Originally Posted by
TromboneAl
Food for thought: If weight control were indeed as simple as calories in calories out, all you'd have to do is stop eating until you reached your goal weight.
It is not that simple.
Well put Al, too many people class everyone as exactly the same and that isn't true at all. Many other factors come into play, such as medications and the side effects some may experience, existing unrelated health conditions where the weight gain happens and plain old genetics. Maybe a nutritionist here can explain what can go wrong in the body to make the metabolism or other mechanism go haywire, I only know what happened to me from so many drugs, surgeries and finally kidney failure/disease.
Originally Posted by
Mobile 155
Seems true. Before I started listening to my doctor and health coach I tried to limit my intake to my calorie burn. What tosses a wrench into the formula, as it was explained to me, is individual metabolism. Hence the earlier statement about 20 something athletes with high carbohydrate preloading before cycling, running or swimming. Yes they may be setting themselves up for problems later in life but when their body is burning energy like a blast furnace they can get away with it. Then one day, if they are like me, the furnace seems to slow down and the intake must decrease because the outgoing simply isn't happening like it used to. This is why we have added zone training to me. It seems true that even during Anaerobic efforts you do burn fat. But you also allow your body to look for quick energy and that is found in the muscle itself. So in zone 3 in my case aerobic I can burn fat and keep my muscle structure while losing weight. A health coach does more than help you lose weight they help you do it properly based on the tests made on your body. Therefore what works for me might be 180 out from what the suggest for someone else. For me 2000 calories in and 2000 calories out didn't work. But for someone else it might be fine, for me it meant plateau.
Just reinforcing what the doctors and researchers have told us, no one answer fits all, that would certainly be nice if it were so. I have a few friends that could eat tremendous amounts of food when they were younger and not gain any weight. Now as middle aged men or women the weight has caught up with them from simple metabolism changes, health issues or other medical problems. They all made fun of anyone that gained weight and was fat, even by small amounts, they said it was simple and anyone can lose weight easily. Now to a person in that group they are all in the obese category and exasperated about trying to lose weight. I am lucky now in that I changed my entire life style when I got kidney disease and adopted a strict, medical necessary diet and exercise that the doctor monitors.
Your changes and success is one more reason that I want to keep doing the correct thing for my weight and overall health. Cycling is a big part of that change, thankfully.
Bill