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Comment by RyanMcGreal | Hacker News Reader

> exercise is not they key to weight loss, proper eating is.

Anecdote here, but I've found that for me the key to weight loss has been exercise-first. I decided that I'd never be very good at reducing my dietary input (I really enjoy food) so I focused instead on increasing my energy output by incorporating progressively more physical activity into my lifestyle.

Over the past few years I have steadily and gradually ramped up my activity through walking, running, cycling, body-weight exercises, plyometrics, stand-up desk, and so on, and I've been progressively losing weight and feeling better physically, mentally and emotionally. As a result, other complementary aspects of health - sleeping, eating - have also tended to fall into healthier patterns in a positive feedback loop.

It's hard to believe that exercise isn't the key to weight loss when I burn 2,000 calories on my Saturday morning run.

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Like so many things, there is no single correct answer.

For myself, if I focus on diet and not worry about exercise I find that I have to eat very little if I want to lose more than a few pounds. So little that I'm miserable all the time. Forever. On the flip side, if I exercise[1] I not only burn calories but increase muscle mass which burns more calories. Other people seem to do well with a focus on diet and not so much exercise. Weight loss should be about losing weight in a healthy, sustainable way, however that works out for the individual. To continue doing something that's not working because it's supposed to be The Right Way is counterproductive and demotivating. I think most people can find some balance between eating healthier/less and exercising more, in a way they can keep up.

1. I've only had two effective exercise regimens: resistance training (weight lifting) and martial arts. If I try to jog, walk, or whatever I will become more and more irregular and eventually quit. Other people love to run. Whatever works.

I'm not suggesting diet doesn't matter; of course it does. But for me, every attempt to eat less failed. When I decided to focus on exercise instead, a subsequent effect was that the pattern of my approach to food started to change in positive ways.

Agreed. Me, too. I just wanted to point out that customization is pretty much required for success.

>Anecdote here, but I've found that for me the key to weight loss has been exercise-first. [...] It's hard to believe that exercise isn't the key to weight loss when I burn 2,000 calories on my Saturday morning run.

You specified that you were only speaking for yourself but I think that for most people, a healthy steady-state weight is easier to achieve by smart food choices rather than exercise.

Recommending exercise is good advice for overall health such as increasing endurance, bone strength, sexual performance, managing stress, etc. However, saying that exercise is a "key" to weight loss is very misleading because the act of exercise also causes an increase in appetite.

These days, I exercise less than half the amount I did a decade ago and I still weigh 10 pounds less. The difference is that I eat oatmeal for breakfast and vegetables + olive oil for dinner instead of sugary corn flakes and pizzas.

Optimizing eating habits (without causing starvation) is much easier than running an extra 10 miles on a treadmill. This disparity in effort is obvious if you ask obese people if it's easier to eat a glazed donut (consume 200 calories) or run 6 mph for 20 minutes (burns 200 calories).

> Optimizing eating habits (without causing starvation) is much easier than running an extra 10 miles on a treadmill. This disparity in effort is obvious if you ask obese people if it's easier to eat a glazed donut (consume 200 calories) or run 6 mph for 20 minutes (burns 200 calories).

Anecdotally, I find that the initial bit of exercise makes the biggest impact. The added benefit of the "exercise first" approach is that after exercising, I find that I don't even want the donut. If I try to tame food first without exercising, I crave worse food which makes that effort considerably harder.

> The added benefit of the "exercise first" approach is that after exercising, I find that I don't even want the donut.

Yes, this exactly! The real challenge of getting in shape isn't the physics or chemistry nearly so much as it is the psychology.

>The added benefit of the "exercise first" approach is that after exercising, I find that I don't even want the donut.

I'm guessing this approach is something like swapping dopamine triggers. You get a good rush from exercising such that you don't need a dopamine release from eating a donut.

However, I still believe your and RyanMcGreal's anecdotes are the minority. Most obese people do not find exercise to be pleasurable. Getting sweaty is "work". For these people, if they exercise, they'll end up getting hungrier which triggers more eating and the end result is a weight change that nets to zero. In contrast to your scenario, instead of skipping the donut after exercise, they feel that they can "reward" themselves with a donut because they had the discipline to exercise!

For most people, switching out bad food for good food such that they are satisfied without starving is a far easier and more realistic lifestyle adjustment. To be clear, I'm not suggesting people eat "less", but that they eat "differently". Drink a kale smoothie instead of a glass of sugar-laden orange juice, etc.

Telling obese people that exercise will strengthen their heart is more truthful than selling it as a key to weight loss.

My own Saturday morning run is about 4 miles and burns ~500 calories according to Runkeeper, so I estimate you're running about 16 miles every Saturday? Do you really expect an overweight, out-of-shape person to jump into a 16-mile run to burn 2000 calories a week? If they drink 2 sodas a day, they could switch them to water or even diet soda and remove even more calories for less effort.

Of course not. I started by slowly walk-running 2 miles, two or three times a week and only increased my distance and speed gradually over a period of two years (compounded with a couple of frustrating delays due to injuries).

These days I run around 25 miles a week - two 6-mile runs during the week and a 13 mile run on Saturday. I also bike around 25-60 miles a week in order to cross-train and give my body a break from running.

Before I started, I was 70 lbs overweight with sore knees and a general malaise after two decades of sedentary living and too much food. I'm in much better shape today than I was two years ago, but I was already noticing significant improvement in my fitness, well-being and body shape after just a few months of what now seem like very slow, short-distance runs.

They should still do some exercise though: while changing your calorie output/intake difference is key and diet changes are the easiest way to do that, there is more to exercise than just burning calories. It is possible to be the perfect weight but still unhealthily unfit.

One thing to remember to account for with massive people: the bigger you are the more you burn moving the same distance. It takes effort to move that mass from place to place. I burn a lot less doing a 5K or 10K run now I weight approximately 10 stone than I did back when I was around 16.

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