Exercise vs. counting calories as weight-loss strategy

[snopes]

As a nation, we are obviously getting fatter and fatter. Not only are we ever more confused about how to lose weight, we're particularly fuzzy on the question of how big a role exercise plays and whether we just have to count calories.

So, here's the deal. Yes, you can count calories or weigh yourself every day. If your weight is up today compared with yesterday, you ate more calories than you burned. If it's less, you burned more than you ate -- provided you didn't drink gallons of liquid the day before, which could throw the scale off.

It comes down to simple arithmetic, and you've heard it before: Calories in, calories out. You will absolutely, inevitably, sadly, this-could-not-be-clearer gain weight if you eat more calories than you expend in basic metabolism -- breathing, digesting, sleeping, etc. -- plus whatever else you do, such as chasing the kids, walking, vacuuming or going to the gym.

But most of us can't, or won't, do the math, probably because it's so depressing.

http://www.latimes.com/features/heal...1759213.column

[Errata]

Originally Posted by snopes

So, here's the deal. Yes, you can count calories or weigh yourself every day. If your weight is up today compared with yesterday, you ate more calories than you burned. If it's less, you burned more than you ate -- provided you didn't drink gallons of liquid the day before, which could throw the scale off.

That's really stupid. You can't glean conclusive data about calorie intake after just one day. If you have a 1000 calorie deficit, which is at the high end of what is sustainable, you'll lose around a quarter pound in a day. You don't have to drink "gallons" of water to throw it off. A single gallon is 8 pounds. 2 glasses of water vastly outweighs the amount of weight you can expect to lose in a day. And not drinking is really stupid if your goal is to lose weight. Random fluctuations from day to day are too great to be able to calculate your calorie intake based on that over of a period of one day.

[snapdragonfly]

I think the best advice I ever saw or read about monitoring and keep track of weight (not the easiest, but I think the most accurate) was to make sure first of all the scale gave, at the least, half pound increments, and then to weigh daily but to average them out once a week (same day every week) to get a more accurate tracking of weight loss. Because as you say it can vary a lot from day to day. For me, how much salt and carbs I've had is the biggest contributor to fluctuations as both cause me to retain a lot of water, more so I think than how much water I actually consume. Or so it seems.

[Beachlife!]

Originally Posted by Errata

That's really stupid. You can't glean conclusive data about calorie intake after just one day. If you have a 1000 calorie deficit, which is at the high end of what is sustainable, you'll lose around a quarter pound in a day. You don't have to drink "gallons" of water to throw it off. A single gallon is 8 pounds. 2 glasses of water vastly outweighs the amount of weight you can expect to lose in a day. And not drinking is really stupid if your goal is to lose weight. Random fluctuations from day to day are too great to be able to calculate your calorie intake based on that over of a period of one day.

I entirley agree. They entirely forget about direct input (eating/drinking) and output (excretions) which can cause great fluctuations from day to day. I weigh myself everyday and I sometimes see three pound differences from one day to the next with out any direct caloric reason.

[mags]

When I was still focusing on losing weight, I weighed myself nearly every day, often more than once a day. I am very aware of how much my weight fluctuates between days and within the course of a day. I definitely would not take a single day's heavier weight as reason to believe I took in too much food or didn't exercise enough. In fact, although I consistently lost four pounds a month, that loss only showed up in one week of each month, with the rest of the time my weight fluctuating by up to eight lbs. I just kept a mental note, or eventually written record, of what my lowest weight was, and if I kept getting new lowest weights every month or so things were fine.

The one weight fluctuation I could never fully explain was when I would weigh myself just before bed, and again right after I woke up, and I had gained weight. There was no possibility of input or output (other than usual metabolic processes, which could only reduce weight) in the meantime. I just chalked it up to variance within the scale itself.

[Darth Credence]

Mags - It was probably because you ate spiders during the night.