I understand and respect your attitude towards fitness, I think that's even better, because this way you are not concentrated on and irritated by the fact that it takes so long to get in shape. Everyone have their own goals when they start doing sports. For some it is improving the performance for others to lose the weight.
Doing hundreds of different diets can be much more challenging then breaking into sweat and for some (imho: very reasonable) people, it's better to lose 2-4 lbs a month than 10 in a week. Most of people are generally aware, that it takes time to lose weight by doing sports, but it is the fact that you do lose it eventually.
To lose 4 pounds a month just by exercising and if you keep your calorie intake the same, you would have to burn an extra 500 calories a day through exercise. That's about a 3 mile run. Assuming most people won't me able to run and will be doing a brisk walk, they can expect to burn about 280 calories an hour - almost 2 hours, 7 days a week.
How many people exercise and don't eat at least a little bit more?
Between walking at decent pace, at a 12% incline, I can burn 500 calories in an hour. I add on another hour on an elliptical at the highest resistance and that is another 900 calories (yes I know they are usually off by up to 15% either way). But how many people just getting into shape can do either with good form? Let alone both 4 days a week?
Well, isn't it individual for every person? Firstly, someone who weighs 141 lbs does not lose weight with the same intensity as someone with 220 lbs. Secondly, if one wants to lose weight by doing sports, he should be reasonable about this and not eat a bar of a chocolate after a 50 min run.
As I already said, I'm not a professional and I do speak from my personal experience. I don't have exact statistics either, I'd like to try and search for it though and post it here. I've found an interesting series of articles which I read just now, if you have interest or time you might want to skim through it, too:
Statistically speaking, no. Most people's physical response to food and exercise is almost exactly the same given the same inputs. There may be minor variations from person to person, but the variations aren't large enough to change the general advice. There are extreme exceptions, but those are natually extremely rare, and shouldn't be used to muddy the water.
> Secondly, if one wants to lose weight by doing sports, he should be reasonable about this and not eat a bar of chocolate after a 50 min run.
While that's exactly the point, the way you said it is too dismissive, IMO. This is exactly what happens to almost everyone. You don't need to exaggerate with chocolate bars. Unless you're counting your calories or consciously going hungrier, most people will naturally just eat a bit more at meal time because they're hungrier, because they worked harder. If that's not being reasonable, then you need to understand that millions and millions of people are not reasonable.
If one only wants to lose weight, he could reasonably skip his normal 2nd morning bagel, and just skip the run too. Save $5, save an hour, it costs less to eat less, in every way. One way to look at this is there's no such thing as losing weight by doing sports. There's only gaining weight by eating too much, and losing weight by eating less than you burn. Whether you exercise is perhaps irrelevant to your weight. (That's exaggerating, but is more true than the other way around.)
> I've found an interesting series of articles
These articles are from a sports magazine and are selling sports as the solution. In the (second) article, he admits that you have to keep diet under control, but he is dramatically over-emphasizing the importance of exercise on weight loss, and he's painting a picture of calorie counting being too difficult and too inaccurate to be effective. Speaking from personal experience, this is quite misleading bullshit. You don't need accuracy for it to work, and you don't have to account for secondary effects of exercise either, which the author claims at length. Compare these articles to the Vox article @scarface74 posted, you will see some striking differences.
I love going to the gym, I advocate exercise 100%. I think exercise keeps me happier and healthier. But the gym isn't a weight loss tool. If anything at all, I now use the gym so that I can eat more than I would be able to otherwise. I can burn 500 calories working out, and then feel okay adding an extra 400 calorie treat during my day.
I didn't exaggerate with a bar of chocolate, I've done that, not proud, but a huge fan of chocolate.
I understand what you mean and most people might do exactly as you say, I don't argue with that. My argument is that it is possible to lose weight if you do sports, even if you lose a very small amount of weight, it is still losing the weight. I'm not trying to stubbornly prove my point here, I just feel that I've been misunderstood. I don't advice anybody to leave doing what they are doing and start doing some sports because it is the only way to lose the weight, no it isn't. There are lots of other options and maybe more effective even. I just don't understand why we should deny the fact that sports also is one of the options, if, and I have to agree here, combined with a good diet (and by diet I don't mean starving yourself, but eating consciously).
I appreciate your answer, there is more for me to read and learn about the subject indeed.
I hear you, and I understand your point. And you're right too. Exercise is a way to burn calories faster, there's no denying that. I've been coming down extra hard to emphasize my point. ;)
But just to be clear, because I'm not sure I've been completely understood either, and to answer your question "why we should deny the fact that sports also is one of the options"... I never lost weight at the gym in 20 years of going to the gym until I realized that sports is not a weight loss option for me personally. The reason is that our physiology compensates for excess calorie burn by making us hungrier, which is true for almost all humans & animals. If I don't track what I eat, then I will accidentally eat too much after I work out, just like I accidentally eat too much when I don't work out. I know that many, many people have the same problem. Once you see this, you realize that for many people, going the gym actually has nothing to do with the weight loss, even if they think is does. It's either a way to continue to eat 2k+ calories, or a way to get stronger, but only the intake control is what leads to weight loss. Without the intake control, the gym just leads to more intake and no weight for me, and for a lot of people.
When I was teaching and training for runs regularly, I would often purposefully eat more on my heavy work out days before a two or three hour work out session just so I could make it through the session. But I was in weight maintenance mode. I wanted my weight to stay in a certain range. If I were over a certain weight, I wouldn't look as toned and under a certain weight, I just felt "little".
I was in weight maintenance mode. But like you said, whT about all of those people who weren't purposefully trying to maintain and were compensating by eating more? I know people who actually gained weight by over compensating.
Heck if I hadn't known about the density difference in fat versus muscle, I would have felt really bad seeing my weight go down by only 15 pounds a long time ago after working out hard, with cardio and weights - even though my body fat percentage went down 12% and I lost 4-6 inches in my waist.
For most people, weight loss is simply the wrong goal. Increasing activity levels and functional ability provides a much better return in quality of life and long-term health than weight loss.
As activity levels rise, weight loss starts to change from an extrinsic to an intrinsic goal, as it now directly impacts performance. It still requires diet change, but each incremental reduction produces more tangible effects than just a number on a dial.
I'd really like to read some unbiased statistics, which wouldn't be some sports propaganda or anything I've unknowingly posted above. Could you advice me any sources that I could read up on?
I've looked through the article that scarface74 posted, but I'd like to have some more read.
Unless you're losing mostly lean mass, that 10 lbs/week represents a 5000 kcal energy deficit every day. With base energy needs around 2500 kcal/day for most people, no diet will get you there.
Doing hundreds of different diets can be much more challenging then breaking into sweat and for some (imho: very reasonable) people, it's better to lose 2-4 lbs a month than 10 in a week. Most of people are generally aware, that it takes time to lose weight by doing sports, but it is the fact that you do lose it eventually.