Exercise alone, the New York Times quotes
one health expert saying, "is pretty useless for weight loss." One
reason for that is the likelihood that people who exercise will end up
eating more calories. The mathematics of weight loss, the Times tells
us, is quite simple, involving
only subtraction. Take in fewer calories than you burn, put yourself
in negative energy balance, and you will lose weight. The deficit in
calories
can result from cutting back your food intake or from increasing your
energy output  the amount of exercise you complete  or both.
Health, fitness and lifestyle tips for people over 50 who still like to play hard
Saturday, May 31, 2025
It’s about time people stop this misinformation. This article is pure codswallop! You can’t burn more calories than you take in. It’s physically implossible. A car can’t burn more gas than you put in it either. Here is the simple truth. Metabolism needs to be boosted in order to lose weight. Strong muscles need nourishment in order to maintain them. In turn that boosts metabolism. The body doesn’t burn fat as fuel when the body isn’t getting enough nourishment. It responds by slowing metabolism and conserving every moursel it can get as fat. If you exercise and don’t eat you are going to hit the wall very fast. Pretty soon you lose your motivation because you aren’t seeing result and you quit exercising.
Now! If That Ant Stupid!!! Don’t eat as much! Now is this guy a rocket scientist or what!!Now tell me the truth, nobody new this one right? This is realy good 2nd grade stuff!! Where do they come up with this B S! ?
You can burn more energy than you take in. Using you automobile analogy. If you start with a full take of gas, let us say 20 gallons of gas at 8 pounds per gal. that is 160 pounds of energy stored. If one were to drive for 200 miles at 20 miles a gallon you would have consumed 10 gals. of gas, and lost 80 pounds. You will still have enough energy to continue. And to a great extent that is the way it is with us. We can store energy in fat and carbohydrates.
We of course cannot simply stop eating and burn of the excess, but we can take in LESS THAN WE USE, the net result is weight loss. To lose some weight we eat less or increase our activity. If we reach the critical point where we are consuming les than we are burning we lose weight.
Obviously you can lose weight by burning more calories than you put in, look at someone with an eating disorder. They eat almost nothing and lose weight, it may not be healthy and it’s definitely not just fat loss, but it is weight loss.
One exercize always works.
Try pushing your chair backwards away from the table.
Please do some research on cellular physiology. The body stores excess caloric intake as glycogen. The reason it is stored is so that the body has reserves to draw on later. Do you eat 24/7? Where did you think the energy to perform the most basic cellular activities comes from? Even if we are not constantly taking in calories, our heart continues to beat, our diaphragm and intercostal muscles contract, allowing respiration to continue… The human body is a remarkably adaptable machine.
You are somewhat correct about the metabolism slowing as a conservation mechanism, however, the key concept here is moderation. Lowering your caloric intake forces the body to resort to reserves more frequently. When exercise is performed, metabolism is increased, not only in the short term; but as muscle mass increases, metabolism increases porportionately as muscles require more energy to function than adipose tissue requires.
As for losing motivation, one must realize that time is required for change to occur. Nobody becomes obese overnight, so why would one expect that state to reverse itself any more quickly than the amount of time it took to gain the weight? In fact, it takes @ three times longer to lose weight than to gain it; provided one is using some common sense and is dedicated to long-term results. I am certain that nobody is advocating starvation as a weight loss method, rather a regular caloric deficit created by reduced caloric intake, which will, over time, result in weight loss. The body must be forced, somehow, to use its energy reserves, stored as fat, in order for weight loss to occur.
As for the car analogy, many vehicles are equipped with reserve tanks to draw from when needed, much as our body is. True, it won’t run indefinately without refueling, however those reserves allow one to refuel less frequently!
Amazing that such a benign revelation as eating less to loose weight would arouse so much controversy. What’s wrong here? I empathasize with those who suffer with obesity. I also realize that there is probably far too little discipline and too much indulgence. We cannot choose our genetics, but we can choose our lifestyle. To each his own.