For weight maintainence, healthy eating is definitely more important than exercise. It takes a hell of a lot more effort to burn 500 calories than to cut 500 calories from your diet.
I'm no exercise nut, but I do a lot of cycling (70-75km/week this summer). I don't find it relaxing; if anything, it's the most stressful part of my day. But, it wakes me up in the mornings and forces me back into the real world at the end of the day. More than the exercise, I really do it for the cognitive benefits.
But exercise has to be something you like doing. Cycling is the most enjoyable exercise I've found so far that I can easily integrate into my daily routine (that's how I commute to school and work).
as somebody that watches what I eat, just healthy eating is not good enough.
If you don't exercise, you loose muscle, replaced by fat. Even if your weight stays the same, your fat/muscle ratio will change, and you wont look good, or feel healthy.
Exercise is a must.
Gym, running outside, playing co-ed sports (soccer, volleyball, whatever) are a must. If you don't at least one of them, your body will suffer.
> For weight maintainence, healthy eating is definitely more important than exercise.
It depends - I find that in a lot of cases (me included), exercising is a good first step. If you exercise, your diet tends to change as a result anyway (the last thing I feel like after a run is a donut).
> But exercise has to be something you like doing.
This is spot on.
My personal priorities are: 1. drink water, 2. get enough sleep, 3. exercise, 4. think about what I eat... Something like Yoga or Pilates is a good 2a or 3a.
What I would encourage most people to do is learn about their bodies and their metabolism. If you walk down the street you'll see a bewildering difference between people - the same applies to their metabolisms. If someone says "fasted cardio is the only way to go", then I'm sure it works, but nothing works for everyone. For example, I run before I have breakfast - for no other reason than I feel horrible and bloated otherwise. However, I know other people that can barely muster the energy to open the door without eating first.
Try a few things out... Turn what a lot of people find a chore into enjoyment out of hacking your mind & body.
This isn't the whole picture. It's hard to burn 500 calories via exercise.
However, muscle burns calories even at rest. And building muscle requires calories. Over the past two months, I've done little exercise besides weight lifting, and dramatically increased my eating. I've had no noticeable increase in fat, though my weight almost certainly went up.
Spoken like someone who is genetically thinner (or one of the few fat people who can just skip a meal and lose weight) than most and never really has to deal with weight issues.
A few years ago, for 4 months, I ate a small breakfast of oatmeal and black coffee, a lunch of one Lean Cuisine, an afternoon snack of a Balance Bar, and for dinner, a small salad and lean meat option. I lost weight the first 2.5 months. After that, I stopped losing and actually gained some back.
You do not know what you are talking about. Please don't ever comment on weight issues. Normal people have to maintain or add muscle mass or their metabolism will adjust and you are back to square one.
Sure, some people apparently get a runners high and really enjoy exercise, and they'll say how much people like me are "missing". My dad is apparently one of those freaks, as is my wife. I'm not. I have never in my life felt like exercise has made me feel that way.
The diet and exercise comment isn't like the Amazon suggestions of the type "If you love being healthy you'll also enjoy good diet and regular exercise", it's more about reminding you that, as far as weight is concerned, it's more or less simple accounting: deposits without caloric withdrawls = increased balance.
I understand that it's frustrating to hear this message all of the time (especially if you are unsuccessful at meeting your weight goals or don't like exercise), but nobody's implying that it's going to be fun, just that it's how the numbers work.
Furthermore, there's more benefit to exercise than burning excess calories, which is why credible dietitians and doctors don't just say to eat less: there are innumerable cardiovascular and muscular benefits; maybe not so important at 25, but definitely something that can make a difference between a youthful and a pre-elderly 50 year old.
Disclosure: I don't do any of this stuff. I do not live a healthy lifestyle and am not chiding anyone for doing (or not doing) anything. I'm just saying the math is what it is and that getting frustrated about it doesn't accomplish anything.
I have lost 20 lbs in the last 6 months, so I have just recently gotten into the exercise craze. I run 10 miles a week, and do 30 minutes of ellipticals on my off days. It sounds painful as heck but there are really 3 major reasons for exercising on a daily basis.
1. You'll look better.
2. You'll feel better.
3. You'll think better.
Ultimately, it's about making a conscious choice in life, do you want to sit around waiting for magic pills to get you in shape, or do you want to take control of your life. I've taken the latter, and I highly recommend it.
As a side note, I recently became a vegetarian too, that has really helped me maintain my weight, and I can still eat all the good stuff (Chocolate, Ice Cream, etc.)
Human bodies are not evolved to sit idle in office chairs for exceedingly long periods of time. All the science points to a reasonable diet and exercise as being important. It's just that most hew-mahns don't like to.
overweight predicts inactivity but inactivity does not predict overweight. With the usual caveat that these are just associations, this is not consistent with the idea that inactivity causes overweight. It is consistent with the idea that overweight causes inactivity, or they are both caused by something else.
overweight is largely caused by diet composition. If that's the case, then changing diet composition is obviously going to be a more effective treatment than exercise, which doesn't address the root cause of the problem. This idea is supported by numerous diet intervention trials.
First of all, there are things everyone should do even though they don't like to do it. Suck it up. Financial planning is boring, but hey it beats outliving your money. Dental work is painful, but it's certainly better than trying to chew steak with your gums. Wearing a condom is so not spontaneous, but I prefer it to having my penis fall off. Writing documentation sucks, but I have to do it if I want more than 3 people to use my code.
Second, using drugs as opposed to a natural method often gives a suboptimal result, and not just in a holistic / living closer to the earth kind of way.
Third, if you want to be fat, all the drug is going to do is give you permission to eat even more, similar to the way people take more risks when driving as cars became safer.
I must be one of those people Linus wants to kick. Too bad for him. I love taking a break from staring at a screen, and I feel way better, physically and mentally, after a good run or a good rowing session. My lower back starts to feel stiff and cramped if I go for more than a day or so without exercise.
Also, I can't imagine life without skiing, and that requires a pretty decent degree of fitness. Anyone who doesn't ski, or doesn't ski hard enough — you don't know what you're missing, and I feel sorry for you. :) (<--- Smiley for the humor-impaired!)
I have to agree. Both skiing (and snowboarding, which tends to have a bad reputation among older folk, sometimes for good reason) are something that everyone should experience at some point in their life. Going 6 to 8 hours without seeing a computer screen, just you and the snow, is amazing. Those who haven't tried it - I strongly suggest you do! If you want fast results, try snowboarding. Snowboarding tends to be faster to learn initially, and harder to improve once you're good, while skiing is rather difficult at first but then is easier once you're past a certain point.
Disclaimer: These are, of course, just my opinions. I've been skiing for 10 or 11 years and snowboarding for 4 or 5 years.
I always enjoyed running around in the woods like an 8 year old. That burns most of my junk food diet, so i don't have any weight problems. Recently i started some other types of exercises, till now everything i tried, except running, got boring, but we'll see if i can actually stick to a regime or not. Apparently Linus has the same problem, but i at least found one thing that doesn't bore/frustrate me. He could try soccer, that kept my interest for the whole summer until it got boring last month.
Have you tried orienteering? You get the running around in the woods like an 8 year old plus the mental challenge of navigating and route selection. The community is also generally intelligent and you get to see some awesome places too.
No, not in the woods, but i tried parkour when i was 17 and it was fun for a while, but then i hurt myself and that was the end of it. I could try orienting next spring.
The only sort of exercise I can tolerate is the type where it's you versus a landscape or individuals. I hate team sports of all types, and running faster or lifting more to beat my personal best doesn't keep me interested either. I think most geeks are this way. The most enjoyable sports for me end up being hiking, climbing, exploring in general, biking, boating, and racing.
Most geeks feel that way? I think you're generalizing your own feelings onto a group that you self-identify, assuming that if you have this in common, you probably have that in common.
If you've ever gotten satisfaction out of improving your skills in a videogame, or from a team-based multiplayer game, then you have the "enjoys self-improvement and team based competition" part of the brain. It's just the physical aspect you don't enjoy.
I would really like to see more research on the relationship between metabolism and aging (not passage of time, but actual cellular aging, I think referred to as mitochondrial aging?)
I had thought that low metabolism, meaning a low pace, or clock to the body's energy consumption, would imply a slower aging action, but a cursory search on google immediately turned up some research that says it may be just the opposite: that high energy consumption (not food consumption, energy use by the body) in mice seems to lead to greater longevity...
Anyone with a more detailed understanding, please?
I'm no exercise nut, but I do a lot of cycling (70-75km/week this summer). I don't find it relaxing; if anything, it's the most stressful part of my day. But, it wakes me up in the mornings and forces me back into the real world at the end of the day. More than the exercise, I really do it for the cognitive benefits.
But exercise has to be something you like doing. Cycling is the most enjoyable exercise I've found so far that I can easily integrate into my daily routine (that's how I commute to school and work).