5 days per week in gym, yet she's still fat - how?

[Amarys]

Each pound of fat is ~3500 calories to burn. In addition, most people grossly over-estimate how hard they work out and how many calories they burn. For instance, a 30 minute jog that amounts to about 3.5 miles only burns about 400 calories for me (at 165lbs). It feels like I worked out enough to die of exhaustion and eat a cow. Conversely, a dinner at any given burger joint is going to run me ~1600 calories for the typical burger+fries. Cramming all her calories into one meal doesn't mean she's getting incredibly less calories than she otherwise would. I could easily eat a 3500 calorie meal in a single sitting, which is more than my entire daily allotment to simply stay EVEN, let alone cut weight.

Plain and simple if she's not losing weight, she's not burning more than she's taking in.

This isn't exactly true. Yes you burn about 400 calories during the exercise but you also speed up your metabolism for days so its gonna be considerable more.

I think the main thing if you wanna see weight loss is cutting out as many carbs as you can. So no drinks with sugar, starches, potatoes bread etc. and only exercise a few times a week but make it count as in minimum 15 minutes of cardio that leaves you sweaty and out of breath. This is enough to keep your metabolism high even when sitting on a couch and watching movies all day. Also no matter what you do, you're right. Fat has a lot of calories in it and is slow to burn so patience is the key. It's unlikely you burn more than a few pounds per week no matter what you do.

[Acidbaron]

At work on my shift people had to walk up and down these huge stepladders dozens of times every day. And in the summer...temperature in there was excessive, and we all slimmed and trimmed down.

Walking is apparently very effective, when i changed work and i simply ended up walking 10 to 12 kilometres per day instead around 5 the weight also came off.
I mean being consistent is all it takes, you didn't gain all that fat in a single year it is a bit absurd for people to think they can lose it all under a year naturally and in a way that it stays off.

Also the lower your fat percentage that harder it is to lose, 30 to 20 goes rather fast, 20 to 15 rather slow in my opinion. Lower than 15 and you probably have to end up being very strict.

[Feral Druid ist Op]

form someone whos doing bodybuilding for 11 years, the gym ist like 20% and your lifestyle/food habits are 80% shes eating to mutch calories its that simple... she can train 24/7 if she eats more than she burns she wont lose weight

[kaelix1]

Simple, people tend to over-exaggerate how much kcal they think they burn at the gym and under exaggerate how much kcal they eat, she's eating more than she is burning

[unbound]

So as per her, she goes to the exercise center 5 days out of each week. What's more, she's not a fit young lady. She's not incredibly fat however she's not slightly chubbier than a normal individual. She's something in the middle.

She additionally consistently eats low-calorie salad and loads her calories in each dinner.

Also, we're not discussing a multi-year elderly person who is a path over the hill. We're discussing a multi-year-old young lady.

So what the heck?

Primarily, the key to weight loss is calories in vs calories out. Every successful diet uses this principal; sometimes in odd ways that make you think that they don't. For example, a low carb diet tends to satisfy your hunger so you simply don't each that much and, in reality, a well-trimmed steak has far fewer calories than most think...a 6 ounce steak is less than 1/3 cup of some pastas (and most people each a couple of cups of pasta plus sauce plus cheese plus some protein). Similarly, an extremely high carb, low energy diet has so few usable calories (to a human) that you simply can't stuff enough into yourself to get but so many calories. Typically, most diets use things like points to hide the fact that they are, for the most part, counting calories.

So if you really want to understand weight loss, you need accept that fundamental truth. Once you accept that, you have 2 primary enemies...hunger, and the fact that most people dramatically undercount what they eat (on average, by about 25%, with a pretty large standard deviation).

Most of your calories are burned by your metabolism, and, no, you can't change your metabolism by a whole bunch. The vast majority of people have a basal metabolic rate (BMR) within 10% of this formula: BMR = 10W + 6.25H - 5A - 161 (for women) where W is weight in kg, H is height in cm, and A is age. On top of that, you add in whatever activities (including exercise) and that will be the total calories you burn in a day.

So, for example, if your girlfriend is 5' 6", 145 pounds, and 25 years old, she will burn 1,419 calories a day just to exist.

Now, on non-workout days, she's going to burn anywhere from 200 to 300 calories most likely, and, on workout days, that range can be as little as 400 calories to as much as 750 calories (realistically) depending on whether she's lightly exercising or pushing herself each time. As you can see, that isn't nearly as much as her BMR (unless you are an extreme athlete, you don't burn as many calories as your BMR).

So, on non-workout days, she's likely burning 1,600 to 1,700 calories, and on workout days, she can be burning anywhere from 1,800 calories and 2,200 calories. Now, as someone pointed out, if she only eats 1,500 calories a day, she *will* lose weight. But the real question is what is she actually eating and how intense her exercise time is.

What is a low-calorie salad? Salads actually range from a hundred calories or so up to over 1,000 calories. Are you sure she's eating low-calorie salad? Non-fat dressings actually tend to have higher calories and how much are you putting on your salad. You need to read labels and/or weigh and measure things to be sure.

How much does she load up for each dinner? A simple plate of spaghetti can range anywhere from about 500 calories to a full 1,000 calories plus whatever you have with it (commonly bread which is pretty high in calories). Again, you will need to read labels and/or weight and measure things to be sure.

How about snacks? One woman who complained that she couldn't lose weight and strictly controlled her calories was asked about snacks, and she replied that she didn't eat many snacks. The doctor suggested that for one week she puts any snack that she would normally eat into a bag instead. When they did the calculations, they found that she'd been eating close to an extra 1,000 calories a day in little snacks...which is why she wasn't losing weight.

So that's the physical reality of weight loss. Best luck.

[shadowmatrix]

Too many factors to make a guess, what is her lifestyle like, her work duties, stress, etc. Losing weight has never been simple thing and it only gets more complicated as we age and new issues get added.

[Wramp]

I'll keep it short - many people here have already said that the key to all of this is eating properly along with an honest-to-yourself exercise plan. I spent years going to the gym/working out at home/Golf/sports and i never lost more weight or felt better than i just did recently after learning how to eat properly and what (and more importantly, what NOT) to eat.

[Nadiru]

She should be loading calories at breakfast, and not at dinner.

[Wheeler]

That's the main problem. Weight loss is 90% diet.

It's absolutely diet. Always is with these situations.

She could literally JUST diet and lose every bit of the weight she wants to lose.

Either not tracking their caloric intake or purposefully lying about it. It's genuinely not even that difficult, just takes consistency. You're not starving all day because of it or anything like that.

[sweatshopkids]

Thread title made me PepeLaugh

[Neuroticaine]

This is one of the worst comments I've ever read. There is no magic that causes a body to remain fat despite a caloric deficit. Sure there are people who have a harder time losing weight than others, but no one in the world has a magic metabolism that causes you to remain fat.

There are no 'extreme diminishing returns' that come with calorie reduction.

There's nothing magic about it, it's just science.

There are (rare) people with extreme thyroid issues that in order to lose weight, they would require an extreme calorie deficit of which is generally considered very unhealthy in the long run. More or less unhealthy than long term morbid obesity is up for debate.

Additionally, the lower your bodyweight, the lower your basal metabolic rate, and thus the 500 calorie deficit you used to have through cutting calories will be countered by your body using more of that deficit for basic functions. Example, if your base metabolic rate is 2500 calories per day at your heaviest (as your body needs to burn more calories when you're heavy just to keep running), and you cut your calories by 500 a day and burn 500 a day in exercise, you'll have a 1000 calorie a day diet (unrealistic number outside of extreme circumstances, just using them for ease of use). Through weight loss, your metabolism can drop down to 2000 per day. Following the same diet and exercise plan you were at the start, your deficit is now only 500 calories per day. In order to maintain the same deficit, you would need to eat an additional 500 less calories a day.

Lastly, the heavier you are, the more calories you burn through the same level of exercise as your body needs to exert more effort. A 500 calorie workout at 360lbs can turn into a 250-300 calorie workout at 180lbs. In order to maintain the same calories burned, you will need to either increase the intensity of exercise, duration, or both.

This, my friend, is called diminishing returns.

If you start morbidly obese and continue to follow the same diet and exercise plan throughout, your weight loss WILL eventually slow to a crawl.

But more on topic, she's probably either not working out as intensely as she believes or she's eating more than she believes.

[Aphrel]

So as per her, she goes to the exercise center 5 days out of each week. What's more, she's not a fit young lady. She's not incredibly fat however she's not slightly chubbier than a normal individual. She's something in the middle.

She additionally consistently eats low-calorie salad and loads her calories in each dinner.

Also, we're not discussing a multi-year elderly person who is a path over the hill. We're discussing a multi-year-old young lady.

So what the heck?

I have a bunch of hypothesis as to what is happening.

But i do not think she is breaking the low of conservation of energy.

[sweatshopkids]

Please stop spreading misinformation and look at the history of those terms of classifying body types for yourself. This sounds like something V Shred would say....

Ugh. This isn't Tumblr.

[justandulas]

The thing about working out is it’s all about consistency and longevity for results. You can work out 7x a week and never see results if you expect a quick turn around.

It takes hard work, time, patience and discipline and months down the road the results show

[Rhaide]

There's nothing magic about it, it's just science.

There are (rare) people with extreme thyroid issues that in order to lose weight, they would require an extreme calorie deficit of which is generally considered very unhealthy in the long run. More or less unhealthy than long term morbid obesity is up for debate.

Additionally, the lower your bodyweight, the lower your basal metabolic rate, and thus the 500 calorie deficit you used to have through cutting calories will be countered by your body using more of that deficit for basic functions. Example, if your base metabolic rate is 2500 calories per day at your heaviest (as your body needs to burn more calories when you're heavy just to keep running), and you cut your calories by 500 a day and burn 500 a day in exercise, you'll have a 1000 calorie a day diet (unrealistic number outside of extreme circumstances, just using them for ease of use). Through weight loss, your metabolism can drop down to 2000 per day. Following the same diet and exercise plan you were at the start, your deficit is now only 500 calories per day. In order to maintain the same deficit, you would need to eat an additional 500 less calories a day.

Lastly, the heavier you are, the more calories you burn through the same level of exercise as your body needs to exert more effort. A 500 calorie workout at 360lbs can turn into a 250-300 calorie workout at 180lbs. In order to maintain the same calories burned, you will need to either increase the intensity of exercise, duration, or both.

This, my friend, is called diminishing returns.

If you start morbidly obese and continue to follow the same diet and exercise plan throughout, your weight loss WILL eventually slow to a crawl.

But more on topic, she's probably either not working out as intensely as she believes or she's eating more than she believes.

If you're working out to lose weight, you're doing it the wrong way. Exercise is important no matter what and will aid in weight loss to an extent, but it takes a million times longer to work off a big mac than it takes to just not eat one.

You don't reach the 'unhealthy' point of calorie cutting unless you're anorexic or a movie star cutting for an intense role. Even at +~30-40lbs cutting down to a 1500/day diet will show results very quickly.

Yes - obviously it's easier to lose weight if you're bigger, but to show the obvious diminishing returns you're talking about requires some extreme fringe cases which are pointless to discuss here.

[Stretchie]

There's an old quote that explains this one "Abs are earned in the kitchen, not in the gym".

[Shadowferal]

She should be loading calories at breakfast, and not at dinner.

I overlooked that point.
Fully agree.
If she's carb loading at dinner and a sleep cycle not long after...? Bad idea.

[Sicarius87]

Track all meals consumed precisely. You won't lose weight without a caloric deficit.

This. And if it still isnt working, id see a doctor as it could be thyroid related or along those lines.

[Pohut]

So as per her, she goes to the exercise center 5 days out of each week. What's more, she's not a fit young lady. She's not incredibly fat however she's not slightly chubbier than a normal individual. She's something in the middle.

She additionally consistently eats low-calorie salad and loads her calories in each dinner.

Also, we're not discussing a multi-year elderly person who is a path over the hill. We're discussing a multi-year-old young lady.

So what the heck?

It is simple. She is lying. She is not going to the gym or doing absolutely nothing there and she is eating way too much lying about it too. Simple.

[TigerBanks]

Stop eating sugar.
It is possible that you can even not spot that you are eating sugar everyday.
Sugar makes you eating like a beast.