Exercise not the Answer ?

I've lost weight both ways in the past.
I'd crept up to 95kg (before I was cycling) and decided enough was enough and dropped to 82kg over about 6 months of not doing any specific exercise at all, but just not eating too much. You got used to being hungry all the time after the first 3 or 4 weeks

After that I started cycling, held my weight in the 80-83kg range over the next 4 or 5 years without too much effort.

A couple of winters ago I thought I'd try and get really lean for racing and went the MyFitnesspal route, logging everything and using actual KJ numbers from my powermeter for cycling to add to the base callories. The days I was cycling I could eat enough to feel totally fine, the days I wasn't were a bit more difficult but managable. I went from 83kg to 74kg over the winter.

The rate of weight loss was about the same for both approaches, but the second one was a whole lot less unpleasant!

Body conditioning is something like 20% exercise and 80% in the kitchen. Exercise is not the answer on it's own and this is nothing new.

The only time I've lost weight from exercise whilst eating whatever I wanted was during military basic training...and that was a stupid amount of running about! Outside of that diet changes are the only thing that makes a difference unless your exercise regime resembles something Royal Marine like. Got picked up for high cholesterol s few years ago and had to go 'cold turkey' on sat fats for 3 mths to see what effect it had. Small drop in cholesterol but I lost a stone in a month. Some of the foods I cut out (eg cheese) I manage to generally avoid so my weight went up a bit, but not back to the original level.

Horses for courses I reckon.

I've always eaten tons of carbs (I love my pasta/bread/potatoes - they comprise almost every meal I eat).

My diet hasn't changed much in the last 4 years (when I decided I was a fat bastard and stopped eating so much chocolate/drinking so much alcohol). That coincided with me starting to do (a lot) more exercise (gym 5* a week + cycling when I can).

I dropped from 13.5 stone to 10 stone in about 3 months. Four years later I'm a steady 10.3 stone/65kg - and that's with a moderate return of my sweet tooth (though I still only drink booze 2 days a week).

I have grave misgivings about that report. The central expert seems to be promoting the idea that over weight people can loose weight by doing no exercise and simply starving themselves thin.

Yes, you can do that, but its mad.

This sugar thing is very interesting. I'd made the switch from carb based to protein/fat/slowcarb - lost a load of weight and felt much better to boot. (No mid afternoon post lunch slumps for starters). However there's not much point to it if youre just going to spend all that healthy feeling sitting on the couch!

Tim Noakes often speaks about carb/sugar based runners who stay fit and healthy but skirt dangerously close to Type2 Diabetes even though to most people they look like the picture of good health.

Its interesting government advice for those looking to lose weight is to still eat carbs (not white bread/pasta though - wholemeal where possible) and yet our own Prime Minister is on record for losing his weight from cutting out the carbs as well.

I do wonder if the cereal/wheat/sugar producers in this country have got an unhelpfully large influence over public policy.