The best always end up being (IMO):
- listen to your body
- exercise some. doesn't have to be gym. even walking 30min a day is fine.
- eat fresh food rather than frozen or processed food (hint: it requires cooking)
- drink water, not soda or beer
- Keep things balanced. Ying & yang principle applies basically everywhere. Including food types, salting, sweetening, etc.
then you generally don't need to force diet upon you. you don't need medication. you don't need a "diet plan". you don't need to "hit the gym".
you don't need to make extra efforts that you'll revert in 3month.
you're also not going to get bulky or a skeleton. you're just going to get normal and healthy.
of course, all the above take some effort. and its true that it's harder to find fresh food or proper food in general in the US than elsewhere, actually.
Contrary to what the exercise industry tells you in ads, you actually can't lose weight with exercise. Diet is almost always required to lose weight.
Going to the gym for an hour, burning a measly 400 calories walking on a treadmill, and then celebrating that with a 800 calorie Smoothie after, is actually making people gain weight not lose.
> Contrary to what the exercise industry tells you in ads, you actually can't lose weight with exercise. Diet is almost always required to lose weight.
You can certainly lose weight by doing exercise and keeping your caloric intake constant. It might as well be that out of all people who want to lose weight, only a small % of people have the discipline/volition to follow such a plan. But that's a far cry from "you can't lose weight with exercise".
Perhaps a better way to state it is that most people find it quite significantly easier to lose weight by reducing caloric intake by a given amount as opposed to increasing physical activity by the proportionate amount.
I stand by my original statement. Unless you are on The Biggest Loser and exercising 8 hours per day, burning 5,000 calories per day with exercise, you have to control what you eat to lose weight. It can't be done with "1 hour of exercise, 3 times per week" as the TV commercials claim.
You called it "caloric intake constant", but that's counting calories, and sounds like a diet to me. And most people unconsciously eat more after a workout. They don't think they do, but they do.
Exercise is a good supplement to diet for weight loss. But it is not necessary.
One of my friends is morbidly obese, it's quite tragic. And her nutritionist keeps telling her to "do more exercise". It's such a terrible idea, it would put a lot of stress on her body, be extremely extremely hard work and all for mediocre benefits.
The bulk of weight loss is from correcting your diet. Again the nutritionist advice for her is generally along the lines of allowing her to eat as much sugar (carbs) as she wants but try and stay below some arbitrary limit, which is difficult.
I find it both funny and scary that more than one person thought I mention exercise as weight loss.
Exercise is necessary for general well being. It doesnt have to be the gym. Walking around is ok.
I also think that people who are extremely overweight generally (unless they have a specific sickness causing this) are simply too weak minded to over come this.
For these, the only way I know of is to educate them as young age. Ie, the ones that are lost are already lost.
Some will overcome their weak mind and eventually get healthy again, but a vast number will not.
And facts will back this up, unfortunately - I don't even think this needs a citation :/
- exercise some. doesn't have to be gym. even walking 30min a day is fine.
- eat fresh food rather than frozen or processed food (hint: it requires cooking)
- drink water, not soda or beer
- Keep things balanced. Ying & yang principle applies basically everywhere. Including food types, salting, sweetening, etc.
then you generally don't need to force diet upon you. you don't need medication. you don't need a "diet plan". you don't need to "hit the gym". you don't need to make extra efforts that you'll revert in 3month. you're also not going to get bulky or a skeleton. you're just going to get normal and healthy.
of course, all the above take some effort. and its true that it's harder to find fresh food or proper food in general in the US than elsewhere, actually.