Hello. I have a question (or, er, dilemma) about cutting calories vs. exercise. I know it is best to do both to lose weight, but there is a discrepancy I am noticing in my personal experience...

I know losing weight can be extremely difficult, but the concept, at least, seems like it is fairly simple: Burn calories/cut them out of your diet so that you have less per day than you need to function, and your body will burn fat instead. Keep your metabolism up by not eating too little and exercising, and this should work.

Short version is: I have tried diet and aerobic exercise, just exercise, and just diet. And what I'm noticing is that only the dieting seems to do anything. I exercised enough to average a 600 calorie deficit per day for months and lost nothing. Recently, I tried about the same deficit in calories, but done through (mostly/only) dieting with Slim Fast. Suddenly, I lost 3 pounds in 2 weeks.

I guess gaining some muscle weight with the exercise and losing some with the Slim Fast is a possibility, but I was doing aerobic exercise, and that seems a bit much. It seems I must not have been burning as much as I thought, but I took precautions to make sure I did not exaggerate how much I was burning. What's going on here?

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As for the long version, if that helps...

I have been big since I was a kid, and have never done a lot to change that. I exercised sometimes, but not with the specific goal of losing weight, since it was so hard to do it regularly. Otherwise, I'm usually very sedentary. Recently I graduated college, and thus had a lot more free time while looking for a job (plus people don't like to hire fat people as much, right ^_^; ) so I thought I'd give losing weight a go. When I started I was a litttle under 225 pounds, I think (though there was a month long overseas trip that made me drop almost 10 pounds of that that was unrelated to my dieting during this, hahah)

First, I tried just exercising. I figured if I was maintaining my weight for years before, then if I just eat the same and exercise and I'll lose weight. I didn't have a particular pace in mind, so long as I saw a downward trend. To exercise, I played DDR. I play heavy mode on DDR and for me it's much, much more tiring than any low impact aerobics exercise I've done off videos. But I know there's a little wait between the songs, so I decided to calculate my calories burned with low impact aerobics numbers anyway, and using the lowest figure I could find: 350/hr. I decided to throw off the 50 since I'd probalby burn that just sitting around.

So 300 extra calories burned per hour on DDR. I played an hour per day at first, then two hours per day. Over time I started fluctuating more, but usually did 2 more often than just 1. I aimed for doing it every day of the week (with the knowledge I would give myself a break as this would never work and I would inevitably miss a day or two ever week, which I did.) I did this for a couple months. ...My weight did not change. It fluctuated more per day than before at first, but I assume this was water-related, and there was no trend up or down. Could I be burning fat and gaining muscle? I didn't know, but I was skeptical since it's not like I was weight training.

So I tried the same exercise, but watching what I ate. I started paying attention to calories, and sure enough I was usually at/slightly above my daily maintenance level. So I watched my calories and made sure they stayed at 2000 (veeeery slightly under my maintenance level which is around 2100 and some) and kept up the exact same exercise. A month, still no change.

So I cut my caloires more, to 1700. For about a week. All the counting was driving me nuts, and my family/parents didn't know I was dieting (I've no desire to tell them. Long story. ^^) and kept trying to feed me at the same rate, and it was really hard. I gave up on that and went back to keeping it under 2000.

I got busy, and started only exercising an hour or two 2-3 times a week.

My parents went out of town for a month, so when they were gone I decided to try Slim Fast. (I know. Not a good long term plan, will gain weight back if I start eating more calories again afterward. Still, a test.) I aimed for 1400 calories per day, giving myself wiggle room up to 1700 on some days. I had two shakes, two snacks, and one meal per day. I exercised a couple times a week, though often on the days I exercised I ate 100 or 200 calories more. In two weeks, I lost two pounds.

Then this week I got lazy. I still aimed for the 1400-1700 area, but I was closer to 1700 more often than in the past two weeks. And I only ate three times a day (I had my "snack" with my shake). Because of business, I didn't exercise once this week. I even had pizza yesterday, though I still counted the calories and kept them under my limit. I was very ready for the scale to either go up, stop going down, or at least slow down its decent. But no. Instead, this week, I lost two pounds. Today I got on the scale and weighed, I think, less than I did in high school.

I guess I should be happy. But all I can say is, WTF, body? At the rate I was exercising before, I should have been burning about the same amount I'm cutting from my diet now. But then I lost nothing, and now with ONLY cutting calories, I'm losing 2 pounds a week?

I want a strong body. I don't want to be one of those people who's losing weight just because they're emancipated. I worry how much of that 2 pounds was muscle. (But it's difficult to test by measuring my stomach since it's so soft and giggly I get a different number every time I do it...even when the measurings are within a few seconds of each other, hahaha) I'd rather lose weight by exercise or slight diet and exercise than eating 1400 calories a day. This...is sort of pissing me off, hahaha.

All I can think is that my body is not burning calories at the rate I think it is when I exercise, yet I rounded all the numbers down to be safe. My friends tell me I'm probably burning 500, and I call it 300. How could I possibly be THAT off?

Admittedly, this '2 pounds a week with no exercise' trend hasn't been going on long. But...it's just frustrating, hahaha.

(On some side notes, as my diet is sort of secret, I do not weigh my food often. Yes, I know eyeballing can be bad, but I was eyeballing both when I was on Slim Fast and off, so if I was getting too many calories by eyeballing, I should still have gotten too many on Slim fast (though admittedly not quite as much since you can't wrongly eyeball Slim Fast). Also, my nutrition probably sucks. I try not to eat too much fat, but I'm sure I don't get as many vegetables as I should, and probably not enough fruit either. Tomatoes is the only thing I eat regularly, since we've got a lot of those canned from the garden. I buy cheap vegetables when I can, like carrots or celery or lettuce, but I find keeping the house well stocked with lots just isn't in my financial capabilities. This was actually one of the attractions of Slim Fast when I started. On Slim Fast, my food per day was much cheaper, and I was getting more vitamins in that 100 calories of powder than I probably would have eaten without it. Also, for entirely unrelated reasons, I've only been sleeping 5-6hrs a night the last two weeks, and my metabolism may be wonky from that.)

Ok it took me a bit to read through that and I'm still not terribly clear.

What I'm getting out of it is that you're not really sticking with anything long enough to know what's working and what's not. 2-3 weeks just doesn't give you enough time to see what your body is doing really.

So I'm going to throw out some random thoughts for you.

1 - Most people unconsciously eat more when they start exercising. It's not even something that they think about, but when you try to lose weight by adding exercise and not addressing your meals, then usually what happens is you get hungrier and you eat more w/out even thinking about it.

2 - Eyeballing what you eat is a sure route to failure. Most people VASTLY underestimate what they eat. Most American's understanding of a serving size has been totally warped by years of restaurants and fast food places and even packaged foods. And even measuring can put you off by 300-500 calories a day. Weighing your food consistently is the ONLY sure way to know how many calories you're getting. I would suspect by "eyeballing" your food, you're probably getting at least 500 more calories per day than you think you are.

3 - You simply can't build muscle that fast. There are a ton of studies and I'll link you to a reputable article if you want, but bottom line is that men who are working out HARD, busting their butts, and eating lots of protein and balanced carbs are only going to gain 2-3 lbs of muscle a month for the first year. The second year, that number drops by half. The third year that number drops by half again. In other words if all you're doing is cardio and a little sporadic lifting, you're NOT building that kind of muscle. And you're absolutely not doing it if you're eating in a calorie deficit.

4 - Sodium is the enemy. If you eat badly and what you eat has a lot of sodium in it, then you may be losing fat, but retaining fluid. A lot of fluid - and even more if you're not drinking enough water. So when you switched to the Slim Fast, you probably dropped your sodium intake significantly, which means you lost a lot more weight from water than from fat. (My best guess here.)

5 - I think your calorie level is way off. For someone who is 200 lbs and works out a minimum of 3x per week, a proper maintenance level of calories is around 2800 calories. A proper *diet* level of calories is around 2000. (That's 30% less than maintenance.) I suspect that *if* you are constantly lowering your level of calories, you're triggering a metabolic adaptation whereby your body functions on fewer calories. And I say "if" becuase of point #2 above. I don't really think you're eating as few calories as you think you are.

So ... all of that to say ... if you really want to know what's going on with your body, you're going to have to actually weigh/measure/log your food and be consistent with it for about 6 weeks. Otherwise, all you're really doing is making what we call WAGs (Wild Ass Guesses) based on constantly fluctuating data.

diet is the main key in losing weight. Get your diet right and you will see results. If you are eating unhealthy and still exercising you will cancel out all the hard work. Make sure to stay away from fizzy drinks and deep fried foods. Get on red meats, vegies, fruit etc and results will continue to come.

good luck

Something else to consider.. When you exercise hard, do you slow down for the rest of the day, or do you maintain the same level of activity? I read an article recently where some school students were assigned to exercise in school, and others were assigned no exercise. But the kids who exercised in school did less when they got home, so both groups got about the same amount through the entire day.

Note that the OP never came back to the forum after posting this. They haven't logged on since Nov 20th.

Great !
I am really grateful to you for providing me with such useful information.
I love the 4th point very much.
Thanks a lot for sharing.Keep sharing more information.