Trying to lose weight and putting it in numbers is demoralizing. I’ve started riding a stationary bike for 5 miles and then doing minor weight lifting after and I maaaaybe lose 200 or so calories. Is that not a good exercise? I’ve been doing this almost everyday starting 2 weeks ago. But it’s starting to feel useless if it’s such a minor amount of calories burnt. Is this a good trend to continue? What am I missing?
Edit: everyone here has been incredibly helpful, and surprisingly consistent with one another. I feel much more confident about what I’m doing and what I need to do. Seriously, thank you all.
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In regards to the weight loss part of the question: Exercising to burn calories is an outdated idea that was mostly manufactured to sell calisthenics video programs (Tae Bo, P90X, Richard Simmons, etc) and home gym equipment like treadmills, spin bikes, ellipticals… It’s not actually an effective weight loss strategy for most people. Calories are much easier to avoid than to burn. Jog for an hour a day or just drink water instead of juice? Exercise should be done to gain strength and resilience, gain mobility, improve cardiovascular health, brain health, and all the other general health stuff and for enjoyment. Exercise in terms of resistance training can be useful for keeping weight off in the long term because the more muscle you have the more calories you burn just by existing. When cardio is useful for weight loss is for people who are already relatively lean and fit, who already have their nutrition and caloric intake figured out reasonably well, and are just trying to drop a couple body fat % for like a competition or photo shoot or vacation. That’s when 150 calories burned 4 or 5 times a week can be useful. Otherwise you’re right, it’s not worth it and doesn’t really make sense (but there are other great reasons to do cardio!).
I believe an unpopular hypothesis on this topic. I used to weigh 475lbs. I currently weigh 194lbs. I don’t believe we burn calories with physical activity and there is some research to support it. The human body is amazing at adapting. When you first start working out, you might burn SOME calories, but with any consistency, your body will account for the increased activity by shutting down other less needed processes (like inflammatory responses.) [Studies examining calories burned by different groups](https://www.science.org/content/article/scientist-busts-myths-about-how-humans-burn-calories-and-why) found that when adjusted for lean muscle mass, sedentary office working, long distance runners, and Olympic athletes all burned the same number of calories per day. So yes, exercise can help you burn more calories, but it is the result of the exercise that burns the calories and not the exercise itself.
This research also rings true to my personal experiences, even if largely anecdotal. You don’t lose weight in the gym. You build muscle in the gym. You lose weight in the kitchen. This is not to say that exercise is unnecessary, it most certainly is if you want to look good once you’ve lost the weight, but there’s a reason why they say “you cannot outrun a bad diet.”
Don’t take what I say as gospel by any means, just wanted to share an alternative viewpoint with some science to back it up, controversial or not.
Exactly right. U may run hor hours and kill the effort by a little extra snack. The only way to lose weight is to consistenly consume less kkal than u need. If u’r not eating enough to let ur muscles grow (the more muscles the more energy ur body needs the more kalories u need) u may not even bother.
Yea, unfortunately that is the reality. Work your ass off for hours in the gym then go home and negate it with a cupcake.
Nah bruh. I aint going out like that. For me, every workout in itself is huge motivation to eat better.
As the saying goes. “Muscles are earned in the gym, abs are earned in the kitchen”.
It’s much easier to eat 200 fewer calories then to burn 200 calories with aerobic exercise.
Though exercise has other benefits and can improve resting metabolism. But it’s mostly about diet.
You get strong in the gym. You get thin in the kitchen.
Don’t exercise to lose weight; do it to get stronger and feel better. To lose weight you have to eat less.
It’s not minor.
First you need to figure out your maintenance calories, or the calories you need to intake to maintain your current weight. There’s calculators online for this.
To take myself for example, I can eat 2500 calories a day to maintain my BW of 170 lbs.
To lose weight you need to be in a caloric deficit *over a period of time*. This means you eat a net amount of calories less than your daily/weekly/monthly amount required to maintain weight. You obviously have to keep recalculating this number as you lose weight.
So say you need, for example 2500 calories a day to maintain weight, and you bike 10 miles a day to burn 250 calories. Over the course of 7 days that’s 1750 calories burned. Over 30 that’s 7500 calories burned – about 3 full days of eating. That’s a couple of pounds you just lost.
Two weeks isn’t really that long to “see” results. Maintain a caloric deficit for a month or two and you’ll see the difference. Watch some YouTube vids on how pro body builders cut to see very legible examples of this in action.
One important thing you should know is that 3500 calories is roughly 1 pound of fat meaning with your estimate of 200 calories burn, it would take you around 17.5 days to lose 1 pound of weight. If you can **MAINTAIN** the same amount of daily calorie intake you do at the moment , then technically you should still lose weight albeit at a very slow pace.
The problem is that people tend to develop the idea that they can eat more than the usual since they are exercising but most don’t realize that it takes a lot of effort to burn calories. With your case, a **single** chocolate cookie is probably enough to setback all 200 calories worth of exercise you did for the day.
That’s why for losing weight, it’s better to focus on the input rather than on the output meaning to give more thought and focus on your diet. Being in calorie deficit and eating better foods provides more impact to weight loss than exercising for exceedingly long hours each day. I’m not saying that you don’t need to exercise, you still do as it helps and is good for you. But primary focus should be on good diet if you really want to lose weight.
Think of it like this; you need energy to do things, and you can only get that energy by eating something or by eating yourself. Since eating yourself is not so good, it is more expensive to you than something else. When you exercise, thats your body eating itself
You can fill your car up with petrol in a few minutes, but you have to drive for hours and hours to use that fuel.
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