Kindergarten Cop or serving as governor of California didn't make him not-Arnold. Do you have gang ink?
You must have missed the pictures from Unfoggedycon. I've never seen so many tattoos on one man's face before, not to mention the piercings.
Friends just had a beloved Yorkie die and got a pit bull almost immediately afterward, and I've been biting my tongue trying not to congratulate them on replacing their dustmop with an actual dog.
I get a new teardrop each time I successfully troll.
125: At one point I was browsing Scientopia blogs and it seemed like every third comment came from either that person or Physioprof, who inexplicably misspells every third word in some kind of vaguely Chauceresque way. I concluded that the whole community was psychotic.
I don't think that I ever posted the photo
Yeah, Physioprof is totally unbearable both in form (nonsensical, highly systematic misspellings and mysterious would-be slang terms that only he uses, like some combination of Tupac Shakur and Paul Erdos) and function (relentless cynicism, "telling it like it is", swearing to sound tough, PZ Myers wannabe who hates religion and, apparently, humanity). Clear example of path-dependence in that guy still being a prominent member of the "community" by dint of having started his blog when there were about a hundred blogs.
Drugmonkey goes off on unfair rants sometimes but is a good blogger.
Apparently my tic is saying "every third".
(It turns out if you explain something really simple to a room full of people and pretend it's extremely difficult/complicated, they will experience it as such.)
Better to simplify jargon into easy-to-remember acronyms. That always helps!
137: training on thing that will actually be part of the job that is slightly not-straightforward but not remotely a big deal. Mostly just aversive in that it is so goddamn boring.
Basically, I like to eat a certain amount. To the OP and all this dieting talk. I was just musing at dinner that I like eating big portions, guilt aside. Not mammoth size, but probably bigger than they should be.
The new labeling requirements should do away with servings per container and calories, and just list how many hours you can subsist on the entire contents.
141: Oh hell no. I want no part of the self loathing that's going to result when I look at the label on something I just ate and find out I can subsist for like 90 fucking hours on it.
141: How long can you subsist on a can of wasabi?
142: Your visceral reaction tells me I'm on the right track.
143: Not long, I bet, so you can go hog wild with the stuff.
"The meal is not over when I'm full. The meal is over when I hate myself."
Back when I exercised regularly I ate a lot more and weighed a lot less. The last time I lost a significant amount of weight and felt in good shape was after a four month trip doing the Eurail thing* over a decade ago. In that case I got a ton of exercise just by walking but probably didn't eat a whole lot more than before or after because budget.
*I just can't call it backpacking after growing up thinking of backpacking as a kind of camping where you carry all your stuff and don't just stay in campsites accessible by car or other motorized transit.
When I was young I never got warming down or cooling down, whatever you want to call it. So I would stop breathless after a maximum effort and just sit or lie down. Made it a lot harder to go about my day. I haven't felt as old or tired since, and that was forty years ago.
Exercise via a job which had me move around a lot plus prepacked food, by which I mean that I brought so much lunch to work and there's nothing more-- is what worked for me.
Also non fat Greek yogurt, turkey bacon and hard boiled eggs help. (Hard boiled eggs fill me up in a way that other kinds don't.)
I went skiing all day today which doesn't actually burn that many calories and was famished.)
Also, my ski instructor said midway through that he was afraid he was going to get high because Colorado. You could definitely smell it.
My really bad diet trick is to eat fiber gummies.