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Diet and exercise as a way to lose weight


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Update 7/11/15 In addition to what I wrote below: I just made a web page where you can estimate approximate calories burned with a few common type of exercise.

 

Update 7/18.2015 I bought a Marcy Stationary Fan exercise bicycle last week. I must say, getting it out of the box and assembling it, was a fair amount of exercise itself. It seems to be well made, and it does indeed let me burn some calories, and not in an unpleasant way. I like that it is easy to use, and keeps count of things, like calories burned. I also like the idea, that it gets rid of some excuses. Many times I do not ride my real bicycle, because it it too hot, too cold, too windy, too dark (lol), or too rainy. Now I can exercise in the air conditioned or heated, dry, windless, well lit comfort of home, any time of day or night, and feel less guilty about watching a DVD or something (as opposed to sitting in an easy chair). I like that you can do upper body, lower body, or both.

The down side: My knees are sore - need to get some glucosamine/chondroitin in me I guess. That is not a medical recommendation, it is controversial, but it has worked well for me in the past.

Also, I mentioned about, that I mad a page with some basic calculators. However, today I created (signed up) for a personalized fitness/diet planner at WebMD. It is a little bit of wrok to set up initially, there is a learning curve to it, but it seems very sophisticated, and I think it will be effective, and makes recommendations that are more moderated (and sensible) that I would typically set for myself. You can see a video overview on there website, or on youtube if you do not mind going there. We'll see how dedicated I am, but I am already encouraged by what I am seeing.

 

ORIGINAL CONTENT of this BLOG ENTRY:

 

From time to time the topic of weight loss and diet and exercise come up in chat.

I often make the point, that it is very difficult to lose weight through exercise, as compared with diet. The idea meets a lot of resistance, not sure if that is just becuase people want to continue their bad eating habits, or if they are just misinformed.

I decided to do the actual calculations to see how exercise and diet compare in terms of acomplishing weight loss in my case, and recorded the results to I could illustrate how dismal it is.

These numbers are for me, as a 63 year old, 6'4", 252 pound male, with a sedendary lifestyle. Your numbers would be different of course, but this should serve to demonstrate the difference between losing weight by diet, versus losing weight by exercise.

First off, the basic information. A person of my gender, age, size, weight, and lyfstyle, needs about 2588 calories per day to maintain his current weight of 252 pounds.

A person has to burn about 3500 calories more that they take in (in diet) to lose a single pound.

I would like to be at 225 pounds, in other words, I want to lose 27 pounds. What if I started on this path tomorrow, Jan 24th, 2015. Lets say I wanted to be at 225 pounds by Memorial Day of this year.

I take that 27 pounds, and multiply it by 3500 calories per pound and find that I need to take in 94,500 calories less than the 2588 calories per day than I need to maintain weight.

Memorial day is on May 25th, which is 121 days after the 24th of January.

That means that to lose those 27 pounds in that time frame, I need to take in 94,500 calories divided by 121 days, to find that on average, I must take in 781 calories per day less that the daily calories I need to maintain the same weight. That means I need to have a daily calorie intake of 2588-781, or a daily intake of 1807 calories. An 1800 calorie a day diet, is not that hard, very doable with a little self discipline. Self control, by the way, is a fruit of the Holy Spirit, so all I need do, it to take a look at my diet as it is, and plan one with less sweets, less carbs, and less fats, and stick with it.

Now, let's suppose, that I like my sweets, my carbs, and my fats, and I don't want to diet, I would rather increase my activity and exercise those calories away instead.

As I already noted, I lead a sedentary lifestyle, so let's say I add some walking to my activity. If I left my diet alone, how much walking would I have to add to my daily activity, to get to my target weight by Memorial Day?

For someone of my specifics, one has to walk for 420 minutes to lose a pound. To lose 27 pounds then, I need to walk for 27 pounds times 420 minutes, or 11,340 minutes. Divide by sixty and I find that is 189 hours. So, if I walk 189 hours in 121 days, that means I nead to walk 189 hours, divided by 121 days, or 1 hour and 34 minutes per day, or just under 4 3/4 miles per day.

Of course I could run, and save time, but to tell you the truth, I am not in good enough shape to run as long as I would need to. How about bicycling?

If I rode my bicycle, at 15 miles per hour (a bit faster than is comfortable), I could lose the weight riding 2 hours and 53 minutes per day. Whoops! That is worse! That is becuase, when you ride a bicycle, you are sitting down, using less muscles, and generally rolling on wheels just makes things more efficient.

Suppose I don't have the time to devote to such things. Is there something I could do for only 30 minutes a day to lose that weight?

If I could run at 8 miles per hour (I probably can't for long enough), I could lose this weight by running for 30 minutes and 21 seconds per day.

For an out of shape old man such as myself, exercise is not a practical solution to weight loss, compared to just eating sensibly. Of course, a combination of diet and exercise is practical and sensible, but diet takes no physical effort and no time, just self control that God has already given me as a believer.

Do you have any thoughts on this?

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I have a friend who recently decided to diet at 240 pounds. So, my ex-brother in-law is on a diet too. So my friend decided to try my ex-brother in-laws diet, and lost 12 pounds in 1 week. I am amazed how this diet has worked. The key to this is less carbs I was told. Everything they buy at the store has been baught according to the carbs. Close to your age and height as well. The key they said is not to eat more than 2 carbs per serving, which according to them is considered per meal. Never realized this before, but, I am amazed at the carbs in all drink and foods I hadn't suspected. Well, if you want to try this type of diet for 1 week, it may help you. Good luck mega:)

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My Church has a diet group and it follows a diet called PRISM. it is based on faith and prayer and healthy eating. It works but it is hard to follow if you don't have self control. We have to keep a food journal at all times to keep track of calories consumed. I can only have 1300 and that is not much so a food journal helps to keep track. We also read food labels.... you would be amazed with the high fructose corn syrup that is in so much of our foods. We can not have any sugar in this diet.No bread in the beginning of the diet as well.When you are allowed bread it can only be whole wheat and two pieces a day. I saw many diabetics come of of insulin on this diet and many middle age folks loose lots of weight.

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Thanks for your inputs friends. Yes, sugars are in lots of things, even things where they do not seem like they really belong. Ketchup for example . . . it needs to be sweetened?

Some ingredients on labels which are forms of sugar:

beet sugar
brown sugar
buttered syrup
cane-juice crystals
cane sugar
caramel
carob syrup
corn syrup
corn syrup solids
date sugar
dextran
dextrose
diatase
diastatic malt
ethyl maltol
fructose
fruit juice
fruit juice concentrate
glucose
glucose solids
golden sugar
golden syrup
grape sugar
high-fructose corn syrup
honey
invert sugar
lactose
malt syrup
maltodextrin
maltose
mannitol
molasses
raw sugar
refiner's syrup
sorbitol
sorghum syrup
sucrose
sugar
turbinado sugar
yellow sugar

 

When speaking of carbs, yes, same problem, especially since your body converts carbohydrates to sugar. 

 

Sugar is the fuel of the body, it is to the body, what gasoline is to a car or electricity to a light bulb. Those calories, are what the body runs on. If you burn more calories than you take in, you lose weight. If you take in more calories than you burn (in exercise or other ways), then your body has a way to story the calories you are not using, we call it fat.

 

Of course there is also fat in our diets (fats, oils, and greases), they also can be burned up or stored. 

 

It used to be that foods were not refined, sugars were usually not so easy to get, and we had to work harder to get them. In primitive living, it often takes about 40 hours of labor, just to meet your needs. Now, 40 hours of labor sometimes means sitting at a desk, instead of tilling the soil, and the money we earn can buy all the food we need, plus find entertaining ways to avoid burning calories, like watching TV.  There is a big difference in sitting in a car to go to the store to buy a package of cookies and pulling weeds from around stalk of celery, and it shows in our waistlines.

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From my studies, I learned that our body goes into fat storing mode when we have high blood sugar or lower blood sugar, that is why starving yourself is not an effective way to lose weight, because you would lose muscle weight first...when you start eating again you would gain back in fat weight.

Muscle is important as the more muscle you have the higher your metabolism, and more effective you are at burning fat.

 

The other state in the body is when we have high blood sugar. High blood sugar occurs when we consume foods that are quickly converted and absorb in the body, which are stuff on the high end of the glycemic index (refine sugars..etc). When we have high blood sugar, the body produce high burst of insulin in order to take the blood sugar out of the body quickly and store them as fat so it doesn't cost damage to the body. High spikes of insulin produce by body also stresses the organs that produce it (Pancreas) wearing the organ out, causing diabetes over time.

 

It is only when blood sugar is in the middle zone that the body could effectively burn fat. Therefore we should eat foods that release energy over long periods in a fairly constant manner, than consume foods that release energy very fast. That is why eating food high in fiber is good for you because fiber is not digestible and traps food in them so they are absorb by the body slowly.

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Well, I did not make it very far in my attempts to lose weight. I still lead a sedentary lifestyle, my diet has improved a little, but I am at about 240 pounds now, blood pressure has dropped a bit. Current weight is about 242, but my stamina is up, I can walk farther, breathe better (apart from allergies) and just feel like I have more energy. I have procrastinated, and I think that to be honest, the two biggest forces working against weight loss for most people, are procrastination and lack of self control. Those are character issues, not physical ones.

Though I have those character issues, I am still determined to over come, and achieve a weight goal of 225. That will sound like a lot of weight to most people, but I like to joke that Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson is about my height and he is heavier than I am. Those dumb, unrealistic weight/age/height/gender charts are not my standard. Longer life comes from being a bit over those numbers, and if I achieved the 185 pounds they suggest for me, I would look frail and anorexic. When I was swimming 5 days a week in sports at high school at 14 to 16 years of age and no discernible fat, I weighed 185 - I want to be more fit, but I do not want to look emaciated.

We'll see where I am this coming spring, when I am ready to try some back county hiking. Hope you are are on you way to reaching your goals. I have some plans for reaching mine, but am to cowardly to say what they are at this time, an revealing further procrastination.

 

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The best way to lose weight I have outlived is living in a corrupt and counterproductive country, like the actual Venezuela... I used to be 75 Kg. Nowadays I am around 62 kilograms with a stature of 5.6; so you can figure out how hard it is to buy and find food this place.

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looking back on this, I am somewhat ashamed. I am now at 223 pounds, so I reached the goal of weight loss that I had, when I wrote the original post, but it took me 2 and a half years to get here. That speaks volumes to my procrastination, self control, lack of dedication and self-discipline. I confess that as sin. If I loved God like I want to, I would have beem taking better care of His temple, my body. 

However, on the plus side, at least I did reach my goal, eventually, and I have a new goal of 204 pounds - we'll see!

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The human body as designed by God is truly amazing.  We're able to turn carbs and sugar into glucose and then route that to every cell of your body to burn it as energy.  If there's little or no sources of carbs or sugar around, that your body can completely switch modes so it uses fat as its primary energy source.  This is called ketosis, or keto for short.  People on keto frequently describe weight loss, better sleep, more constant energy through the day, and lower overall inflammation.  It's not for everyone, though, as keto involves a significant lifestyle change is what you eat, namely greatly limiting carbs and sugar.    After trying it for 1.5 years, I've found it to be completely worth it.

Dr. Jason Fung has some good videos on youtube about keto, obesity, and how the body burns calories.  To learn more about keto, the reddit keto groups are some of the best sources of information.  Be careful, as there's a lot of wrong info about keto on the internet so it's something where proper research is necessary. 

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I suppose I should have added some time back, that I set a new goal of reaching 206 pounds. For about 6 months now, I have been maintaining a weight of 200 to 205, which put me in the high normal to low overweight range. I have no desire to go lower, and I keep having people tell  me to stop losing weight, most of me looks thin, but not to the point where my ribs show, I think this is about the right weight for me.

I still live a sedentary life style, so this was achieved only with the self discipline of portion control while eating, and cutting back on sweets. If I get the self discipline to add exercise to my daily routine, I will increase my food intake to try to maintain my current weight, with a bit of increase muscle mass instead of my former body fat.

All of this can be done by most people, as people have noticed, there are no obese prisoners of war, which is just a snarky way of saying if you we fat, we are over eating!

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About 40 years ago I stopped smoking...   I weighted  about 200 pounds.   over the next 15 years I peaked out at 355.  I wasn't really out of shape, just fat.   It didn't stop me from working just make it a little more difficult.

After playing with a couple of diets, an old doctor friend of mine explained how the human body works.    If you eat/drink more calories than you burn throughout the day, your body stores fat.   So the secret to loosing weight is not taking more calories than you can burn.   It takes about 3,000 calories to loose a pound of fat.

Long story short for me, I went on a 1.000 calorie a day diet.  To do that one has to not only change how much we eat, we have to change what we eat.   Believe it or not you can eat between 900 and 1,200 calories a day and not be hungry.    I did this along with taking vitamins and some minerals.  In 6 months I lost 75 pounds.   Unfortunately at that time I took a fall and broke my left wrist.   My doctor wanted me to stop the diet for a couple of months to help my arm heal faster.   So I did.   I held my weight for several years at about 275. then it started back up and at 298 I went back on my 1,000 calorie a day diet.   It is a lot of work to plan out a menu with that amount of calories and still get the nutrition you need.   I made the decision to give Nutrisystem a try and so far that has worked out well.   October 1st I went on the diet and about October 15th I started Nutrisystem's.  So far I have lost 55 pounds and feel great.

I also swim 5 days a week for about an hour to burn up more calories.    I tried lifting weights for a month or so and I noticed that while my belly got smaller, I actually gained weight...   turning fat into muscle isn't bad, but at my age I need to shed the pounds, but still keep some strength.   I don't need to press 300 pounds at 74 years of age.

So since my peak weight of 355 over the past ten years or so I have lost 115 pounds in two sessions   Since October I've dropped about 55 pounds and lost 11 inches from around my big old fat belly.

 

I've tried many different diets and all kinds of fads, but the only thing that works is to burn more calories than you eat...  So far today I have had 890 calories and can say I haven't been hungry all day.

Trivia:   The lowest calorie order at IHop, is a T-bone steak and a salad.   

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