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To Lose Weight with Exercise, Aim for 300 Minutes a Week

nytimes.com

71–80 of 145 posts

Re: To Lose Weight with Exercise, Aim for 300 Minutes a Week

#71

I see a lot of comments from people I suspect have never struggled with weight loss here. "Put the fork down" is easy advice, but for many it's a lot more challenging than it sounds. For me, and I suspect a lot of people, focusing on exercise first is the key. I can plot the number of miles I post on the bike against my weight. Of course I absolutely do more than 300 minutes a week on the bike. Diet is super importan…

The conclusion was that exercise can help with appetite suppression. These people have not struggled with their weight but do struggle to RTFA.

Re: To Lose Weight with Exercise, Aim for 300 Minutes a Week

#72

The majority of weight is lost through respiration, that's the C in CO2. Exercise is great for health, and does help weight loss. But diet is the only thing that is going to resolve this. You consume far more calories in a regular sized Milkyway then you're going to burn exercising in 50 minutes that's for sure. Here's a chart of just those tiny "fun sized" Halloween candies. https://www.popsugar.com/fitness/What-Tak…

The problem with this is that the lizard brain takes over. Brain says eat your are staving to death, eat it'll make you happy, eat... or else. You can't control urges to eat, you can only do your best to resist them. However, exercise, is always under your control, so it is a great tool. Exercise also has all sorts of non weight loss health benefits that aren't tangential but complementary to weight loss, including s…

> You can't control urges to eat, you can only do your best to resist them.

This is going to depend from person to person. Like most things, you can train yourself to control your hunger/appetite. Some people will have no real issue, others it will be an uphill battle.

Re: To Lose Weight with Exercise, Aim for 300 Minutes a Week

#73
post #35

The majority of weight is lost through respiration, that's the C in CO2. Exercise is great for health, and does help weight loss. But diet is the only thing that is going to resolve this. You consume far more calories in a regular sized Milkyway then you're going to burn exercising in 50 minutes that's for sure. Here's a chart of just those tiny "fun sized" Halloween candies. https://www.popsugar.com/fitness/What-Tak…

I.e., “you can’t outrun your mouth”

Not sure why you're getting downvotes, but this is correct. Though I've heard it as "you can't outrun your s----y diet".

Re: To Lose Weight with Exercise, Aim for 300 Minutes a Week

#74
This article doesn't mention routine at all, and the only focus is on weight loss. This is extremely short sighted as a novice sticking to a routine of increasingly heavy compound lifts 2-3 times a week (~120-180 minutes) can expect improvements in body composition and coordination that will be a much bigger improvement in overall physical ability than just losing some arbitrary amount of weight. Even if weight loss is the end goal, having a solid foundation will help immensely.

Re: To Lose Weight with Exercise, Aim for 300 Minutes a Week

#75
post #31

The majority of weight is lost through respiration, that's the C in CO2. Exercise is great for health, and does help weight loss. But diet is the only thing that is going to resolve this. You consume far more calories in a regular sized Milkyway then you're going to burn exercising in 50 minutes that's for sure. Here's a chart of just those tiny "fun sized" Halloween candies. https://www.popsugar.com/fitness/What-Tak…

According to your chart and a full size Milky Way being 240 calories, it’s more like 30 minutes

Depends on the exercise of course, that's 80 minutes of walking.

Re: To Lose Weight with Exercise, Aim for 300 Minutes a Week

#76

I've found I lost more weight walking (long walks) than doing intense exercise. Cole (Snake Diet guy), had an interesting comment/hypothesis, when your exercise is intense you burn sugar (easily accessible). Your body senses that it needs a lot of energy (fight or flight scenario)and this leaves you craving to replace that energy that you burned (sugar). When you do a low impact cardio exercise (walking below 4 MPH),…

Everyone is a little different. So I'm not going to tell you what works for you.

For me... cycling works wonders. I burn calories twice as fast as walking and so long as I focus on good post-workout foods I avoid the trap of undoing all the good that I just did. Eating proteins and fats after a workout fills me up and lets my body repair torn muscle tissue.

Re: To Lose Weight with Exercise, Aim for 300 Minutes a Week

#77
post #39
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to your chart and a full size Milky Way being 240 calories, it’s more like 30 minutes

It could be even more wrong. Running burns around 100kcal/mile[1], so assuming a fairly pedestrian 8min/mile, that's only 20 minutes. [1]: https://apnews.com/article/51de4cba6ffe48b0886cf9b2c7a6ba8a

I would venture to guess, most people struggling with weight, aren't putting 20minutes of running in. That's at least a couple miles.

Re: To Lose Weight with Exercise, Aim for 300 Minutes a Week

#78
Admittedly I haven't read tons of scientific research on this topic, but whenever the topic of diet/exercise comes up, I often find the way the question is researched to be lacking.

The article mentioned the participants could exercise however they wanted and "many chose to walk". I don't understand why walking is considered exercise. I understand it burns more calories than sitting still, but it doesn't elevate your heart rate nor push your muscles to grow/develop in any real way, and it feels like trying to "cheat" your way into exercise.

Also, this bit was really interesting to me: "Those burning about 3,000 calories a week showed changes now in their bodies’ levels of leptin, an appetite hormone that can reduce appetite. These alterations suggested that exercise had increased the exercisers’ sensitivity to the hormone, enabling them to better regulate their desire to eat." I would bet that those who burned the most amount of calories weren't just walking farther than the others, but instead their choice of exercise was just more intense.

I've always heard that running isn't a great way to lose weight because it just makes you want to eat more, but that hasn't been my experience. After running somewhere between 3.5-5 miles, my appetite is gone for at least a few hours after the run. I have no desire to snack, and while I might eat slightly more at dinner, the overall calories for my day don't change too significantly.

Re: To Lose Weight with Exercise, Aim for 300 Minutes a Week

#79

I see a lot of comments from people I suspect have never struggled with weight loss here. "Put the fork down" is easy advice, but for many it's a lot more challenging than it sounds. For me, and I suspect a lot of people, focusing on exercise first is the key. I can plot the number of miles I post on the bike against my weight. Of course I absolutely do more than 300 minutes a week on the bike. Diet is super importan…

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