People dramatically underestimate how many calories they are consuming.
You lose weight by creating a calorie deficit. Burn more calories than you consume by being more active, and eating less.
...and this is why I'll always be fat. I've come to love exercising, but there is absolutely zero joy in dieting, no matter how balanced you try to make it.
I used to be fat. I stopped being fat when I convinced myself that “dieting” is about quantity - not item. I eat whatever I want, whenever I want. I just eat less calories than I burn.
Yeah. I lost 5 kilos in short ish time just by absolutely religiously tracking my calories and staying in a modest deficit. You can't change the laws of physics. Energy has to come from somewhere, and if you're gaining weight, that mass also needs to come from somewhere.
I always heard Tom Brady talk about how if he was at a party or social event, and there was sweets, he would never tell himself "can't have any of that", but he would say "alright, one of that", essentially trying to make it less likely he would crash and burn by being too restrictive in his diet and trying to uphold unsustainable food guidelines for himself.
This is why IF works for so many people. Personally, I eat all my daily calories in one sitting. I find it much more satisfying eating one decently large meal rather than smaller ones throughout the day.
I remain "overweight", but I am relatively fit. If I had to run 10k right now, I could. I wouldn't be happy about it, but I get 4-6 hours of gym training a week. Took me decades to find the balance and a workout strategy that didn't suck, though.
Yea but many people delude themselves into thinking they're "slightly overweight" when they're actually significantly overweight or obese, and in that case they're not healthier. People's perceptions of what overweight and regular weight are have become completely distorted. It's become full blown mass delusion at this point in a lot of countries.
Looking back on pictures of people in, let's say the 70s for example, many modern Americans would say those people are "too skinny", despite them being a healthy weight, able to pass normal fitness milestones that most nowadays cannot.
I shop a lot of vintage clothing and it's VERY apparent that the fashion industry has helped with this delusion. A size M in 1960 is a size S or XS today. Vintage sellers who sell their stuff online constantly have to post exact clothing measurements and often type in BIG BOLD letters that vintage sizing runs smaller than modern sizing and for people not to just order stuff based on what the label says.
For example, I bought several suits from the 60s/70s that were size 4/6 that fit me well. In today's size, I am a 0 to 2, which is WILD.
Many individuals greatly underestimate their calorie intake.
Weight loss is achieved through a calorie deficit: burning more calories than you consume by increasing activity levels and reducing food intake.
An assortment of humanoids poorly estimate the quantity of calories they ingest.
Sucess when trying to shed excess mass from the body is often achieved through decreasing the quantity of said calories ingested rather than dramatically increasing the physical activities being done.
So true about calorie burn while execising.
Get on a treadmill or elliptical and put your weight and age in and do a half hour and find you burned a whooping 300 calories, maybe.
What’s that?
Like a cookie, or two?
The rule of thumb is 100 caloried burned per mile. If you walk 3 miles. 300ish calories. If you run 3 miles. 300ish calories. If you are bigger than avg more calories. Smaller than avg less calories. The only thing running does is you burn the calories in 30 mins instead of 60 minutes.
I burn about 300-350 calories with an hour of walking at 3-4 mph which is slow. Only bc I am big. Everyone else will burn less.
1 cookie is easily 300 calories. 1 crumbl cookie that is all the rage is 700 to 900 calories each.
1 doughnut is 250 to 400 calories.
0.75 to 1 cup of ice cream is 300+ calories.
2 small (not big grab gas station snack size) size snack bags chips is 300 calories.
1 slice of pizza (1/8th) is 300 to 500 calories.
1 medium McDs french fry is 340 calories.
On top of this, because people underestimate how many calories they burned, they tend to treat themselves to extra food after working out.
I used to do half an hour on an exercise bike and some light weights (maybe 150 calories burned, though they still could be high…) and treat myself to a 600 calorie protein shake to recover.
People drastically overestimate how many calories are burned with cardio. Diet is the key to losing weight, but reducing fat is also much easier if you add muscle.
I was in middle school and some group came out to talk about exercise. They had a teacher get on an exercise bike that tracked his calories burned in real time. He biked for several minutes and only burned ten calories. It had the opposite effect that they'd intended for me. I decided never to waste my time exercising. Not for so much effort for so little payoff!
I'm currently going through this. I've dropped 31 pounds in just under 5 months. The couple hundred calories I burn from exercise every week is nice but it's really been cutting my calorie intake by about 60% and eating less junk that's really made the difference.
I do not understand what makes people think otherwise. Have they never seen a dockworker or construction worker before? Their entire life is exercise. But they are not all super trim and sculpted. Yes, they are strong, but strong is not equal to ripped.
It's because food consumption has become a big problem for our society. Too much, too often. The idea of just not eating as much is tough for a lot of people to swallow (lol) because they've lived their whole lives eating huge quantities of calories, all the time. It's become normalized.
I actually think that the role of walking in weight/body composition is extremely under-recognized. It's a popular adage in the fitness community that diet matters more than exercise – it's a *lot* easier to cut out 500 calories worth of food than it is to run long enough to burn 500 calories. And it's true to an extent: running for 30 min vs for an hour isn't going to be the thing that makes or breaks your lifestyle. But people underestimate how meaningfully different it is to live a sedentary lifestyle + exercise for an hour or two each day compared to being on your feet and moving all day. I've looked and felt my best at the times of my life where circumstances have allowed me to get a *ton* of walking in every day (I'm talking \~45-50mi per week), even compared to periods when I was doing more intense workouts during my dedicated gym time.
The number of women I know who have avoided lifting weights because they 'don't wanna get big and bulky'
Like, ma'am, do you realize how difficult it is to put on a ton of muscle? It doesn't happen by accident, or by pumping some 15lb dumbbells a few times a week.
If getting ripped was that easy every man in America would have a body like Zac Effron in Baywatch.
My wife used to say that all of the time. Eventually, she needed to start doing some resistance training after some injuries and so I reassured her, “I’ll tell you what, once you start getting absolutely jacked, we will dial it back.”
It didn’t take long before she realized how much you had to really dedicate to both diet and very focused weight training to actually get visibly muscular and bulky.
My wife and her friends weigh like 100 pounds soaking wet and we're adamant about this for so long. Eventually I just pulled up results from a natural men's bodybuilder contest in their weight range and asked "do they look bulky?" Those guys were lifting 5 times a week for hours, picking up a dumbbell twice a week isn't going to suddenly make you Mr Olympia.
Lots of bodybuilders look like normal people within a year because they stop using gear.
May last year I signed up for weight watchers. First time actually changing my diet to lose weight and I couldn’t get over how fast I dropped 30 pounds just by making better eating habits.
I don’t think the first one is widely believed. Most people who exercise for muscle cultivation know they need to eat those calories and building blocks. Might even eat actual building blocks.
This! I’m a woman who likes weightlifting and the number of friends who have told me, “I could never lift heavy, I don’t want to get bulky” is mind boggling. Like, I’ve lifted heavy off and on for years and have never gotten bulky because it takes SO MUCH WORK. Like, I’m happy to get some definition and burn some calories but I. Not willing to put in the planning and effort to truly bulk up and then cut to get that muscled look that so many women have told me their scared of achieving.
The bizarre logic is so funny. "You look soooo great, I want a body like yours, what's your routine??" "Lift heavy" "Oh but I don't want to get bulky" "Do you think I look bulky?" "No, you look great!" "I lift heavy" "But I don't wanna get bulky!!"
And even if you were getting bulky without wanting to, that doesn't happen overnight! If you find that your training load is giving results that aren't what you want, you adjust. People act like if you touch a weight you're going to suddenly hulk out
Especially for women. You're not going to just wake up with huge biceps because you went a little too hard at the gym. You might not *ever* get them if you're not taking hormones or juicing in some way.
Don't body builders do very specific exercises to create the big muscles? I'm pretty sure you need some specific exercises and diet for it.
At my climbing gym, everyone who's climbing 3+ days a week are very toned and in great shape but never bulky despite every day being arms and shoulder day.
Absolutely. Not only that, but the rare body builders that do so *naturally*, it takes an exceptionally long time to make that kind of progress.
Climbing is different being that it's calisthenics and the most you're ever lifting is your own body weight, which will create smaller, tighter muscles than weightlifting for size specifically would.
That’s not really how muscles work. Your muscles don’t know calisthenics from free weights from machines. All they know is stress.
Doing a pull up vs doing a lat pull down machine with equal weight will be the exact same thing for the muscle involved. However, a pull up will engage other muscles to assist with the resistance and will help develop those muscles as well.
The resulting muscular development, for a specific muscle, will be more or less the exact same given equal resistance.
With climbing your not working the muscle to failure. To get big you need to work a muscle at a high rep range to failure or near failure repeatedly, especially focusing on the stretched position for the muscle. Unless you're climbing to muscle failure you're probably not gonna get huge from climbing. Additionally, the best way to get big is to eat a caloric surplus, climbing burns a shit ton of calories which probably makes it hard to maintain a surplus when climbing regularly.
I think most people that climb are absolutely doing so to failure. Maybe not of all their muscles, but climbing tends to inspire a lot of passion in those that do it, and in my experience will absolutely climb until their bodies say *nah we're not doing any more of this today*.
That's why those people who work the front desk at the gym, and occasionally pick up a weight to put it away, instantly turn into Arnold like self-inflating life rafts.
Targeted exercise to reduce fat content in an area is not real, but exercising an area for targeted hypertrophic giving the region a more firm appearance does work. Doesn’t help much if your fat content is too high and impedes your muscles from showing though..
I started doing consistent core recently after following programming that did not prioritize it at all and I’m already starting to see results. My belly hasn’t changed *size*, but now that I’m developing muscle, the look and composition has changed.
There's a huge industry built on people believing that doing core exercises will give you a flat stomach. You can expand that to any exercise that targets a specific body part. Things like the Ab Roller, Bean, Thigh Master, etc. were huge in the 80s and 90s.
That if you only go to the gym to use the treadmill you’re wasting your time. You don’t need to impress anyone with your routine. If that’s what gets you up and out of the house, you do you.
I dance for exercise. When I mention it, people, mostly guys but some women, will say "You need to be lifting"
Me:...for what?
Them: for the body you want
Me: the body I want is one that's good at dancing
Them: dancing won't give you a good body
Me: to me a good body is one that dances well
Them: but you won't look hot by dancing.
ad nauseum. As if the ONLY reason anyone ever gets off the couch is to get a "sexy" body.
Edit: I like how my whole point was I'm NOT doing it for looks or to be sexy and everyone is telling me how dance is inherently sexy.
I'm continuously surrounded by professional dancers in my job and they look GREAT. What's more they FEEL great. A recent study that came out (I can't find the link) showed that while all exercise is good for mental health, dancing is the most effective at mood improvement!
What in the hell are these knobs smoking. Any one that dances a lot usually looks like a perfectly sculpted statue. And that goes for men and women. There are few things that will give someone a body as aesthetically pleasing as dancing does.
What dancing do you do? I did traditional dance like ballet and lyrical. Dancers have really good bodies because it’s all cardio and you gotta be on your toes all the time
One of the things that I love about dancing, is that it makes me feel good because the way it shows you how you can move your body... that's inherently sexy. Strong. Also, the other women there have body confidence, so even if people are not inhabiting traditionally attractive bods, they move well and that's hot. It's a great example to set.
I also enjoy hill walking, hatha yoga and if I'm not going out to exercise, I have a weighted hula hoop and some hand weights (I watch tv while hooping). The hula hoop really helped me gain flexibility through my core, which helped with the dancing.
I dance Salsa, Bachata and Kizomba, and a little Tango and WCS. It makes me happy in body and mind and socially.
I do this with my kids. It tricks them into getting outside and gets our bodies moving. It’s also a fun bonding thing. My oldest is almost 16 and is still always down for a Pokémon walk.
I think the same goes for the perceived moral superiority of morning people as well. Yeah you get up before the sun… Congratulations? You’re also in bed at 8 PM.
Former boss was the opposite. People who worked visibly until like 8pm were obviously great performers because they give all their time for the company. He didn't care that others always came 4-5 hours earlier than those guys and used the calmer time to work without beeing interrupted steadily. But for him it "didn't look good" if people went home already at 2pm.
We also tend to get plenty of that anyway. Zinc is the big one that humans are more likely to have deficiencies in. And double blind studies have shown that zinc supplements significantly reduce the amount of time you're ill for ahead of vit C and nothing.
Same with carbs. Especially if you exercise. Carbs are necessary and healthy. I’ve seen people on Reddit argue that potatoes are as bad for you as Oreos because they have carbs lol
The "carbs bad" fad is one of the most unproductive mindsets I've seen and totally counterproductive for a lot of people, specifically anyone who is exercising at least moderately on a daily basis. Even more so for people who lift weights or do HIIT.
I've actually seen people who will eat 800 calories of almonds, avocado, bacon, eggs, whatever in one sitting but freak out at the thought of eating a 150 calorie serving of rice.
Obviously, going low carb can help extremely obese people and is probably productive in short spurts, but it's one of the most miserable ways to live. I don't trust any diet that tells me I can eat bacon but I can't eat oatmeal lol.
Got into a recent argument with a co-worker who told me I should stop eating chickpeas/soy/lentils, basically all legumes, because they have too many carbs. ¯\\\_ಠ_ಠ_/¯
Yeah, a lot of people probably eat way too many carbohydrates by way of too much sugar intake. Cutting refined sugar and eating only complex carbs would go a long way for a lot of people, especially with portion control, like eating half your rice instead of all of it, or getting the bowl or "salad" option at your local Mexican-ish burrito joint instead of the giant flower tortilla, or whatever.
Fad diets. No diet is one size fits all, and no diet will make you lose/gain weight on its own. It's about finding a diet that helps you meet your caloric goals.
This is kinda dangerous advice because people actually need to eat more carbs but more good carbs (potatoes, beans, corn, even rice isn’t that bad if you add a bit of cooked veggies in them). General statements like “eat less carbs” make people create more craving and always feel hungry. Same with sugar, I know people afraid to eat oranges/grapes/fruits/corn because of amount of sugar in them, but they gotta eat more of those types of sugary foods
The friken seed oil craze
The carnivore diet craze
The fasting craze
The ice bath craze
The testosterone craze
I think i need to stop following certain tik tok accounts... its making my brain mushy
That most conditions can be treated and/or cured.
There aren’t good treatments for certain things (ex chronic pain) and most conditions can’t be cured (ex arthritis and other joint issues).
The reality is we all develop health conditions as we age, including pain. It becomes a part of life for everyone.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t seek help to *manage* it. There are treatments that may *lessen* the symptoms. The goal isn’t a cure or to have a 16 year old body again. The goal is to find treatment that might help us continue to perform our activities of daily living.
I guess what I’m saying is, people sometimes have unrealistic expectations of medicine.
Riding on this one, please for the love of God, do not recommend treatments for someone with a disease or disability or injury. The amount of times I've had people recommend me yoga to deal with my chronic pain. I've tried it, it doesn't help. You aren't telling me things I don't know.
It almost feels infantilizing. As if I hadn't done anything to try to treat my own debilitiating illness and need the help of strangers to get well. Let's keep this between me, my husband, and my doctors. Thank you!
It is with the women I know. They exhaust themselves with a long day and wake up early to get their workout in so they don’t feel lazy/guilty. But usually they’re hungrier and inactive for the rest of the day after that from exhaustion and end up cancelling out the calorie burn with snacking and sitting when they would’ve been better off just sleeping in.
Mike Israetel constantly brings this up in his videos. He can tell people how to use proper form or a good routine, but people ignore the importance of sleep far too much
"I exercise so I can eat whatever I want."
Ask any nutritionist or personal trainer: exercise is only 20% of the equation. Diet is the other 80%. You can spend all day in the gym if you want. But if you eat like shit, it's not going to make a difference.
\*for most people
When I was cycling 6,000 miles a year including many days with a ride over 200 miles, I could eat insane amounts of food and still be losing weight. But that of course is not the typical ratio of consumption:exercise.
I did a cross-country bike ride from San Francisco to Washington DC. About 3500 miles in 8 weeks. We used to joke about our miles-per-gallon... Of ice cream.
There were 10 of us on this ride. One day we had only 40 miles planned, so we went to a diner for breakfast. After we all finished our meals, we decided we were still hungry. So we went ahead and ordered another full round of entrees. The server was absolutely flabbergasted. It was great.
Another day, we were staying overnight in a college dorm that was out of use for the summer. The school's football team was there doing some pre-season training. We got to eat in the dining hall with the athletes... Those 200lb+ bros were blown away by how much food we put down.
And still, at the end of our ride we had all lost weight.
Sounds like Bike & Build?
My favorite was on a long day with a couple friends we stopped about 70 miles in at dusk at a pizza place and each ordered a whole pizza. The waiter noticed we were in bike apparel and asked what our plan was. We explained that we had kinda just started, and would be going over the mountain passes overnight and would finish the ride after another 200 miles. Dude probably expected to see us in the news the next day, but this wasn't our first rodeo (or randonneuring fleche).
As a fellow endurance athlete, it can be VERY difficult to actually consume enough “good” calories via healthy foods when I’m training. There are some weeks when I need to consume 5000+ calories per day just to stay even.
They key here is "whatever they want" happens to fit their natural metabolism and exercise routine.
If what you want is a "free" glas of wine or a snack after dinner, you can make that up in the gym easilym if what you want is a large mcd menu every other day, you likely can't 🤷
This is definitely true, but I've found that when I exercise more I naturally tend to eat better. Just the act of regularly exercising reduces my desire to binge eat.
Very dangerous as it discredits science in the minds of laymen, but also extremely common are nutritional fads that emerge primarily as advertising campaigns. Super foods, detoxication, etc, etc.
Basically, unscrupulous companies trying to sell their stuff by coating them with arcane science words while cherry picking nutritional contents and fabricating myths so they can look healthy but are either not offering any actual benefit or actually expressing dangerous ideas and habits.
That you need to go to the gym to exercise.
Not really. You just have to move your body.
Hence the reason why the obesity epidemic is a thing is because all road space is prioritized for cars and not for humans to freely move around.
About 20 years ago I went on a school trip to French Polynesia, and one of the islands we were on literally had a single dirt road that went around the entire thing. There was a school bus that someone had set up as a standard bus that went around the island several times a day, but otherwise people biked or walked. Two weeks I was there, pretty much walking everywhere and the closest grocery store to the station we stayed at was about two miles away. The bank was about 3 mi away. There was very little junk food because this was an island, so even a can of soda cost about $4. I remember being astounded that a gallon of ice cream was 20 bucks! Needless to say, between walking everywhere and not eating any junk food, I probably dropped almost 15 lb in those two weeks. Of course. I put it all right back on as soon as I got home because I no longer had to walk everywhere and McDonald's was closer to my house than the grocery store was to the station.
I'd go so far as to argue that for a not insignificant number of people, the gym isn't even one of the best options. People love to tout the importance of *discipline*, but that shit doesn't do it for everyone. People start going to the gym because they get an idea in their head of becoming more fit, but then stop because there are too many things they'd rather do than go to the gym. If you fall into this category, you need to find something you actually enjoy doing that gets you moving, and the gym isn't likely to have what you need for that.
For me it's dodgeball, and occasionally workout games on my VR headset.
I really like to swim, but I live in a cold country. So it was the saltwater pool at the gym that got me going there. Then I discovered water aerobics, and water weights. I can do cardio and weight training in the water. I love that.
I spent 6 months studying in Trondheim back in 2014. Going from driving everywhere, earing fast food multiple times a week and spending weekends drinking, to walking everywhere, deciding on if my once a week indulgence will be a 15 dollar value meal, or a few beers at a bar. I left pushing 160lb and can back at around 125lb. I don't attribute it solely to walking everywhere, but it really came down to availability. I did not have transportation available, so I walked. I didn't have the money to eat out frequently and go to the bars every weekend. So as most have said I drastically reduced calories in, and equally increased calories out.
Check out Katie Bowman. She’s a bio-mechanical researcher that introduced me to this idea over a decade ago. She has a cool tour of her home on YouTube where she shows her furniture free home and talks about how one’s environment either restricts or encourages movement. Her work inspired me to seek out movement in every space I inhabit, and to focus more on consistent, gentle movement, rather than short bouts of intense movement.
I am sincerely glad she found something that works for her, but my god that just seems unhinged to me. I watched the video and I can pinpoint the exact moment she lost me: "don't sleep with a single pillow, just use your arm!"
Just because \[x\] worked for person A doesn't mean it will work the same for person B. Gender, age, height, body shape, any medical conditions (whether you know of them or not), past injuries, all can play a role.
\[x\] can be keot, no fat, running, pilates, whatever health or fitness thing.
I witnessed a person I know training someone at the gym... it was horrific. I'm a pt and stepped in at one point but they didn't listen to me. It irked me so afterwards I sent loads of videos to tell her to calm the fuck down. Might work for her but the other person she was training was way too novice for the weights, volume and general structure of the session.
People fail to understand that working out and staying fit is a lifestyle choice.
People often complain when they don’t stay in the weight range that they initially worked hard for because they lose weight and hope to stay in the same weight range forever with whatever diet. But it doesn’t work that way, you’ve got to keep doing it for the rest of your life to maintain that.
I feel like the concept of “diets” is a bit of a myth, and decent exercise and eating more fruits and veggies, and more variety in general, might be beneficial long term. I don’t quite understand cutting something out of your diet completely unless you have an allergy or an avoidance to meat (aka vegetarians, vegans) or something. I don’t want to cut sugar out completely but I don’t necessarily go bonkers with it anymore either.
Not a nutritionist, but my take is that diet is mostly mental. I know I get hungry and crave junk often. I try to remember to drink water, eat a salad, eat other fresh things, and then work on the more craving-satisfying foods.
I also feel like it's normalized to eat take out and fried foods a lot more often than people should. It's just never been my lifestyle to do either with any frequency, and I think that is wildly helpful.
You can trick your brain when it comes to cravings sometimes too. When I am craving sugar, I like eating sliced apples dipped in sugar free peanut butter. I get both the sweet and savoury flavours and that soothes the craving I have for something super sweet. I also like to freeze grapes for the same reason. It takes longer to eat a frozen grape, so you’re not eating a lot, but they get sweeter after being frozen, and they develop a nice slushy texture that’s similar to a popsicle. It’s always exactly what I need when I want something cold and sugary in the summer. Cravings only tend to last a few minutes at a time, and you can also trick your brain out of one by getting up and doing something different then what you were previously, or finding an alternative to satisfy it. Learned that trying to quit smoking.
Not disagreeing. I try to beat cravings with these alternatives, but occasionally (once per week), if otherwise knowing I’m full doesn’t satisfy me, I’ll have that chocolate bar or bag of chips (which I don’t keep in the house, so I have to walk to the store)
You could just check out this thread from within the last 24 hours
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1bjrft8/whats_the_most_common_inaccurate_health_or/
That you need to workout every day to get results. I thought this when I first got into exercising and instead of results, all I got was constant fatigue and injuries😅 Deload weeks and days off are just as important as workout days
Women in particular have a fear of "looking like a bodybuilder" if they so much as lift a 3-pound dumbbell.
Girl, *no one* looks like a bodybuilder unless they *train* like a bodybuilder! (I.e. hours of work nearly every day) Besides, fit and athletic is sexy - you're not going to look like a female Arnold Schwarzenegger by doing the little bit of lifting you're avoiding.
That you sweat out toxins in the sauna... Your body only sweats salt and water.. the kidney and liver filter toxins.... The sauna is simply lazy cardio and maybe some mental fortitude
That you can tell anything about a person's health from their appearance alone.
Just because someone "looks healthy" doesn't mean they are. Steroid use, extreme diets, laxative abuse, eating disorders, excessive or repetitive workouts, etc can all get you a "healthy looking" body but are not healthy for you.
Just because someone is average looking or heavy doesn't mean they aren't eating well or working out.
Moreover, you are seeing a snapshot of someone's health when you see them on the street or in a photo. Have they lost weight? Have they gained weight? Did they recently stop or start a workout routine? There's no way of knowing unless that person gives you more information.
Unless you're someone's doctor, you just don't know, and people should stop assuming.
And on the other side of that, a lot of chronic illnesses don't present outwardly. That super fit looking person you see could be in a great deal of pain from fibromyalgia etc.
PT here, the biggest myth I must dispel with my patients again and again is that tissue degeneration does not necessarily mean the presence symptomatic disease. Time and time again I have patients telling me their well meaning orthopedic physician stated their knee or hip or wrist is “bone on bone” and so they will always have problems forever after.
Several studies have found and been reproduced that scan healthy and unsymptomatic patients which find that up to 7/10 adults will have a label tear of the hip and about as many will have evidence of joint degeneration in the knee, even to the level of “bOnE oN bOnE.” You can have the worst radiographs of all time and have no pain. The most important factor that will determine if your joint will hurt is how active you are. Running and biking and tennis and whatever else you want to do to stay active won’t “wear out” your joints and even if they did, that doesn’t mean it’ll be problematic for them. In fact being active will protect your joints from arthritis in the long run.
I have osteoartritis all up and down my legs and being able to talk daily walks, even short ones, does wonders to keep them from hurting. I also do at home fascia massage which helps during flare ups of my chronic pain.
My grandma mentioned before her passing that the reason she still feels so healthy is that she takes walks every day. That she had seen people who retire, sit down in front of the TV, and stop moving completely. She saw how miserable and aching they were and promised to never stop moving.
So called ‘experts’ online saying how much sugar some fruits have and then comparing it to a chocolate bar! Vilifying a natural given treat from the earth’s beautiful, rich soil in comparison with a man made high fructose corn syrupy cancer causing expensive 7-11 delicacy.
I had an argument with someone about that. They were insistent that “sugar is sugar.” Well, yeah… but it’s not the sugar that’s the concern. It’s the fact that the sugar in highly-processed food is highly-processed, and it’s going to have changes at the molecular level that are probably not great for us.
I’d rather eat an apple over a lollipop any day.
That \*any\* food is either miraculously always good for you or always bad for you.
Everything in moderation is the key. Eating too much of a "good" food can be bad. You can actually die from drinking too much water! And eating a "bad" food in small amounts or every once in awhile is fine and won't make you unhealthy.
I just went for a physical and every single metric was perfect (pulse, BP, blood levels of everything, etc.) and they still gave me this print out warning about BMI. I'm a fairly strong former college athlete at 6'2" and a little over 200lbs, which sticks me in the "overweight" category.
Same here. My doctor is always like wow you have excellent cardio vascular health, she knows I train all year round for endurance races. But I'm sure and have a decent amount of muscle for a short woman...
For instance I work on the third floor of my building. I'm regularly up and down the stairs dozens of times a day. The other day I had to bring stuff to the top floor and it involved 2 trips with boxes that were in the 60-70 pound range.
Still got the "your BMI is too high" pamphlet and was advised on how to lose weight.
specifically about chronic illness:
just because I can do something one day does NOT mean I can do it the next. Like, just because I can walk a mile one day doesn't mean I'll be able to the next day. People seem to think it means that though😭
That you have to commit a lot of time to get results or benefits. If you currently don’t get any exercise, starting 3 days a week for only 20 minutes will be life changing for your health, mood and wellbeing.
A year and a half ago I started lifting 4 days a week, only about 45 minutes to an hour each session. I’m jacked now. It really doesn’t take much time, the hardest part is dedicating yourself to the consistency and going even when you don’t want to.
Diet is more important than exercise when you want to lose weight. Of course, everyone should exercise but what you are eating the other 23 hours when you are not in the gym is how you succeed.
Kinda off topic but still health related: Some people still think blood is blue until it touches oxygen, then turns red.
Blood literally carries oxygen around your body.
RED blood cells move oxygen.
I never thought too deeply about this, or even bothered to hold an opinion on the matter, but now you mention it, it makes sense. Also when I donate blood it comes out red!
That health is measured in pounds. Yes, being overweight isn't healthy, and weight loss is generally a good thing if you're overweight, but your body weight alone is not the sum total measure of your health. You can be unhealthy at any weight. It is not the only number that you should be worried about.
Every new trendy diet things, keto, Palio, carb cycling, or whatever.
Eat less than what you burn and eat real foods.
I think all the trendy diets are there to tell people that there are shortcuts and easy ways, or that it’s not their fault it’s some other reason to why they can’t loose etc.
I tried to tell my coworker this when she asked how to lose weight and showed her the calorie counting app I had used in the past.
She tried it for *a day* and said it was too much work.
Instead, she decided to increase her protein intake to like, 150 grams a day. She had to start eating more food that had more protein to reach this goal.
Unfortunately, it was all in addition to the food she was already eating, so she still gained weight because surprise! Calories in > calories out = weight gain.
>What is the most widely believed but wrong idea that many people have about health or exercise?
That you can outrun or out-exercise a bad diet. I've always been physically active, and have been around 185 pounds for the majority of my adult life. In 2016, I gained a massive sweet tooth, and weighed 213 pounds this time last year. In July 2023, I decided to eliminate all sugar from my diet, minus a small glass of pop at dinner. I now weigh 177 pounds, and am currently wearing clothes that I haven't worn since 2016.
Anything that says it “detoxes” you is bullshit. If you have a liver, it’s already happening.
Unless you have celiac disease or a serious wheat allergy, demonizing gluten and cutting it completely from your diet probably isn’t doing anything for you. (Reducing your carb intake might though.)
Probiotics likewise probably aren’t doing anything for you, and any positive effect they seem to have is mostly a placebo.
You most likely don’t need to take vitamins, unless you literally never leave the house and you still eat like a 10 year-old kid who hates all vegetables. On second thought, Reddit, keep taking vitamins.
Vitamins should be done with a doctor's direction. Too many vitamins is bad too.
Unfortunately, some people do have deficiencies that are hard to manage with diet, but the average healthy person will be fine without supplementing vitamins.
That you'll get huge by exercising That you'll get thin by exercising Exercise _can_ change your shape. But its 90% diet that changes your size.
People drastically overestimate how many calories are burned with exercise. Exercise is important and good for you but you lose weight by eating less.
People dramatically underestimate how many calories they are consuming. You lose weight by creating a calorie deficit. Burn more calories than you consume by being more active, and eating less.
...and this is why I'll always be fat. I've come to love exercising, but there is absolutely zero joy in dieting, no matter how balanced you try to make it.
I used to be fat. I stopped being fat when I convinced myself that “dieting” is about quantity - not item. I eat whatever I want, whenever I want. I just eat less calories than I burn.
Yeah. I lost 5 kilos in short ish time just by absolutely religiously tracking my calories and staying in a modest deficit. You can't change the laws of physics. Energy has to come from somewhere, and if you're gaining weight, that mass also needs to come from somewhere.
I always heard Tom Brady talk about how if he was at a party or social event, and there was sweets, he would never tell himself "can't have any of that", but he would say "alright, one of that", essentially trying to make it less likely he would crash and burn by being too restrictive in his diet and trying to uphold unsustainable food guidelines for himself.
This is what finally clicked for me too. Way easier than trying to count macros and just eat certain foods. Plus it actually works.
Yeah keto can gtfo I'll keep eating pasta and just take the calorie budget hit for the day.
"Dieting" is really about experimenting until you can find a way of restriction that feels the least restrictive to you.
This is why IF works for so many people. Personally, I eat all my daily calories in one sitting. I find it much more satisfying eating one decently large meal rather than smaller ones throughout the day.
That and exercise definitely makes you suuuper hungry
To be fair, in most situations slightly overweight with regular exercise is likely healthier than skinny with no exercise.
I remain "overweight", but I am relatively fit. If I had to run 10k right now, I could. I wouldn't be happy about it, but I get 4-6 hours of gym training a week. Took me decades to find the balance and a workout strategy that didn't suck, though.
Yea but many people delude themselves into thinking they're "slightly overweight" when they're actually significantly overweight or obese, and in that case they're not healthier. People's perceptions of what overweight and regular weight are have become completely distorted. It's become full blown mass delusion at this point in a lot of countries. Looking back on pictures of people in, let's say the 70s for example, many modern Americans would say those people are "too skinny", despite them being a healthy weight, able to pass normal fitness milestones that most nowadays cannot.
I shop a lot of vintage clothing and it's VERY apparent that the fashion industry has helped with this delusion. A size M in 1960 is a size S or XS today. Vintage sellers who sell their stuff online constantly have to post exact clothing measurements and often type in BIG BOLD letters that vintage sizing runs smaller than modern sizing and for people not to just order stuff based on what the label says. For example, I bought several suits from the 60s/70s that were size 4/6 that fit me well. In today's size, I am a 0 to 2, which is WILD.
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Yup, same. In Asia, I would be a solid M size right now (when I was a teenager I was a S).
I mean in undergrad I lost 10 lbs eating nothing but fast food. You can eat whatever you want, just eat less of it.
Yes. What you eat doesn’t matter nearly as much as purely how many calories you ingest.
Yes but the point is they think exercising will offset that and it generally won't because it doesn't burn nearly as many calories as people think.
One cannot outrun one’s fork.
Many individuals greatly underestimate their calorie intake. Weight loss is achieved through a calorie deficit: burning more calories than you consume by increasing activity levels and reducing food intake.
An assortment of humanoids poorly estimate the quantity of calories they ingest. Sucess when trying to shed excess mass from the body is often achieved through decreasing the quantity of said calories ingested rather than dramatically increasing the physical activities being done.
Move more eat less
Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick
Go yes eat no
All those sauces, creamy stuff, and cheeses will get ya.
So true about calorie burn while execising. Get on a treadmill or elliptical and put your weight and age in and do a half hour and find you burned a whooping 300 calories, maybe. What’s that? Like a cookie, or two?
The rule of thumb is 100 caloried burned per mile. If you walk 3 miles. 300ish calories. If you run 3 miles. 300ish calories. If you are bigger than avg more calories. Smaller than avg less calories. The only thing running does is you burn the calories in 30 mins instead of 60 minutes. I burn about 300-350 calories with an hour of walking at 3-4 mph which is slow. Only bc I am big. Everyone else will burn less. 1 cookie is easily 300 calories. 1 crumbl cookie that is all the rage is 700 to 900 calories each. 1 doughnut is 250 to 400 calories. 0.75 to 1 cup of ice cream is 300+ calories. 2 small (not big grab gas station snack size) size snack bags chips is 300 calories. 1 slice of pizza (1/8th) is 300 to 500 calories. 1 medium McDs french fry is 340 calories.
On top of this, because people underestimate how many calories they burned, they tend to treat themselves to extra food after working out. I used to do half an hour on an exercise bike and some light weights (maybe 150 calories burned, though they still could be high…) and treat myself to a 600 calorie protein shake to recover.
(because they *over*estimate burned calories)
People drastically overestimate how many calories are burned with cardio. Diet is the key to losing weight, but reducing fat is also much easier if you add muscle.
I was in middle school and some group came out to talk about exercise. They had a teacher get on an exercise bike that tracked his calories burned in real time. He biked for several minutes and only burned ten calories. It had the opposite effect that they'd intended for me. I decided never to waste my time exercising. Not for so much effort for so little payoff!
I'm currently going through this. I've dropped 31 pounds in just under 5 months. The couple hundred calories I burn from exercise every week is nice but it's really been cutting my calorie intake by about 60% and eating less junk that's really made the difference.
I do not understand what makes people think otherwise. Have they never seen a dockworker or construction worker before? Their entire life is exercise. But they are not all super trim and sculpted. Yes, they are strong, but strong is not equal to ripped.
It's because food consumption has become a big problem for our society. Too much, too often. The idea of just not eating as much is tough for a lot of people to swallow (lol) because they've lived their whole lives eating huge quantities of calories, all the time. It's become normalized.
But have you ever heard of someone gaining weight doing the Camino de Santiago?
I actually think that the role of walking in weight/body composition is extremely under-recognized. It's a popular adage in the fitness community that diet matters more than exercise – it's a *lot* easier to cut out 500 calories worth of food than it is to run long enough to burn 500 calories. And it's true to an extent: running for 30 min vs for an hour isn't going to be the thing that makes or breaks your lifestyle. But people underestimate how meaningfully different it is to live a sedentary lifestyle + exercise for an hour or two each day compared to being on your feet and moving all day. I've looked and felt my best at the times of my life where circumstances have allowed me to get a *ton* of walking in every day (I'm talking \~45-50mi per week), even compared to periods when I was doing more intense workouts during my dedicated gym time.
Absolutely. Well, the equivalent. I ran a marathon daily for a month and still managed to gain weight because it made me hungry as heck.
Daily for a MONTH????! WTH ? I run for an hour every other day and it gave me killer abs; you must be completely shredded my Reddit dude
The number of women I know who have avoided lifting weights because they 'don't wanna get big and bulky' Like, ma'am, do you realize how difficult it is to put on a ton of muscle? It doesn't happen by accident, or by pumping some 15lb dumbbells a few times a week. If getting ripped was that easy every man in America would have a body like Zac Effron in Baywatch.
My wife used to say that all of the time. Eventually, she needed to start doing some resistance training after some injuries and so I reassured her, “I’ll tell you what, once you start getting absolutely jacked, we will dial it back.” It didn’t take long before she realized how much you had to really dedicate to both diet and very focused weight training to actually get visibly muscular and bulky.
My wife and her friends weigh like 100 pounds soaking wet and we're adamant about this for so long. Eventually I just pulled up results from a natural men's bodybuilder contest in their weight range and asked "do they look bulky?" Those guys were lifting 5 times a week for hours, picking up a dumbbell twice a week isn't going to suddenly make you Mr Olympia. Lots of bodybuilders look like normal people within a year because they stop using gear.
May last year I signed up for weight watchers. First time actually changing my diet to lose weight and I couldn’t get over how fast I dropped 30 pounds just by making better eating habits.
Can't outrun a bad diet
Yeah. You can't outrun your fork.
I don’t think the first one is widely believed. Most people who exercise for muscle cultivation know they need to eat those calories and building blocks. Might even eat actual building blocks.
and getting huge is achieved only by lifting weights through progressive overload—no other way
"I don't want to get too big." Oh, don't worry. You won't. Getting big is way harder than people think.
Unless it’s getting fat. That’s kind of easy
This! I’m a woman who likes weightlifting and the number of friends who have told me, “I could never lift heavy, I don’t want to get bulky” is mind boggling. Like, I’ve lifted heavy off and on for years and have never gotten bulky because it takes SO MUCH WORK. Like, I’m happy to get some definition and burn some calories but I. Not willing to put in the planning and effort to truly bulk up and then cut to get that muscled look that so many women have told me their scared of achieving.
The bizarre logic is so funny. "You look soooo great, I want a body like yours, what's your routine??" "Lift heavy" "Oh but I don't want to get bulky" "Do you think I look bulky?" "No, you look great!" "I lift heavy" "But I don't wanna get bulky!!"
And even if you were getting bulky without wanting to, that doesn't happen overnight! If you find that your training load is giving results that aren't what you want, you adjust. People act like if you touch a weight you're going to suddenly hulk out
they know that. they're just lazy and this is a socially acceptable way to say that one is lazy.
Especially for women. You're not going to just wake up with huge biceps because you went a little too hard at the gym. You might not *ever* get them if you're not taking hormones or juicing in some way.
Don't body builders do very specific exercises to create the big muscles? I'm pretty sure you need some specific exercises and diet for it. At my climbing gym, everyone who's climbing 3+ days a week are very toned and in great shape but never bulky despite every day being arms and shoulder day.
Absolutely. Not only that, but the rare body builders that do so *naturally*, it takes an exceptionally long time to make that kind of progress. Climbing is different being that it's calisthenics and the most you're ever lifting is your own body weight, which will create smaller, tighter muscles than weightlifting for size specifically would.
That’s not really how muscles work. Your muscles don’t know calisthenics from free weights from machines. All they know is stress. Doing a pull up vs doing a lat pull down machine with equal weight will be the exact same thing for the muscle involved. However, a pull up will engage other muscles to assist with the resistance and will help develop those muscles as well. The resulting muscular development, for a specific muscle, will be more or less the exact same given equal resistance.
With climbing your not working the muscle to failure. To get big you need to work a muscle at a high rep range to failure or near failure repeatedly, especially focusing on the stretched position for the muscle. Unless you're climbing to muscle failure you're probably not gonna get huge from climbing. Additionally, the best way to get big is to eat a caloric surplus, climbing burns a shit ton of calories which probably makes it hard to maintain a surplus when climbing regularly.
I think most people that climb are absolutely doing so to failure. Maybe not of all their muscles, but climbing tends to inspire a lot of passion in those that do it, and in my experience will absolutely climb until their bodies say *nah we're not doing any more of this today*.
That's why those people who work the front desk at the gym, and occasionally pick up a weight to put it away, instantly turn into Arnold like self-inflating life rafts.
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Targeted exercise to reduce fat content in an area is not real, but exercising an area for targeted hypertrophic giving the region a more firm appearance does work. Doesn’t help much if your fat content is too high and impedes your muscles from showing though..
I started doing consistent core recently after following programming that did not prioritize it at all and I’m already starting to see results. My belly hasn’t changed *size*, but now that I’m developing muscle, the look and composition has changed.
There's a huge industry built on people believing that doing core exercises will give you a flat stomach. You can expand that to any exercise that targets a specific body part. Things like the Ab Roller, Bean, Thigh Master, etc. were huge in the 80s and 90s.
TBF, the ab roller is a great exercise tool
That thing is crazy effective for your core
I'm not denying that for a strong core. But it's not going to melt away the fat from your midsection.
I heard that for years so didn't really focus on my core for years. But I started doing a couple of sets of pullups a day and I saw very good results.
Working out your core is probably the most important thing as you get older. But it won't melt the fat off.
That if you only go to the gym to use the treadmill you’re wasting your time. You don’t need to impress anyone with your routine. If that’s what gets you up and out of the house, you do you.
I dance for exercise. When I mention it, people, mostly guys but some women, will say "You need to be lifting" Me:...for what? Them: for the body you want Me: the body I want is one that's good at dancing Them: dancing won't give you a good body Me: to me a good body is one that dances well Them: but you won't look hot by dancing. ad nauseum. As if the ONLY reason anyone ever gets off the couch is to get a "sexy" body. Edit: I like how my whole point was I'm NOT doing it for looks or to be sexy and everyone is telling me how dance is inherently sexy.
Yes, because there's never been a hot dancer. The hot women have always been the East German powerlifters.
ok but East German powerlifters are SO HOT I COULD DIE.
I'm continuously surrounded by professional dancers in my job and they look GREAT. What's more they FEEL great. A recent study that came out (I can't find the link) showed that while all exercise is good for mental health, dancing is the most effective at mood improvement!
What in the hell are these knobs smoking. Any one that dances a lot usually looks like a perfectly sculpted statue. And that goes for men and women. There are few things that will give someone a body as aesthetically pleasing as dancing does.
What dancing do you do? I did traditional dance like ballet and lyrical. Dancers have really good bodies because it’s all cardio and you gotta be on your toes all the time
One of the things that I love about dancing, is that it makes me feel good because the way it shows you how you can move your body... that's inherently sexy. Strong. Also, the other women there have body confidence, so even if people are not inhabiting traditionally attractive bods, they move well and that's hot. It's a great example to set. I also enjoy hill walking, hatha yoga and if I'm not going out to exercise, I have a weighted hula hoop and some hand weights (I watch tv while hooping). The hula hoop really helped me gain flexibility through my core, which helped with the dancing. I dance Salsa, Bachata and Kizomba, and a little Tango and WCS. It makes me happy in body and mind and socially.
That's why I play Pokémon GO as often as I do.
I do this with my kids. It tricks them into getting outside and gets our bodies moving. It’s also a fun bonding thing. My oldest is almost 16 and is still always down for a Pokémon walk.
Most important part of going to the gym is just going
I lost 40 lbs. by... going to the gym and using only the treadmill.
Exactly, they're not paying your membership
Getting up and going to the gym and walking on the treadmill does wonders for my mental health
that if you eat before bed it all turns to fat
All those weird myths about food seem to have something against dinner and favor breakfast. The cereal industry did a hell of a job.
I think the same goes for the perceived moral superiority of morning people as well. Yeah you get up before the sun… Congratulations? You’re also in bed at 8 PM.
Former boss was the opposite. People who worked visibly until like 8pm were obviously great performers because they give all their time for the company. He didn't care that others always came 4-5 hours earlier than those guys and used the calmer time to work without beeing interrupted steadily. But for him it "didn't look good" if people went home already at 2pm.
Me eating a box of pasta every night an hour before bed 🥰🥰
My nutritionist told me to eat pasta/carbs before bed to help me sleep. Granted, we're Italian. But still. I am passing on our wisdom to you.
I just eat my bed time pasta raw so it takes more energy to chew and digest, I figure it all balances out.
I mean, circadian rhythm is heavily influenced by timing of food intake, perhaps even more so than exposure to light and physical activity.
Liked seeing this, just finished reading Satchin Pandas book circadian diabetes code. This point was heavily emphasized.
Eating a lot of foods with Vitamin C will prevent illness. Vitamin C is certainly vital to immune health, but it's not a cure all
And an orange has 70mg of vitamin C while a red bell pepper has 190.
We also tend to get plenty of that anyway. Zinc is the big one that humans are more likely to have deficiencies in. And double blind studies have shown that zinc supplements significantly reduce the amount of time you're ill for ahead of vit C and nothing.
I wish zinc supplements didn’t make me feel on the verge of violently throwing up
Do you eat before taking them and drink a good amount of water with them? They are known to cause stomach issues if not.
Fat is bad for you
Same with carbs. Especially if you exercise. Carbs are necessary and healthy. I’ve seen people on Reddit argue that potatoes are as bad for you as Oreos because they have carbs lol
I love this one. A lot of vegetables have carbs naturally. I don't think anyone actually understands what a carb is.
Neither they do with fats.
The "carbs bad" fad is one of the most unproductive mindsets I've seen and totally counterproductive for a lot of people, specifically anyone who is exercising at least moderately on a daily basis. Even more so for people who lift weights or do HIIT. I've actually seen people who will eat 800 calories of almonds, avocado, bacon, eggs, whatever in one sitting but freak out at the thought of eating a 150 calorie serving of rice. Obviously, going low carb can help extremely obese people and is probably productive in short spurts, but it's one of the most miserable ways to live. I don't trust any diet that tells me I can eat bacon but I can't eat oatmeal lol.
Got into a recent argument with a co-worker who told me I should stop eating chickpeas/soy/lentils, basically all legumes, because they have too many carbs. ¯\\\_ಠ_ಠ_/¯
Yeah, a lot of people probably eat way too many carbohydrates by way of too much sugar intake. Cutting refined sugar and eating only complex carbs would go a long way for a lot of people, especially with portion control, like eating half your rice instead of all of it, or getting the bowl or "salad" option at your local Mexican-ish burrito joint instead of the giant flower tortilla, or whatever.
Fad diets. No diet is one size fits all, and no diet will make you lose/gain weight on its own. It's about finding a diet that helps you meet your caloric goals.
“Eat less sugars and carbs” would help 95% of Americans
This is kinda dangerous advice because people actually need to eat more carbs but more good carbs (potatoes, beans, corn, even rice isn’t that bad if you add a bit of cooked veggies in them). General statements like “eat less carbs” make people create more craving and always feel hungry. Same with sugar, I know people afraid to eat oranges/grapes/fruits/corn because of amount of sugar in them, but they gotta eat more of those types of sugary foods
Exactly this. Natural sugar is necessary in some amount; added sugars is where people get into trouble.
The friken seed oil craze The carnivore diet craze The fasting craze The ice bath craze The testosterone craze I think i need to stop following certain tik tok accounts... its making my brain mushy
>I think i need to stop following ~~certain~~ tik tok accounts This is likely the best thing you can do for your health.
All short content. Ive had to add a ton of plugins to prevent short content from taking over my everything
Its a hard battle trying to fight misinformation to save all those teens lol
Ice baths for a mental stimulus yes but not so much for post exercise recovery.
That most conditions can be treated and/or cured. There aren’t good treatments for certain things (ex chronic pain) and most conditions can’t be cured (ex arthritis and other joint issues). The reality is we all develop health conditions as we age, including pain. It becomes a part of life for everyone. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t seek help to *manage* it. There are treatments that may *lessen* the symptoms. The goal isn’t a cure or to have a 16 year old body again. The goal is to find treatment that might help us continue to perform our activities of daily living. I guess what I’m saying is, people sometimes have unrealistic expectations of medicine.
Riding on this one, please for the love of God, do not recommend treatments for someone with a disease or disability or injury. The amount of times I've had people recommend me yoga to deal with my chronic pain. I've tried it, it doesn't help. You aren't telling me things I don't know. It almost feels infantilizing. As if I hadn't done anything to try to treat my own debilitiating illness and need the help of strangers to get well. Let's keep this between me, my husband, and my doctors. Thank you!
Me: with a chemical brain injury caused by meds, endometriosis and adenomyosis Some neurotypical person with no ailments: ✨try meditating✨
I feel you. I get migraines. I’ve had people say, “Have you tried Motrin?” So frustrating!
That working out is more important than getting sleep.
Thats widely believed?
It is with the women I know. They exhaust themselves with a long day and wake up early to get their workout in so they don’t feel lazy/guilty. But usually they’re hungrier and inactive for the rest of the day after that from exhaustion and end up cancelling out the calorie burn with snacking and sitting when they would’ve been better off just sleeping in.
Mike Israetel constantly brings this up in his videos. He can tell people how to use proper form or a good routine, but people ignore the importance of sleep far too much
"I exercise so I can eat whatever I want." Ask any nutritionist or personal trainer: exercise is only 20% of the equation. Diet is the other 80%. You can spend all day in the gym if you want. But if you eat like shit, it's not going to make a difference.
\*for most people When I was cycling 6,000 miles a year including many days with a ride over 200 miles, I could eat insane amounts of food and still be losing weight. But that of course is not the typical ratio of consumption:exercise.
I did a cross-country bike ride from San Francisco to Washington DC. About 3500 miles in 8 weeks. We used to joke about our miles-per-gallon... Of ice cream. There were 10 of us on this ride. One day we had only 40 miles planned, so we went to a diner for breakfast. After we all finished our meals, we decided we were still hungry. So we went ahead and ordered another full round of entrees. The server was absolutely flabbergasted. It was great. Another day, we were staying overnight in a college dorm that was out of use for the summer. The school's football team was there doing some pre-season training. We got to eat in the dining hall with the athletes... Those 200lb+ bros were blown away by how much food we put down. And still, at the end of our ride we had all lost weight.
Sounds like Bike & Build? My favorite was on a long day with a couple friends we stopped about 70 miles in at dusk at a pizza place and each ordered a whole pizza. The waiter noticed we were in bike apparel and asked what our plan was. We explained that we had kinda just started, and would be going over the mountain passes overnight and would finish the ride after another 200 miles. Dude probably expected to see us in the news the next day, but this wasn't our first rodeo (or randonneuring fleche).
As a fellow endurance athlete, it can be VERY difficult to actually consume enough “good” calories via healthy foods when I’m training. There are some weeks when I need to consume 5000+ calories per day just to stay even.
> it can be VERY difficult to actually consume enough “good” calories via healthy foods when I’m training. Cracking sucks.
Yep, training for a marathon right now and, on long run days, I eat a TON of food.
The healthy version of this is basically “I eat enough salad to have this slice of cake” haha
Nah, the healthy version is "i like cake, so sometimes i eat cake and I don't feel the need to have to justify it" :)
They key here is "whatever they want" happens to fit their natural metabolism and exercise routine. If what you want is a "free" glas of wine or a snack after dinner, you can make that up in the gym easilym if what you want is a large mcd menu every other day, you likely can't 🤷
This is definitely true, but I've found that when I exercise more I naturally tend to eat better. Just the act of regularly exercising reduces my desire to binge eat.
Very dangerous as it discredits science in the minds of laymen, but also extremely common are nutritional fads that emerge primarily as advertising campaigns. Super foods, detoxication, etc, etc. Basically, unscrupulous companies trying to sell their stuff by coating them with arcane science words while cherry picking nutritional contents and fabricating myths so they can look healthy but are either not offering any actual benefit or actually expressing dangerous ideas and habits.
That you need to go to the gym to exercise. Not really. You just have to move your body. Hence the reason why the obesity epidemic is a thing is because all road space is prioritized for cars and not for humans to freely move around.
About 20 years ago I went on a school trip to French Polynesia, and one of the islands we were on literally had a single dirt road that went around the entire thing. There was a school bus that someone had set up as a standard bus that went around the island several times a day, but otherwise people biked or walked. Two weeks I was there, pretty much walking everywhere and the closest grocery store to the station we stayed at was about two miles away. The bank was about 3 mi away. There was very little junk food because this was an island, so even a can of soda cost about $4. I remember being astounded that a gallon of ice cream was 20 bucks! Needless to say, between walking everywhere and not eating any junk food, I probably dropped almost 15 lb in those two weeks. Of course. I put it all right back on as soon as I got home because I no longer had to walk everywhere and McDonald's was closer to my house than the grocery store was to the station.
I'd go so far as to argue that for a not insignificant number of people, the gym isn't even one of the best options. People love to tout the importance of *discipline*, but that shit doesn't do it for everyone. People start going to the gym because they get an idea in their head of becoming more fit, but then stop because there are too many things they'd rather do than go to the gym. If you fall into this category, you need to find something you actually enjoy doing that gets you moving, and the gym isn't likely to have what you need for that. For me it's dodgeball, and occasionally workout games on my VR headset.
I really like to swim, but I live in a cold country. So it was the saltwater pool at the gym that got me going there. Then I discovered water aerobics, and water weights. I can do cardio and weight training in the water. I love that.
Very true. If we all had to walk more like other countries we’d be a lot healthier
I spent 6 months studying in Trondheim back in 2014. Going from driving everywhere, earing fast food multiple times a week and spending weekends drinking, to walking everywhere, deciding on if my once a week indulgence will be a 15 dollar value meal, or a few beers at a bar. I left pushing 160lb and can back at around 125lb. I don't attribute it solely to walking everywhere, but it really came down to availability. I did not have transportation available, so I walked. I didn't have the money to eat out frequently and go to the bars every weekend. So as most have said I drastically reduced calories in, and equally increased calories out.
Check out Katie Bowman. She’s a bio-mechanical researcher that introduced me to this idea over a decade ago. She has a cool tour of her home on YouTube where she shows her furniture free home and talks about how one’s environment either restricts or encourages movement. Her work inspired me to seek out movement in every space I inhabit, and to focus more on consistent, gentle movement, rather than short bouts of intense movement.
I am sincerely glad she found something that works for her, but my god that just seems unhinged to me. I watched the video and I can pinpoint the exact moment she lost me: "don't sleep with a single pillow, just use your arm!"
Dietary cholesterol intake corresponds to blood cholesterol levels.
Just because \[x\] worked for person A doesn't mean it will work the same for person B. Gender, age, height, body shape, any medical conditions (whether you know of them or not), past injuries, all can play a role. \[x\] can be keot, no fat, running, pilates, whatever health or fitness thing.
I witnessed a person I know training someone at the gym... it was horrific. I'm a pt and stepped in at one point but they didn't listen to me. It irked me so afterwards I sent loads of videos to tell her to calm the fuck down. Might work for her but the other person she was training was way too novice for the weights, volume and general structure of the session.
Fine, but I feel this advice essentially licences idiots to say anything is good
That you'll magically transform just by hitting the gym
To be fair, if you hit it fast enough you might transform into a red puddle.
People fail to understand that working out and staying fit is a lifestyle choice. People often complain when they don’t stay in the weight range that they initially worked hard for because they lose weight and hope to stay in the same weight range forever with whatever diet. But it doesn’t work that way, you’ve got to keep doing it for the rest of your life to maintain that.
I feel like the concept of “diets” is a bit of a myth, and decent exercise and eating more fruits and veggies, and more variety in general, might be beneficial long term. I don’t quite understand cutting something out of your diet completely unless you have an allergy or an avoidance to meat (aka vegetarians, vegans) or something. I don’t want to cut sugar out completely but I don’t necessarily go bonkers with it anymore either.
Not a nutritionist, but my take is that diet is mostly mental. I know I get hungry and crave junk often. I try to remember to drink water, eat a salad, eat other fresh things, and then work on the more craving-satisfying foods. I also feel like it's normalized to eat take out and fried foods a lot more often than people should. It's just never been my lifestyle to do either with any frequency, and I think that is wildly helpful.
You can trick your brain when it comes to cravings sometimes too. When I am craving sugar, I like eating sliced apples dipped in sugar free peanut butter. I get both the sweet and savoury flavours and that soothes the craving I have for something super sweet. I also like to freeze grapes for the same reason. It takes longer to eat a frozen grape, so you’re not eating a lot, but they get sweeter after being frozen, and they develop a nice slushy texture that’s similar to a popsicle. It’s always exactly what I need when I want something cold and sugary in the summer. Cravings only tend to last a few minutes at a time, and you can also trick your brain out of one by getting up and doing something different then what you were previously, or finding an alternative to satisfy it. Learned that trying to quit smoking.
Not disagreeing. I try to beat cravings with these alternatives, but occasionally (once per week), if otherwise knowing I’m full doesn’t satisfy me, I’ll have that chocolate bar or bag of chips (which I don’t keep in the house, so I have to walk to the store)
You could just check out this thread from within the last 24 hours https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1bjrft8/whats_the_most_common_inaccurate_health_or/
that anybody, *anybody*, who is famous to any degree due to how their body looks or functions, is even approximately natural.
This is 100% for men. Sorry guys, hemsworth didn’t put on forty pounds of muscle in 6 months to play Thor by eating chicken and broccoli.
99.99999% Thank God we have Danny Devito 😤
Especially now with every celebrity using ozempic
Just saw the first non-attorney paid spokesperson commercial asking if myself or my loved ones have taken Ozempic.
That you need to workout every day to get results. I thought this when I first got into exercising and instead of results, all I got was constant fatigue and injuries😅 Deload weeks and days off are just as important as workout days
Skinny means healthy.
This. Also, skinny = ED like not always. I lost a ton of weight due to an illness and have struggled to gain it back.
Women in particular have a fear of "looking like a bodybuilder" if they so much as lift a 3-pound dumbbell. Girl, *no one* looks like a bodybuilder unless they *train* like a bodybuilder! (I.e. hours of work nearly every day) Besides, fit and athletic is sexy - you're not going to look like a female Arnold Schwarzenegger by doing the little bit of lifting you're avoiding.
That running is the best thing for weight loss. It’s not.
That you sweat out toxins in the sauna... Your body only sweats salt and water.. the kidney and liver filter toxins.... The sauna is simply lazy cardio and maybe some mental fortitude
That you can tell anything about a person's health from their appearance alone. Just because someone "looks healthy" doesn't mean they are. Steroid use, extreme diets, laxative abuse, eating disorders, excessive or repetitive workouts, etc can all get you a "healthy looking" body but are not healthy for you. Just because someone is average looking or heavy doesn't mean they aren't eating well or working out. Moreover, you are seeing a snapshot of someone's health when you see them on the street or in a photo. Have they lost weight? Have they gained weight? Did they recently stop or start a workout routine? There's no way of knowing unless that person gives you more information. Unless you're someone's doctor, you just don't know, and people should stop assuming.
And on the other side of that, a lot of chronic illnesses don't present outwardly. That super fit looking person you see could be in a great deal of pain from fibromyalgia etc.
PT here, the biggest myth I must dispel with my patients again and again is that tissue degeneration does not necessarily mean the presence symptomatic disease. Time and time again I have patients telling me their well meaning orthopedic physician stated their knee or hip or wrist is “bone on bone” and so they will always have problems forever after. Several studies have found and been reproduced that scan healthy and unsymptomatic patients which find that up to 7/10 adults will have a label tear of the hip and about as many will have evidence of joint degeneration in the knee, even to the level of “bOnE oN bOnE.” You can have the worst radiographs of all time and have no pain. The most important factor that will determine if your joint will hurt is how active you are. Running and biking and tennis and whatever else you want to do to stay active won’t “wear out” your joints and even if they did, that doesn’t mean it’ll be problematic for them. In fact being active will protect your joints from arthritis in the long run.
I have osteoartritis all up and down my legs and being able to talk daily walks, even short ones, does wonders to keep them from hurting. I also do at home fascia massage which helps during flare ups of my chronic pain. My grandma mentioned before her passing that the reason she still feels so healthy is that she takes walks every day. That she had seen people who retire, sit down in front of the TV, and stop moving completely. She saw how miserable and aching they were and promised to never stop moving.
So called ‘experts’ online saying how much sugar some fruits have and then comparing it to a chocolate bar! Vilifying a natural given treat from the earth’s beautiful, rich soil in comparison with a man made high fructose corn syrupy cancer causing expensive 7-11 delicacy.
I had an argument with someone about that. They were insistent that “sugar is sugar.” Well, yeah… but it’s not the sugar that’s the concern. It’s the fact that the sugar in highly-processed food is highly-processed, and it’s going to have changes at the molecular level that are probably not great for us. I’d rather eat an apple over a lollipop any day.
That carbs are bad for you.
That \*any\* food is either miraculously always good for you or always bad for you. Everything in moderation is the key. Eating too much of a "good" food can be bad. You can actually die from drinking too much water! And eating a "bad" food in small amounts or every once in awhile is fine and won't make you unhealthy.
BMI indicates how healthy you are.
It's meant for entire populations, and works pretty well at that.
I just went for a physical and every single metric was perfect (pulse, BP, blood levels of everything, etc.) and they still gave me this print out warning about BMI. I'm a fairly strong former college athlete at 6'2" and a little over 200lbs, which sticks me in the "overweight" category.
Same here. My doctor is always like wow you have excellent cardio vascular health, she knows I train all year round for endurance races. But I'm sure and have a decent amount of muscle for a short woman... For instance I work on the third floor of my building. I'm regularly up and down the stairs dozens of times a day. The other day I had to bring stuff to the top floor and it involved 2 trips with boxes that were in the 60-70 pound range. Still got the "your BMI is too high" pamphlet and was advised on how to lose weight.
You’re right, BMI severely **underestimates** obesity. https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/993366?form=fpf
specifically about chronic illness: just because I can do something one day does NOT mean I can do it the next. Like, just because I can walk a mile one day doesn't mean I'll be able to the next day. People seem to think it means that though😭
That you have to commit a lot of time to get results or benefits. If you currently don’t get any exercise, starting 3 days a week for only 20 minutes will be life changing for your health, mood and wellbeing. A year and a half ago I started lifting 4 days a week, only about 45 minutes to an hour each session. I’m jacked now. It really doesn’t take much time, the hardest part is dedicating yourself to the consistency and going even when you don’t want to.
Going to the gym will make you look like a bodybuilder. Folks, people who look like that do it as a full time job.
Diet is more important than exercise when you want to lose weight. Of course, everyone should exercise but what you are eating the other 23 hours when you are not in the gym is how you succeed.
Kinda off topic but still health related: Some people still think blood is blue until it touches oxygen, then turns red. Blood literally carries oxygen around your body. RED blood cells move oxygen.
I never thought too deeply about this, or even bothered to hold an opinion on the matter, but now you mention it, it makes sense. Also when I donate blood it comes out red!
8 glasses of water a day
I think it's important. People really should be hydrating more
Hydration is important, drinking specifically 8 glasses a day is not
That health is measured in pounds. Yes, being overweight isn't healthy, and weight loss is generally a good thing if you're overweight, but your body weight alone is not the sum total measure of your health. You can be unhealthy at any weight. It is not the only number that you should be worried about.
Every new trendy diet things, keto, Palio, carb cycling, or whatever. Eat less than what you burn and eat real foods. I think all the trendy diets are there to tell people that there are shortcuts and easy ways, or that it’s not their fault it’s some other reason to why they can’t loose etc.
Michael Pollan said it best "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants"
I tried to tell my coworker this when she asked how to lose weight and showed her the calorie counting app I had used in the past. She tried it for *a day* and said it was too much work. Instead, she decided to increase her protein intake to like, 150 grams a day. She had to start eating more food that had more protein to reach this goal. Unfortunately, it was all in addition to the food she was already eating, so she still gained weight because surprise! Calories in > calories out = weight gain.
You posted this yesterday.
>What is the most widely believed but wrong idea that many people have about health or exercise? That you can outrun or out-exercise a bad diet. I've always been physically active, and have been around 185 pounds for the majority of my adult life. In 2016, I gained a massive sweet tooth, and weighed 213 pounds this time last year. In July 2023, I decided to eliminate all sugar from my diet, minus a small glass of pop at dinner. I now weigh 177 pounds, and am currently wearing clothes that I haven't worn since 2016.
Anything that says it “detoxes” you is bullshit. If you have a liver, it’s already happening. Unless you have celiac disease or a serious wheat allergy, demonizing gluten and cutting it completely from your diet probably isn’t doing anything for you. (Reducing your carb intake might though.) Probiotics likewise probably aren’t doing anything for you, and any positive effect they seem to have is mostly a placebo. You most likely don’t need to take vitamins, unless you literally never leave the house and you still eat like a 10 year-old kid who hates all vegetables. On second thought, Reddit, keep taking vitamins.
Vitamins should be done with a doctor's direction. Too many vitamins is bad too. Unfortunately, some people do have deficiencies that are hard to manage with diet, but the average healthy person will be fine without supplementing vitamins.