Humans are hilariously efficient at running. Skipping a candy bar is easier than running two miles.
The line I like is “you can’t outrun your fork.” Weight loss is 99% about the kitchen, bodybuilding is probably about 75% the kitchen.
And also “six packs are made in the kitchen, not the gym.” Everyone’s got abs, you just can’t always see em!
Speak for your fucking self. I run about as well as a 65 year old tractor left out in the sun
Please. You don’t use exercise to lose weight. That’s what bootleg weight loss drugs are for.
Do cocaine
You got it, boss
This one hits close to home. I was in great shape the first half-plus of my life. Played sports, swam competitively, did the Marine thing. Always had a reason to want to not be out of shape, mainly so doing things didn’t suck.
Lost reason. Packed some pounds on, maybe 20 or so.
Finally decided about a year and a half ago to start running again, and so now I run like 35-40 miles a week, and every run I see the calories. Run for 45 minutes, burn like 650 calories. Costco has these cookies that I have to avoid seeing, and each cookie is 200 calories, and I can easily eat three, four, five at a clip, with a nice tall glass of milk. And so I’ll run for 90 minutes, and literally offset the benefit entirely in 10 minutes watching Netflix before bed.
It’s not fair. But it is what it is. And so my reason to run is chocolate chip cookies.
It wouldn’t even be offset if you didn’t run
People must be made so different. Exercise is the main factor in my size & weight. Like, even getting a job where I have to go up the stairs makes a difference.
And remember that there are so many benefits to exercise, beyond body shape. Cardio is so good for your heart and helps ease anxiety, lifting is so good for your bones, yoga helps keep you resilient & mobile so you don’t break when you fall down, and helps with balance.
All of them help offset all the sitting most of us have to do at work.
I’m grateful that my work involves running around with children, lifting them up, spinning them, etc. I get a bit of cardio and strength training while making money.
Except today. It was hot as balls and the air conditioner wasn’t fully working. I produced enough sweat sitting still to put a gym bro to shame. At one point a kid was spinning around on a spinner toy and I sat next to her just so I could feel the breeze it made, like a little fan.
Yeah but how many jobs are available as a professional child abductor? This doesn’t seem feasible for most people.
Damn, that was good. I probably should’ve phrased things differently, haha.
You gotta think bigger, start a business, be your own boss
You’ve just gotta be the change you want to see in the world
Part of the trick is finding an exercise that’s actually enjoyable to do so that you don’t care how hard you’re working or how much time has passed. Time is gonna pass extra slow on a treadmill and feel really difficult, if you’re not enjoying it. I find that the bicycle is that sweet spot for me, I do it because it’s fun not because of my health.
I like riding a bmx bike but I’m also pushing 40 so I look like an old crackhead who just stole a kids BMX bike if I do.
Do it, nobody gives a shit more than you do
In my 30s I lived in Seattle and rode bikes everywhere. I was proud on the day I rode a bmx from the stadium up and over to the other side of Capitol Hill where I lived. It’s only a 3 mile (4.8 km) trip but with a 400 ft (121.9 m) change in elevation.
Awesome. If I saw someone 10 years older than me absolutely tearing up a path in the woods, pushing themselves the way I remember biking for fun, I’d be nothing short of inspired.
I bike 50 miles a day (in summer, at least) and I fucking hate getting passed by the guys that look like they’re in their 80s. I just tell myself they’re on an e-bike, which might even be true sometimes.
Part of the trick is finding an exercise that’s actually enjoyable to do so that you don’t care how hard you’re working or how much time has passed.
That’s why I take an edible and then run the treadmill.
Whatever works!
Same same same. Once I fell in love with cycling it just became something I do. It’s only exercise incidentally. Not like I’m super fit or anything but I am healthy and I have a hobby I enjoy that is also good for me.
If you haven’t found something like this for you, there isn’t anything wrong with you, you just haven’t found it yet.
I wouldn’t mind biking if I didn’t live in a city. Years ago back when I was going to college, I decided to ride my bike the one mile to school and made it about 2 weeks before crashing to avoid being hit by a car.
If I didn’t live in America.
Ftfy.
Also, it isn’t better in an American countryside, unless you like semis blasting past at 55mph giving you zero room while you ride on a nearly non-existent shoulder. I’ve been there. It isn’t fun, though it does get the adrenaline pumping. Also, things are way further apart so it’s a lot more biking to get anywhere. God bless the US of A.
Before someone says “biking is also bad in XYZ location:” Of course there are also other places in the world that don’t have bike infrastructure, but America is kinda the most famous for it, especially considering the country’s wealth.
I definitely agree with you about riding on country roads, but I love in the PNW and was thinking more about being closer to mountain bike trails out in the woods as far away from cars as I can be.
There are also some cities around that have good bike infrastructure where they’re at least common enough in the city that people watch out for them or even better there are dedicated bike paths up on the curb so you’re not just separated from traffic by a white strip of paint on the ground.
Ahh, yeah, logging roads and the likes, suuuper rural stuff. And yeah, I live in Spokane, and the bike infrastructure is fragmented, but not as bad as you’d think.
I’ve gotta say, biking in NW Louisiana / E Texas was fucking fantastic. I could do 60 mile rides on country roads and not see a human being the entire time. And there were only a couple of months every year where the heat would kill you.
I love biking, but the ride to work kinda sucks. Either I have to turn the 2 mile ride into 8 miles to avoid cars, or I have to ride in a narrow bike lane on the side of a 4 lane road. I do dream of better infrastructure.
What has been working awesome is riding the tandem to our weekly trivia watering hole, it’s almost entirely through suburbs and on Spokane’s incredible Centennial trail. I also don’t mind if we don’t take the most efficient route, as it’s all for leisure. Of course I’m probably still at a net gain on calories haha, it’s a 4 mile round trip, fairly level, and that just ain’t enough to cover two beers and a burger.
Won’t lie that 8 mile detour sounds like a rather nice option. You’d be surprised how quick you can get used to that kind of distance.
That’s a good point. It’s definitely hard to get motivated to spend 45 minutes cycling to work in the morning when I could just hop in the car and be there in under 10. If there were some magical way to drive to work and cycle home, I’d do that in a heartbeat. I’m always in more of a cycling mood in the afternoon, once I’m more awake.
“You just eat less and exercise more.”
- Crunch Bandicoot, Crash Nitro Kart
It is easier to limit excess calories than to burn them with exercise, for sure.
But I do the recommended 30 minutes of “moderate exercise” and I see 200 calories, so it is maybe not entirely as dismal as this?
building muscle through resistance training is the best way to get your body to burn more calories. cardio is exercise for heart and lungs
This is what I’ve read, the calories-over-time that muscle burns “for free” outweighs any weight loss you can get from exercise. Cardio is more for escaping melee combat
Lol that’s hilarious, and also lowkey why I always make sure I can run at least one mile flat out
I had no special goal for exercise other than to reduce “all cause mortality” and my internet research steered me toward 30 minutes of moderate cardio. But I have also heard that strength/cardio are interrelated.
i said cardio is exercise for heart and lungs- speaking less broadly, the better shape your heart and lungs are in, the better you can be at resistance training; you’ll have more stamina and faster recovery, and things in general will be easier to do (walking, stairs, keeping up with children). resistance training makes the rest of your body stronger, so that things in general get easier, like lifting things etc. you can get away with only doing cardio or only doing resistance but best to do a bit of both, i think. but you should also train a bit for flexibility.
you can run/row/elliptical yourself skinny (not without eating healthy) but you cant run yourself jacked, you need to build muscle. unless you’re a sprinter, i guess
Yeah I just saw my doctor yesterday and they said that cardio is great but if I want to feel my energy level improve I need to do strength training. So that’s another factor to put on the list. Fortunately they said that 10 minutes would be enough, because 30 mins cardio, 30 mins strength, and ideally 30 mins flexibility like you mentioned would be awesome but ain’t nobody got time for all that.
The caloric calculation is only based on the effort at time of exercise, you continue to burn afterwards for several hours as muscles recover and heal -all that takes energy, and energy only comes from burning.
Yeah and don’t forget that the newly built muscle needs more energy as well just to maintain.
I have to eat painfully much… (I’m quite active, and even when not I eat a looot more than others…)
The resting metabolism of muscle tissue isn’t that high. It’s mostly overstated when it comes to actual passive calorie burn.
But that isn’t to say that having significant muscle doesn’t have a measurable/significant effect on calorie expenditure. If you’re building muscle by going to the gym, each trip back to the gym will involve more weight and therefore more calories due to the exercise itself. So packing on muscle makes each trip to the gym more productive in terms of calories burned.
Around 15 kCal/kg daily, maybe not very high indeed, but it’s significant, say I have 10-15kg more muscles than the average untrained person, that would be 150-225 more calories at rest, also you’re not always resting as you say already, the number will likely be higher, when considering daily activities, also since there’s more strength, it’s likely that the muscles are more used when doing sports (faster running/cycling, more weights, etc.), which is also relevant.
(For my case, I have a very inefficient metabolism likely (rather results in heat than fat-increase), I eat a lot even when I’m not trained, but right now, as I’m a little bit more packed I eat absurd amounts of food (due to a lot of drumming mostly btw. wouldn’t have thought it results in that much extra muscle/calories-burning))
15 kg of muscle (not just water and the accompanying fat/glycogen/bone density that comes from being that strong) is a lot. That might represent a 30 kg difference in actual body weight. For someone that big, an extra 250 calories per day (fat is metabolically active, too) is pretty insignificant compared to the immense calorie burn they’ll get from the actual exercise needed to maintain that muscle.
Like you mention, a huge chunk of the effect is the increase in calories of just moving that heavier body around in daily activities.
To me the point of regular exercise, especially cardio, is that if I run every day, my body simply doesn’t want to eat the unhealthy food. I can’t run if I’ve eaten a sleeve of Oreos that day. And afterwards my body craves hearty, healthy meals and vegetables.
On the contrary, when I’m going for a long bike ride, I’m literally drinking syrup for fuel and eating high carb snacks.
The carbs are great sources of energy, but aren’t meant for post workout. Just enough to power through a long, multi-hour cardio session and avoid bonking out.
It’s the reward you get to have while doing the work and a healthy meal with whole foods is what you have afterwards. Good to train yourself that the sweets should never be at the end.
For anyone only doing short exercise sessions, absolutely no reason to carb load or fuel on anything other than water and maybe some electrolytes. Especially if weight loss is the goal. Even then, diet should be priority 1 over exercise. That one Oreo could cost you 30 minutes to burn off.
Walking and moving your legs provides crucial pumping action for your body to avoid fluids pooling in your lower body
What if I like fluids pooling in my lower body… ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
That means swelling in your ankles, your groin is the middle not lower.
I think that just means, that you have changed your microbiota to like more healthy stuff (I too just don’t like unhealthy food anymore, but that took years…).
Carbs though are something that you really crave while being active, the muscles want to be fed, whether that happens via Oreos or say more healthy fruits or something like that is a different story.
I don’t understand the idea of “rewarding” yourself with crappy food after you exercise to burn calories.
I suggest adopting the mantra “food is not reward, food is not entertainment”.
Are you one of those “food is medicine” people
Fortunately I have the opposite impulse. I see a fun-size candy bar, get PTSD from my last treadmill session, and recoil from it like a snake.
caloriemaxxing doesn’t just have to be on the treadmill: You can also suffer on a stationary bike!
It’s crazy how much work it is to maintain a mid physique. I gym/cardio 6 days a week and am training for a marathon and will still put on weight if I don’t track what I eat.
Since you mentioned you track what you eat, this might be a good place for me to add my contribution.
I struggled with my weight my whole life and I started tracking what I eat, focused mainly on limiting my calories. It was still a struggle, but it definitely helped.
Then I discovered my body overproduces cholesterol and I had to change my diet, which was relatively easy since I was already tracking. I feel like I was given the key to weight loss with this one change: keep your saturated fat below 13g per day.
It’s not as easy as it sounds, you’re stuck basically eliminating certain foods altogether (I’m looking at you, beef) and you need to do a good deal of meal plan and prep (which is good for you anyway) - but holy shit. I eat constantly and I can’t keep weight on.
The only way I can gain is by stopping exercise altogether (I do one hour 3 days a week) and really loading up on carbs (bread/pasta).
How are you all tracking what you eat? I’ve had some success with doing that before, but I did it with menu management that I can’t pull off easily now. Still, I feel like just knowing where I’m at each day would be helpful for me.
Macrofactor is the gold standard, but requires a subscription. Calorometer is a decent alternative, but still locks some features behind a subscription and is a bit messy.
I use a calorie counter app. Cronometer is the one I use right now, but its pretty annoying without an adblock. For that i use AdGuard. I even gave them money after I found out they were a buy-it-once instead of a subscription model. AdGuard, that is, not cronometer.
Trail running makes running so much better, but also I find an hour and a half on the treadmill way easier than an hour and a half on the stationary bike.
I love riding bikes outside, but I can’t stand riding on the trainer. And whenever I say it, there’s always someone trying to convince me that I’m being irrational for not liking both
I got a recumbent bike from a sale at a big box store. Set up a Steam Link (yes i know its old as fuck) and a Steam Controller. I play my library of games while I bike. The last few years I play Fall Guys for anywhere from 30-60 minutes at a time.
Great cardio. I forget I’m even doing it. Usually burn around 300-500 in a session a few times a week. All that said, I still eat like shit and can’t lose weight… BUT I am not putting any on. So thats nice I guess.
There’s some post-exercise calorie burn (measurable as excess post-exercise oxygen consumption) beyond just what the machine says. Some people have found much better effects from repeated shorter bursts of intense cardio (aka HIIT).
Still, personally, I get the best results from doing both slower steady cardio for long periods of time (more absolute calories) and occasional faster speed work (probably more post-exercise calories and more adaptation in my cardiovascular system and bones/muscles/tendons to get better at exercising next time).
And once you get better at exercise, it becomes possible to really burn calories enough to where you have a better calorie budget for eating more delicious food.
