Losing weight with a huge appetite? - Page 4

If exercise is stimulating your appetite, it can make it harder to get into a weight losing regime than if you simply cut calories. And exercise can be very dispiriting and difficult for someone who is overweight and poorly conditioned. Add this on top of the discomfort associated with cutting back on calories and you will find that many people can't do both successfully. If you can do both, go for it. It is definitely a better way to go. But if you can't, it is far better to shed the weight and then get back onto an exercise regimen once you have reached your goal than it is to remain fat.


I understand the point you are trying to make, but I disagree with your comment.

First off, there is general consensus that body weight relative to height (in the form of the BMI) is a useful indicator of body composition. It is a compromise, but it provides a very simple indicator that anyone can use to get ballpark estimates of body composition. If you want to estimate body composition a bit more accurately, you can get a scale with an impedance plethysmograph function built in.

Second, if you follow a sensible diet plan and don't enter into a starvation regime (which most people don't have the discipline to do anyway), weight loss will primarily be in the form of fat loss. Minimal daily exercise (walking around the block, taking stairs rather than elevators, etc.) will help insure that muscle mass is not being shed in any significant quantity.

Third, the psychology of weight loss is a key factor in motivating a person to stay on an effective weight loss diet. Positive reinforcement works wonders in helping a person resist the temptation to grab a bite to eat when hunger strikes. Used intelligently, the scale is the best friend you have in your battle to lose weight.

If you are particularly good in sticking to the diet one day and get on the scale the next morning and see a drop of .2 - .4 pounds, it is a fantastic motivator. If you splurge a bit one or two days in a row, you can see your weight loss stall out or even reverse a bit. This is a fantastic tool to fine tune your daily intake. It is the ONLY way I know of to actually learn precisely what and how much you can eat each day and still lose (or maintain) your weight.

To use it properly, it is important to understand a few things. First off, it is important to measure weight under the same conditions every day. Same time. Same clothing (or lack thereof). Empty stomach. I always measure my weight first thing in the morning after getting up and emptying my bladder. I know that I am slightly dehydrated and at my absolute minimum weight, but I also know that the conditions are repeatable every single day. The only variable out of my control is how much stool is being carried in my colon. I don't worry about that, but understand that it can have a small effect.

Another thing to keep in mind is that body weight can fluctuate a bit due to water shifts. Eat a dinner of Chinese food soaked in soy sauce and you will gain a pound or two more in the form of retained water when you check your weight the next morning. Same thing will happen if you take Advil or other NSAIDs or any other medicine that promotes water retention. So factor this into your assesment when you weigh yourself. Accept a couple of days of slightly higher weight after a salty meal knowing that you will lose it right back once you have shed the added salt/water.

Bottom line is that the scale is a VERY useful tool if used properly.

Getting back to your emphasis on body composition: I agree with you that having an ideal body composition is the ultimate goal. No question. Its all just a matter of how you get there. I think the path I have suggested (lose weight first via caloric restriction then phase exercise in as weight loss proceeds and the target weight is approached) will be successful more often for more average people than one that combines a rigorous restriction of calories AND a rigorous exercise regime from the start. It is a lot easier to exercise when you weigh less than when you are obese.

Why not just use the mirror? Because the feedback is too delayed and not precise enough to allow you to adjust your daily intake based upon it. It is a nice reward at the end of the process, though. But you don't even need the mirror. You will know you are successful when people comment on how great you look.

Pragmatism vs. purity, I suppose.

The primary reason that you have someone who is obese work out from the outset is that they're a high risk for cardiac problem. Getting them to exercise in an aerobic fashion will help to strengthen the heart in a manner that will help to fight the disease prone state that they are currently in. I'm not one for throwing someone who is overweight into an intense program, but making them get their heart rate up on a treadmill, elliptical or stationary bike isn't going to break the bank in terms of their eating habits. Diets are about self control, it's their job to maintain the diet during all fluctuations in activity during their weight loss process. Even if they're not obese resistance training will help to increase muscle mass which will help to burn more calories making weight loss easier.

Also, how useful and motivating a scale is depends on the person and where they're coming from and going to. Someone going from 300+ is going to see a change on the scale, but it should be monitored max weekly. Cleaning up their diet and restricting calories, unless they have some condition should cause them to lose weight. A person like the OP who just wants to slim down should be using the mirror more than the scale. A lot of people go into a program thinking "I want to be X weight so I look better" when they could look better at the same exact weight they are with a change of body comp. Scales have their uses, but it's not the be all end all of body maintenance.

Why are these posts so long? Don't eat processed foods. Get out and play soccer once in a while. Done.

Um, sure. Engaging in fad cyclical diets is a much better plan than cutting out the beer and eating a healthy, balanced diet at 17. Remind me to avoid Finnish doctors -- or at Finnish kids with less than a complete junior high school and high school education touting themselves as first year medical students.

I would opt for less beer, but markedly better quality. Ugh, Bud Light. I know I'd lose a ton of weight if that was the only beer available to me, because I'd rather not drink. As for real advice, eat more often (4+ times a day) but have smaller, healthier meals. Think lean turkey, fish, lean hamburgers, etc... Exercise, and cut out soft drinks too.

Ketogenic diets have been around for easily over ten years, I wouldn't consider it a fad diet.

According to my book they were first promoted in the late 1800s.....at least come close to range. The paleo diet has been around much longer I bet

That's because ten years is substantially more than half your lifetime. The "grapefruit diet" has been around for what, 50 years? Doesn't mean it's not a fad diet.

Along the lines of Ken's sensible post, I'd say any diet that doesn't emphasize that you should try to follow balanced, healthy eating habits and get some exercise is a fad diet.

Yeah keep attacking my age and spreading your opinions without any facts.


Sweet, I did not know they were that old

Just wondering, have you ever actually worked out? For according to most sources I've read, exercising, at least at a moderate intesity, actually surpresses hunger. That has been my experience just as well.

he might mean post exercise or throughout the rest of the day, which can happen, but yes during exercise your digestive tract essentially gets shut down.

Until a few years ago I swam six days a week on a Masters swim team. Did it for many years. We did a 3000 yard workout every morning at 6am before going off to work. Have done all of the other usual things including bicycling, jogging, hiking, etc. Still go to the gym a few times a week, but the intensity level isn't what it used to be.

Exercise might suppress some people's appetites for a brief period immediately following their workout, but an hour or two later it made me ravenously hungry. Fortunately for me, I was burning serious calories so it worked out OK. But it certainly made it harder to regulate/balance my diet and caloric burn.

Exercise is definitely a good thing, but primarily for the reduction of cardiovascular risk factors and promotion of general fitness.

The main point I was trying to make about exercise is that it is not a particularly effective tool for weight loss if done at the level of intensity and duration typical of most exercise programs followed by most middle aged people.

As an example, a person running or walking at non-competetive speeds burns something like 100 kcal per mile. A typical workout for an average middle aged person might be a three mile run (and they might only do this three or four times per week.) This would only burn around 300 kcal per day of exercise, which corresponds to the amount of calories in a small bag of potato chips or a single candy bar (neither of which should be a part of a weight loss diet, of course.) I would venture a guess that the vast majority of middle aged people on diets and exercise programs aren't even doing that much exercise. Twenty minutes walking on a treadmill at 3 mph (which I suspect is more like what most "exercise" programs might consist of) might only burn 150 kcal.

Bottom line is that the only way most average middle aged people can really get into significant negative calorie balance is to eat less. Adding exercise can help, but in the manner in which it is typically done, only to a modest degree. Almost all of the heavy lifting in a weight reduction program comes from decreasing caloric intake.

As an aside, there is an interesting article in today's NYT about how the "calories burned" numbers that you see on those machines at the gym are wildly inaccurate and typically significantly overestimate actual calories burned.

Do a lot more cardio and cut out the beer. It's worked for me.

Assuming you're otherwise correct, engaging in at least moderate exercise while cutting caloric intake for weight loss is important to keep your metabolism up.

Besides, you can dismiss burning 300 kcal per day from exercise. But if you do that 5 days a week that's 1500 kcal per week, which puts you on a pace to lose a couple of pounds per month -- a healthy goal for sustained, moderate weight loss.

Did you know? Shopping burns appx. 1/2 as many calories as jogging at a 12min/mile pace. Sitting on your ass burns appx. 1/7 as many, while standing still burns over 1/4 as many. You can be pretty lazy and still lose weight!