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Erkki

Idle Workouts

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Oh okay.

 

But I really like smoothies tho. So I'll just eat nothing but smoothies as long as I eat less calories than I use. Problem solved.

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I have never heard this, and I've talked to a lot of people about it.

 

That you can lose weight without exercising, I am aware of, but that exercising isn't also good for it sounds incorrect.

 

Exercise isn't good for weight loss. It's an incredibly inefficient way to lose fat. It won't hurt your attempts, but it certainly won't make or break your attempts to lose fat. The reason it sounds incorrect is because we've all been told for years that you have to exercise to lose weight. It's not false, but it's certainly not anywhere near the best way.

I've come to see exercise as a catalyst. It speeds up fat loss when your diet is on point, but as badfinger said, it's probably in the range of 70/30 diet/exercise.

When I was over weight and under trained I focused on putting on muscle first, then worrying about losing fat later. It's really hard to train and diet without ever having done either before.

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Exercise isn't good for weight loss. It's an incredibly inefficient way to lose fat. It won't hurt your attempts, but it certainly won't make or break your attempts to lose fat. The reason it sounds incorrect is because we've all been told for years that you have to exercise to lose weight. It's not false, but it's certainly not anywhere near the best way.

I've come to see exercise as a catalyst. It speeds up fat loss when your diet is on point, but as badfinger said, it's probably in the range of 70/30 diet/exercise.

When I was over weight and under trained I focused on putting on muscle first, then worrying about losing fat later. It's really hard to train and diet without ever having done either before.

Actually, the reason it sounds incorrect to me is because it just plain sounds incorrect. It's not so much that exercising has a direct correlation to losing weight as it is that it builds your body up so that you actually burn more calories just by being more fit. One feeds into the other.

 

I know quite a bit about this topic, despite hating it. Probably because I hate it. What I'm saying is I'm not ignorant here.

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The thing is, if you're on a calorie restricted diet, you won't gain muscle from exercise. It's impossible, unless you're a complete beginner, or tremendously over weight. So there won't be any significant gain in basal metabolic rate.

Why would you be on an isocaloric diet, or hypercaloric diet if you're trying to lose weight? That would be counter productive.

Also, remember that while muscle has a higher level of resting metabolic rate than fat tissue, fat tissue still metabolises. For every bit of fat you lose and muscle you gain, the difference between your overall metabolic rate is actually quite small.

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Your metabolic rate is influenced by your level of exercise, exercise has a host of health benefits, and usually if you're overweight you're also sedentary so exercise will increase strength on parts of the body you're going to need later, but it's never going to be as big a contributor to weight loss specifically as changing your diet and reducing your calorie intake.

 

It's possible to lose weight without exercising, but for normal people, if you're not exercising, you're not going to be losing much weight either. This is why most of the advice basically makes it mandatory - for most regular people, who are not being closely watched by a doctor, it's better to boil it down to 'you have to exercise'.

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Your metabolic rate is influenced by your level of exercise, exercise has a host of health benefits, and usually if you're overweight you're also sedentary so exercise will increase strength on parts of the body you're going to need later, but it's never going to be as big a contributor to weight loss specifically as changing your diet and reducing your calorie intake.

 

It's possible to lose weight without exercising, but for normal people, if you're not exercising, you're not going to be losing much weight either. This is why most of the advice basically makes it mandatory - for most regular people, who are not being closely watched by a doctor, it's better to boil it down to 'you have to exercise'.

I disagree with the assessment that you won't lose much weight without exercise. It's demonstrably false. There's a ton of data out there on weight loss, in humans and animal models based entirely on hypocalorific diets. Anecdotally, I've lost more weight by dieting than I ever have by exercise alone. Obviously I've lost more weight by dieting and exercise, but in my experience with other people, doing both is more likely to lead to failure, especially if they hate exercise.

Just saying "you have to exercise" is such shit advice because it avoids the key issue. "You have to eat less" is far better advice. A meta analysis of dietary/combined/exercise interventions showed that combined weight loss of diet and exercise interventions are not significantly better than dietary only. Exercise only being the worst.

I'm not saying exercise is bad. I would recommend everyone exercise, but it's completely inefficient for weight loss. It's great for bone, heart, lung, metabolic and circadian health.

I'd also argue that changing habits about how you eat is easier than changing habits about how you're active, that's subjective though, but if someone hates exercise, I'd imagine they'd feel the same as me.

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If you want to be healthy tho, it's shown that it's more important to exercise than to be thin. A fat person who regularly exercises (even if they stay fat) is healthier than a thin sedentary person (even if their weight stays steady).

 

Exercise is also fun, it's good for bone strength and muscle strength, etc.

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I feel like I'm being a contrarian, but a lot of this is tangentially related to my field of research so I end up reading about it anyway. 

 

If you want to be healthy tho, it's shown that it's more important to exercise than to be thin. A fat person who regularly exercises (even if they stay fat) is healthier than a thin sedentary person (even if their weight stays steady).

 

So this is false. Activity does not mitigate the health risks of being obese. The research on this is around 10 years old found here and here.

 

Essentially it's better to be thin and sedentary, than fat and active. It's also better to be thin and active than anything else...who'd have thought?

 

The fitness industry is really good at ignoring scientific data that doesn't help them make money, or doesn't back up what they believe.

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Granted I skimmed through those papers, but I don't see any comparison that's relevant. The authors don't even comment on activity vs high bmi, let alone do any stats.

It might be there and I missed it, but it's certainly not the focus of the paper unlike the two I linked.

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Granted I skimmed through those papers, but I don't see any comparison that's relevant. The authors don't even comment on activity vs high bmi, let alone do any stats.

It might be there and I missed it, but it's certainly not the focus of the paper unlike the two I linked.

BMI is a fairly meaningless statistic, and has largely fallen into disuse (or, at least, should). http://blogs.plos.org/obesitypanacea/2015/04/30/30-of-people-with-a-healthy-bmi-are-actually-obese/

I also don't really think it's worth arguing over whether clinical obesity or chronic sedentarism are worse for you. Travis Saunders is a good person to look to for research in this, as is PLoS in general and Obesity Panacea specifically. Here's an article from there about recent developments in sedentary behavior research http://blogs.plos.org/obesitypanacea/2015/03/11/the-latest-findings-on-sedentary-behaviour-and-mortality/

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I've decided to cancel my current gym membership because it's too expensive (it's like embarrassingly expensive, but I picked it because it was close and the gym is really really nice).

 

I also learned that my health insurance will pay/offer-large-discounts for certain gyms (L.A. Fitness being one of them, I think, not that it really matters, point is it's much cheaper). So now I need to motivate myself to work out instead of relying on a team class.

 

This won't end well.

 

I also as of yesterday started keeping track of my food intake again. Hopefully I'll keep the habit up, so I can know really what I need to know.

 

Is a Fitbit (or some equivalent) worth getting? I'm really dumb and bad at keeping track of this kind of stuff on my own, so if one of those fitness devices is actually helpful, I want to get one.

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BMI is a fairly meaningless statistic, and has largely fallen into disuse (or, at least, should). http://blogs.plos.org/obesitypanacea/2015/04/30/30-of-people-with-a-healthy-bmi-are-actually-obese/

I also don't really think it's worth arguing over whether clinical obesity or chronic sedentarism are worse for you. Travis Saunders is a good person to look to for research in this, as is PLoS in general and Obesity Panacea specifically. Here's an article from there about recent developments in sedentary behavior research http://blogs.plos.org/obesitypanacea/2015/03/11/the-latest-findings-on-sedentary-behaviour-and-mortality/

 

Oh I agree, but the papers linked only measured BMI, and not body fat percentage. If they were to measure anything related to the discussion, it'd have to take into account their only measurement of weight.

 

Again, you're right, it's kinda pointless in terms of practicality, especially in a thread about exercise. I just went down the rabbit hole and didn't know when to stop arguing about it, mainly because I find the research really interesting. Put it down to me being obnoxious, and I'll try to stop it.

 

I also as of yesterday started keeping track of my food intake again. Hopefully I'll keep the habit up, so I can know really what I need to know.

 

Is a Fitbit (or some equivalent) worth getting? I'm really dumb and bad at keeping track of this kind of stuff on my own, so if one of those fitness devices is actually helpful, I want to get one.

 

I use myfitnesspal, which is a free app and an online resource. Really good for tracking food. If you scan barcodes with your smart phone is makes entry super easy. You can also enter recipes which is crazy good. I found getting food scales to be the most important part of tracking food, even without the resources. I'm apparently really bad at eyeballing things like that.

I also use "Strong" an app for tracking my exercise. It's nice and simple to use, it has a free demo period and then cost I think £5 which I thought was extremely reasonable for something I use practically every day. 

 

No experience with a fitbit, mainly because the idea of steps per day isn't an attractive statistic to me. I don't walk, but I do cycle and I do resistance training. I think anything that gives me a number to beat is useful and taps into my love of games. Personal bests are just high scores. Strong keeps track of personal bests etc, so it fulfils the same niche, just for a different type of exercise. 

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I also use MyFitnessPal! I find the mobile interface to be a bit tedious to navigate, but overall, it's served me well in the past. I just kind of get lazy after a while... ):

 

I'll check out Strong, that sounds like the kind of thing I'd find useful. I don't mind paying for apps, either, they're so cheap and I can replace some shitty junk food purchase with the app and that's a win-win, right??

 

Fitbit is I think supposed to track more than just steps taken. But I don't know how, it's all basically magic to me, I only recently started looking at it.

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Again, you're right, it's kinda pointless in terms of practicality, especially in a thread about exercise. I just went down the rabbit hole and didn't know when to stop arguing about it, mainly because I find the research really interesting. Put it down to me being obnoxious, and I'll try to stop it.

Oh, you weren't being obnoxious! I'm just a person who likes to point out "this is not a productive thing to talk about, so maybe place your energies elsewhere" because, uh, I do that in meetings with doctors for a living, kind of.

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unless you're at triathlete levels, exercise like all things in life is about forming good habits. maybe i'm being ignorant because I don't fitbit, and I can see how the data might be nice, but I think if you're getting a strenuous workout in 3-5 days every week, making sure your diet includes fruits and vegetables, you on a good path to physical and mental well being. 

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Fitbit's pedometer stuff is helpful for me. It reinforces the development of good habits. I have a desk job, and keeping track of my steps helps me make sure I get up and move around enough in any given day, even when I'm not going out of my way to work out.

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I also use MyFitnessPal! I find the mobile interface to be a bit tedious to navigate, but overall, it's served me well in the past. I just kind of get lazy after a while... ):

 

I'll check out Strong, that sounds like the kind of thing I'd find useful. I don't mind paying for apps, either, they're so cheap and I can replace some shitty junk food purchase with the app and that's a win-win, right??

 

Fitbit is I think supposed to track more than just steps taken. But I don't know how, it's all basically magic to me, I only recently started looking at it.

 

 

I am only five days into fitbitting, but the data collected and analyzed depends on the model you get, and there are at present six different versions.  I got the Charge HR, which is by far and away the most popular model - it tracks steps taken, heart rate, duration and quality of sleep, calories burned, distance walked, and flights of stairs climbed, and it also has an alarm function so it can be set to vibrate when certain daily goals are met, or as a wake-up alarm.  If I had a smartphone, I could pair it to factor in GPS data to get a better read on distance walked, and also get vibrating call notifications and caller ID displayed on the watch face. My wife has the Zip, which is a pedometer and not much else.  Both of them have bluetooth to report their data to the fitbit app.

 

The fitbit app and myfitnesspal app can be hooked into each other, so if you're logging your food and exercise in myfitnesspal, it will report that information to fitbit, and fitbit will report calories burned in your day-to-day (less the calories burned at the basal metabolic rate, determined by your age/weight/height/gender information in your settings) back to myfitnesspal.  The two apps are pretty good at shuffling data back and forth - I can log my weight in myfitnesspal and it propogates to fitbit, or I can log it in fitbit and it propogates to myfitnesspal.  Same with water drank, calories consumed, and calories burned. So I log my food in myfitnesspal and let fitbit do everything else.

 

The Charge HR is great because it determines your caloric expenditure from some kind of witchcraft based on your heart rate, which is what interested me the most.  I feel like I'm getting a much more accurate read on my caloric budget from the information harvested by fitbit.  I haven't been to the gym since I got it yet, though (I went on a trip over the holiday weekend) so I haven't been able to compare my heart rate reported by the fitbit against my heart rate reported by the elliptical.

 

And like, let's be real - of course I don't NEED it to exercise or get fit, it's really just a neat toy designed to turn exercise, eating, and sleeping into a video game.  I have high scores and daily challenges and a leaderboard and some sweet, sweet cheevos. But I feel like that's appropos for idle thumbs.

 

Also: while I was comparison-shopping and googling for information on which model of fitbit to get, I found this article by David Sedaris about how he got a fitbit and it took over his life, and like everything David Sedaris writes, it's pretty great:

 

I began pacing the airport rather than doing what I normally do, which is sit in the waiting area, wondering which of the many people around me will die first, and of what. I also started taking the stairs instead of the escalator, and avoiding the moving sidewalk.

 
“Every little bit helps,” my old friend Dawn, who frequently eats lunch while hula-hooping and has been known to visit her local Y three times a day, said. She had a Fitbit as well, and swore by it. Others I met weren’t quite so taken. These were people who had worn one until the battery died. Then, rather than recharging it, which couldn’t be simpler, they’d stuck it in a drawer, most likely with all the other devices they’d lost interest in over the years. To people like Dawn and me, people who are obsessive to begin with, the Fitbit is a digital trainer, perpetually egging us on. During the first few weeks that I had it, I’d return to my hotel at the end of the day, and when I discovered that I’d taken a total of, say, twelve thousand steps, I’d go out for another three thousand.
 
“But why?” Hugh asked when I told him about it. “Why isn’t twelve thousand enough?”
 
“Because,” I told him, “my Fitbit thinks I can do better.”

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unless you're at triathlete levels, exercise like all things in life is about forming good habits. maybe i'm being ignorant because I don't fitbit, and I can see how the data might be nice, but I think if you're getting a strenuous workout in 3-5 days every week, making sure your diet includes fruits and vegetables, you on a good path to physical and mental well being. 

Congratulations if you're capable of doing that without a lot of external and ever-present motivation.

 

I can't! As I've stated a thousand times in this thread, I find it all tedious and boring and stressful and I fucking hate it.

 

Stuff like tracking apps and whatnot help me, though. Fitbit giving me cold hard numbers would help me. Sounds like it might be worth getting, root! Hmm, hmmm. Can't get it for a while, though, since the costs of physical therapy for a few weeks has ruined any chance I had of saving up money.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hurray being active and discovering I have tendonitis in my knee.

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Yeah, it's not an impulse buy, and I'm also pretty much constantly broke because I made the Good Life Choice of being a cartoonist. I was fortunate enough to have stockpiled amazon giftcards from several family members for my last birthday and finally settled on a fitness tracker.  And I'm the same way - I won't walk for the satisfaction of walking, but now that I get the instant gratification of seeing my score go up, the Video game treadmilling impulse has begun to assert itself.

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