Quote:
Originally Posted by Libertine
Compensating for things like that is completely possible, but it requires lots and lots of exercise - roughly 10 miles of running for a single bag of potato chips.
Looking at the side of losing weight, you'll need to run about 30 miles to lose a single pound. If someone wants to lose 50 lbs and runs 10 miles 3 times a week, it'll take an entire year for him to reach his goal - and that's assuming he doesn't eat a single bit more than he would need without the running.
|
You're forgetting about increased metabolism, which is the primary benefit to exercising regularly. All I can speak for is my own patterns I've noticed and for me, little or no exercise + eating very well equals roughly the same results as regular exercise and eating like complete shit in terms of how I do with weight loss, and eating like complete shit meaning eating 3k+ cals a day avg. with lots of junk food, eating very well meaning eating about 1500-1800 cals/day avg with little or no junk food. So I actually do the best when I exercise regularly and eat moderately well (1800-2100 cals/day and little or no junk food, doing less than 1800 when exercising regularly almost guarantees I'll binge sooner or later as my body would be starving). Plus you even mentioned you do weight exercises...that's another factor - having more muscle burns more calories as well.
Diet IS important, that's for sure, and people SHOULD do both diet and exercise to lose weight, but if changing both aspects of their life at once is too much (which it can be for some people) and they are generally sedentary day by day, I firmly believe exercise makes more of a difference...unless they're eating something ridiculous like 6,000 cals a day. But hell, look at Michael Phelps...sure he does burn a lot of cals through exercise, but it's that combined with his crazy ass metabolism that allows him to eat ridiculous amounts of food. There's no way in hell he burns all those calories off through his exercise alone - he has to have a metabolism far beyond anyone here. He eats 12,000 cals a day and exercises only 5 hours a day, 6 days a week (lol @ "only" but considering how much he eats...). 84,000 cal intake per week with maybe 33,000-36,000 cals worth of exercise per week (that'd be 1,100 - 1,200 cals per hour, much higher than what most people burn swimming but figure it's very strenuous plus he's made of muscle). Surely he doesn't just sit around besides his exercise but c'mon - to maintain his weight taking in that much he'd have to burn the rest of the 84,000 for the week somehow. My daily burn if just sitting around is like 2,200 cals or so...his is clearly a lot more.