I know I should understand this by now, but as someone who struggles to maintain my weight without hours of exercise, how does burning calories work? And specifically, if I eat 600 calories for lunch, then do a fast 5 mile walk, does that burn the food in my stomach?
In: Biology
Your meal timing has very little to do with how your body burns calories and isn’t really something you should be considering.
The very basic energy balance says that if you consume less calories than your body expends, then it has to get that calories from the fat storage, and thus you will over time lose weight. Oppositely if you eat too many calories for what your body requires, then it will store it for later.
You have a “base energy use” for a day where you do nothing, this depends on lots of factors like height weight gender etc. Additionally you burn energy during various activities, but generally your base rate accounts for a large portion of your calorie needs.
The absolute best thing for weight loss is to reduce calorie intake, specifically by eating low calorie foods that keeps you full. Typically that’s vegetables, low fat protein sources and fiber sources.
You can also increase calories burnt with exercise, for this it’s best to choose low effort exercise that you enjoy, things like walking or playing sports so that you can burn off the calories without feeling exhausted or worse becoming more hungry than you normally would.
Right off the bat man…
EVERYONE would struggle to maintain their weight with exercise, if that was their solution.
Exercise has a tiny, tiny impact on your weight. And it’s difficult, and time consuming.
Just put less food in your mouth.
And, get used to feeling hungry. Convince yourself that feeling hungry equals success. Because until you’re hungry, and choosing to not eat… your body will never start to burn the fat it has stored. You have to spend time feeling hungry for your body to turn to its backup plan of burning fat.
If you want to lose 50 lbs, that’s 175,000 calories. You can do it with extra exercise, or, you can do it by not putting the food into your mouth.
That’s 3 hours of walking every day for 6 months, or a skipped meal once a day for 6 months.
What’s easier, skipping one meal, or walking for 3 hours straight?
Put less food into your mouth, and teach yourself that hunger is the light turning on that says “You’re now losing weight.”
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