> Some of my friends are obese despite exercising heavily every day.
I’ve been chubby despite heavy exercise most of my life. It took me at least 30 years to come to what now seems like the dumbest most obvious realization:
Exercise makes me strong. Food makes me fat.
Now I think of them separately, to a first approximation, as the high order bit. To affect change to my strength, I first need to modify my exercise habits, and to affect change to my weight, I fist need to modify my eating habits. Of course I’m not saying you can’t burn calories exercising, but it’s actually been extremely helpful in my weight loss goals to mentally separate exercise from eating. Instead of thinking of exercise as _the_ way to lose weight, I think of diet as the primary tool, and exercise as something that is primarily for strength and activity and only secondarily for weight control.
The reason I’ve been fat despite exercise is, of course, because I naturally compensate for exercise by eating more. For me, I was eating until I feel a certain level of fullness, and that level seems to be slightly too much regardless of how much physical activity I do. Finally realizing that I don’t need to exercise harder, I ‘just’ need to track what I eat, is what finally actually worked. But like the article says, simple is not easy; I air-quoted the ‘just’ in that last sentence because successful food tracking is mentally difficult.
One of the fun side effects of tracking my eating instead of thinking of exercise as the primary weight loss tool is that with respect to food, exercise sort-of reversed it’s function for me, in a way. Instead of thinking of it as my weight loss tool and relying on it to compensate for what I ate, I sometimes use exercise to allow me to eat more when I’m hungry or want a treat. It’s funny, I know I said the same thing two ways, but my mindset changed almost 180 degrees. When I’m in a calorie deficit, I’ve noticed that days I don’t exercise I get more tired and hungry than days I do exercise.
To support what you said, there has been exactly one time in my life where I was exercising enough that it affected my weight, and that was when I was playing water polo for 3 hours a day, every day. That is a level of exercise that just about no one will put themselves through, where even your down time is spent treading water. And all that working out? Equivalent to pretty much one meal you'll get at a restaurant. And makes you ravenous, so the real reason it worked was that it capped out my availability of food, not my appetite for it.
I’ve come to understand “getting in shape” is literally that. Food just gives your body energy and nutrients, how you use your body decides what shape it’ll take (how it directs that energy and nutrients).
I’ve been chubby despite heavy exercise most of my life. It took me at least 30 years to come to what now seems like the dumbest most obvious realization:
Exercise makes me strong. Food makes me fat.
Now I think of them separately, to a first approximation, as the high order bit. To affect change to my strength, I first need to modify my exercise habits, and to affect change to my weight, I fist need to modify my eating habits. Of course I’m not saying you can’t burn calories exercising, but it’s actually been extremely helpful in my weight loss goals to mentally separate exercise from eating. Instead of thinking of exercise as _the_ way to lose weight, I think of diet as the primary tool, and exercise as something that is primarily for strength and activity and only secondarily for weight control.
The reason I’ve been fat despite exercise is, of course, because I naturally compensate for exercise by eating more. For me, I was eating until I feel a certain level of fullness, and that level seems to be slightly too much regardless of how much physical activity I do. Finally realizing that I don’t need to exercise harder, I ‘just’ need to track what I eat, is what finally actually worked. But like the article says, simple is not easy; I air-quoted the ‘just’ in that last sentence because successful food tracking is mentally difficult.
One of the fun side effects of tracking my eating instead of thinking of exercise as the primary weight loss tool is that with respect to food, exercise sort-of reversed it’s function for me, in a way. Instead of thinking of it as my weight loss tool and relying on it to compensate for what I ate, I sometimes use exercise to allow me to eat more when I’m hungry or want a treat. It’s funny, I know I said the same thing two ways, but my mindset changed almost 180 degrees. When I’m in a calorie deficit, I’ve noticed that days I don’t exercise I get more tired and hungry than days I do exercise.