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Diet, not lack of exercise, drives obesity, a new study finds

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Re: Diet, not lack of exercise, drives obesity, a new study finds

#21
post #7

This is true to an extent and I'm very fond of the saying, but beyond a certain point you can indeed outrun a bad diet. I used to spend ~4 hours a day training martial arts (kickboxing, BJJ, etc) during which time I could eat almost anything I wanted without gaining weight. I'm sure if I had downed a cheesecake a day it would've been bad for me, but I was able to get away with a level of excess back then that I am un…

You were also younger.

I used to house whole pizzas for lunch. Now I only eat 2 slices and weigh the same.

Re: Diet, not lack of exercise, drives obesity, a new study finds

#23

I have been, rather lazily I suppose, trying to tweak my diet in such as way as to lose weight; and with little to show for it. I'm not sure that there is much if any processed food still in my diet (maybe just the English muffin in the morning?). I stopped buying/drinking soda pop decades ago (a low-hanging fruit indeed — I lost almost 10 pounds within a month of making that dietary change alone). And since I have t…

Try a diet plan where you prep your own meals and intake a specific amount of calories. I've used Clean Simple Eats in the past. Diet only works. Diet+exercise works better, and adds all of the benefits of exercise.

Re: Diet, not lack of exercise, drives obesity, a new study finds

#24
Diet to manage your weight. Exercise to manage your fitness.

It's real simple in theory and real difficult in practice. Super worth it, though. Your entire world starts opening up when things take less energy to do and you have more energy to give. It's very challenging to convey how important it is without living the experience.

Re: Diet, not lack of exercise, drives obesity, a new study finds

#25
post #4

The timing of when I eat changes, if I gain weight. Eating pizza after jogging? Fat on belly. Eating as much pizza as I want, but going to bed after on empty stomach after running, or putting the running in the morning while doing about 12 to 16 hour slots of intermitted fasting? Hello, six-pack.

That is a pretty interesting observation. I always thought it was solely on the amount of calories consumed vs burned. For example, you burn ~2500 through just living, if you eat a pizza that contains 3000 calories, no matter the time at which you eat it, will you not still gain fat?

Its all anecdotal all the way down, so here's another grain of salt to add to the pile.

(Calories in - calories out) is correct enough to be the single most reliable metric, and will serve you right 99% of the time. My "one level deeper" understanding is that there are a few transfer functions applied to calories in. So of the technically available calories you eat, how much does your body absorb. Then, when the calories are biologically available, how does your body spend them?

So the idea would be, if you eat the pizza at the right time you reduce calories in. Either you will digest less calories, or your body will allocated them differently at different times of the day.

Unfortunately these things aren't really measurable so it's very hard to separate from hearsay.

Re: Diet, not lack of exercise, drives obesity, a new study finds

#26
Having lost 40lbs in the past couple of years, diet and walking have been key. It's just so much easier to burn fat by not eating it, than it is to try to burn it off with exercise. You'll find that burning 500 calories on a treadmill feels like an eternity, but eating one chocolate chip muffin? You can do that and gulp down a big glass of milk in 5 minutes like it's nothing.

Re: Diet, not lack of exercise, drives obesity, a new study finds

#28

I have been, rather lazily I suppose, trying to tweak my diet in such as way as to lose weight; and with little to show for it. I'm not sure that there is much if any processed food still in my diet (maybe just the English muffin in the morning?). I stopped buying/drinking soda pop decades ago (a low-hanging fruit indeed — I lost almost 10 pounds within a month of making that dietary change alone). And since I have t…

Have you tried introducing a food scale? Not with the intent of changing your portions or anything like that - just out of idle curiosity to confirm how much you're eating?

I found that I was eating over double the amount of nut butter that I was estimating once I started weighing it. After a couple of months I was able to go back to eyeballing it while remaining accurate.

A lot of wisdom suggests being +/- 300 calories from your TDEE to cut/bulk. Three tablespoons of peanut butter is ~285 calories. So it's entirely possible that something as small as an estimation error is responsible for whether you're gaining or maintaining. Same goes for eyeballing cooking oils, seeds & nuts, and, to a lesser extent, processed carbs.

Re: Diet, not lack of exercise, drives obesity, a new study finds

#30

I have been, rather lazily I suppose, trying to tweak my diet in such as way as to lose weight; and with little to show for it. I'm not sure that there is much if any processed food still in my diet (maybe just the English muffin in the morning?). I stopped buying/drinking soda pop decades ago (a low-hanging fruit indeed — I lost almost 10 pounds within a month of making that dietary change alone). And since I have t…

A good diet only helps so much. Of course with enough self control, a caloric deficit will make you lose weight, but you need to make yourself perpetually hungry. Eating clean without measuring and limiting portions is not enough for people whose appetite is naturally higher.

Ozempic was the only thing that actually solved my hunger. I would eat healthy, do exercise, but without ozempic my appetite was unstoppable and would think of food 24/7.

BTW you can still improve your diet. PB and bread are bad for weight loss. Go with high protein, low carb. But even that was not enough for me.

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