Why you shouldn't exercise to lose weight

No, you do. It's not being a dick. I'm not going to get into the details of how I know this but this is a very important point. So, let's use the example of my girlfriend. We're not in America now but might go there in the future. So, 33% of America is obese [1] and my girlfriend loves food. She knows she's on the heavy side by local standards here, but I don't judge her for it! Judgment doesn't work. Also, in my opinion she can eat whatever she wants, as long as she's counting protein. I showed her some of the American food and said, look, if we go to America I don't want her to become absolutely morbidly obese. So, when I hear her employ "fatlogic" without any judgment or criticism I shoot that logic down completely, while letting her eat whatever she wants. She can eat anything. She just can't verbally state any "fat logic". This worked VERY well with my friends, who lost huge amounts of weight under my guidance. I didn't criticize them! But I would call out fatlogic. For example, when the one who has lost the most weight basically under the program I outlined above had some localized problem and said she couldn't go to gym anymore, I called her out on it and said, "Oh really? At all? Why not, exactly? Which body parts are affected? Are you in pain? What would moving your arms affect about that body part?" etc. In the end she didn't stop going to the gym. If I hadn't called her out on it, in fact it would have just been an excuse - she would have just stopped going to the gym, period. Instead she's looking more beautiful than ever, and starting to turn heads.

So I'll give you an example of my girlfriend's fatlogic. (One which I haven't called out yet.) She bought a 12-pack of some candy cake or something, while stating "It's good to keep in the _____" (where she works) " for an emergency so that if I can't go out I can maybe have one, like with an apple". I didn't say anything because, okay, sounds reasonable. Of course three days later they're in her apartment and she has eaten half of them, which is NOT a judgment! She can eat whatever she wants. But the NEXT time we're in a store and she's buying a 12-pack of something while stating that "It's good for an emergency" I'll call her out, "Sure, you can buy it! As you know I don't let you diet, you can eat whatever you want as long as you're counting protein. But I have to call out anytime I see fatlogic because when we go to America you'll just balloon up, like a third of everyone, if you employ it a little. So, you've said this before, (I'll quote her) but in the end what will happen is you'll have it in your apartment and eat it - which is not a problem!!!! You can do it!! But you can't say it's for something else, because that's fatlogic and you have to be very careful because if you employ it you'll go to american and balloon up!! So just say you want this. you can eat anything you want!!" There's no reason for her to have any guilt or make excuses or like have to defend her action like saying she'll eat it with an apple when I haven't seen her eat an apple yet (even when we bought some for a picnic, also she had some at home but it was starting to go very old, I had to peel it for use in some eats). So fatlogic is stuff like saying "Well it's okay, later I'll just have a salad with nothing on it" when obviously you won't, because that's stupid and nobody does that. I'll say, "That's fatlogic, you can't say that because if you keep that mentality then if we go to America you'll balloon up. You can eat anything you want! If you actually do want to have a salad later let's buy it now because you don't have any at home and, you know, we're in the store, but let's make it something someone would actually eat and buy croutons, some tuna since you love that, and some dressing and baby tomatoes. Let's see if we can make it good." (By the way I've had her salad the way she makes it now and it sucks, I wouldn't eat it. It's like she considers it punishment food instead of actual food. When you can eat anything there's no such thing as punishment food.) So don't get me wrong. Fatlogic is everything from the stupid and wrong idea that salads are supposed to taste like a piece of crap, like you're out with a picnic and instead of eating the french baguettes and delicious cheeses, you pick up a clump of grass that somebody has already stepped in, and that's your meal - that's what a salad is supposed to taste like. Fatlogic includes the idea of "Oh it's okay I'll just go run for 2 hours" when that's stupid, who runs for two hours, nobody. Stop saying stupid shit like that, you can eat whatever you want but I don't want to hear fatlogic so that you don't become a balloon when we go to America. What, are you going to say, "Oh I'll just have this now but both Saturday and Sunday I'll run a half-marathon? Because a marathon only burns a grand total of 2600 calories[2]. That's stupid thinking and I don't want to hear it. If you want to go running go running but actually I forbid you to run at all, don't waste time doing that crap and putting your knees out, when you could spend half that time Googling on how to better do heavy weight training on specific body parts, and then spend 6 minutes doing that, and see a better result a week later than if you really had run a marathon." Fatlogic includes saying "Oh I got this great promotion for a hamburger place", which shows like food for three people, and then going to burger king and buying a standard meal since it's smaller. What does the promotion have to do with it? Just go to burger king and have a meal if that's what you want to do. It even adds to your protein target for the day.

and so on and so forth. I am attracted to my girlfriend and really respect her thinking on a variety of issues, but that fact that she's intellectual makes it easier for her to spin all kinds of stupid fatlogic, so I'm not going to let her do that, WHILE supporting her in whatever she wants to eat! It's another question that education is important and I'll ask her how much protein, carbs and calories she thinks are in something and make her read the label, again, so that when she goes to America she won't balloon up. We've gone to ice cream places together where you assemble your own ice cream, using all kinds of toppings, etc. But when she makes hers at that self-serve place with a stevia-sweetened vanilla ice cream (stevia is a 0-calorie sweetener), and adds toppings and a caramel sauce, it's fine, she could have also done it with a non-stevia ice cream if she wanted, and I'm happy to eat it with her -- but when she calls it a "healthy meal" I call her out and say, no, this is not a healthy meal! We're having ice cream, which is like candy, as you can see I'm happy to have it here with you but I don't want you to confuse it with healthy things that aren't candy. we're just having some candy now, which is fine, I enjoy doing this with you. Yeah it might have fewer calories than a big meal at mcdonald's but that doesn't make this a healthy meal. Plus! How much protein is ice cream? You've added like 6 grams. so it's just a treat :)

So there's absolutely nothing assholish about calling out stuff like this. The idea that exercise won't make you lose weight is demonstrably wrong, though. I clearly showed this in my [A] and [B] scenarios.

so I hope this explains my position a bit more clearly and I hope you will retract your initial impression.

[1] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2920219/How-fat-co...

[2] https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+calories+does+a+mar...

My experience is that really high protein/low carb diets (e.g. Atkins initiation phase) produce, for me, an uncomfortably full feeling without satiety. But there's pretty extreme variation in response person to person.

From the article: "If a hypothetical 200-pound man added 60 minutes of medium intensity running four days per week while keeping his calorie intake the same, and he did this for 30 days, he'd lose five pounds. 'If this person decided to increase food intake or relax more to recover from the added exercise, then even less weight would be lost,' Hall added. (More on these 'compensatory mechanisms' later.)

So if one is overweight or obese, and presumably trying to lose dozens of pounds, it would take an incredible amount of time, will, and effort to make a real impact through exercise.”

OK. I exercise more than that every month and have for years. It's painless to do because it's the only time I spend watching TV shows like Game Of Thrones--I look forward to my exercise sessions.

So, this article is telling me that (unless I exhibit compensatory mechanisms' such as eating more than I do), and if I started at 200 lbs, I'd lose 5 lbs a month, just doing what I actually want to do (because I enjoy watching entertaining TV shows like GoT). I'd go from 200 lbs to not being overweight in less than a year. The article's take on this is "it would take an incredible amount of time , will, and effort to make a real impact through exercise". That seems like an incredible amount of negative spin the authors are trying to put on it. To me, it sounds like a fantastic deal. And one I've taken advantage of.

My own weight loss path is pretty complicated, but I was at 225 and now my weight stays between 173 and 183, generally up and down depending on life events and whether I have temporarily keep more sodas in the fridge than I normally do.

EDIT: I just want to emphasize that the key for me is that I enjoy my exercise sessions, because I look forward to watching the most entertaining TV produced in the English language. So it takes almost no will power or effort. It's a matter of choosing not to watch that TV when not exercising, which gets to be a habit--similar to not picking up an apple pie every time I go to the grocery store so there's no such pie sitting around the house. If if DID take willpower and effort to do that exercise, I probably wouldn't do it! It helps enormously that I have an elliptical trainer in the house. But that's a small investment compared to the health benefits--not just weight loss and maintenance, but the fact that exercising is great for the brain, and many other benefits as well, including a reduction in cancer risk.

EDIT 2: I don't even know if I'd find that TV all that enjoyable if I wasn't exercising. I can imagining thinking "why am I wasting this time watching this crap when I could be doing something useful??" But when exercising, there are so many benefits that I give myself total permission to watch it, and I do enjoy it!

You can find 600 calorie pizzas easily enough, which fit into a 1800 calorie a day diet just fine.