I mentioned the nutrition because that used to be my problem in the past.
I had low level of iron, so the answer “just exercise and burn some calories” was quite useless to me—I was barely able to wake up in the morning. Repeatedly I tried to exercise regularly for a few weeks, but the outcome was always pathetic: after a few moves I was exhausted, and there was no visible long-term progress. Of course, after doing a difficult thing with zero benefits, after a few weeks my motivation was gone.
Meta problem was that “checking my levels of iron” wasn’t even on the list of things I was thinking about, when I was thinking about how to get rid of some fat. (People around me assumed the opposite causal model: I have a problem with energy, because I am not doing any sport or exercise, duh!) It happened quite randomly; a friend of mine was reading somewhere on internet a list of symptoms of iron deficiency and mentioned it to me, and I was like “huh, sometimes I have similar symptoms, too”. Yet it took a few years until once I asked a doctor to measure my iron level. Turned out, it was at the lowest end of the “healthy” interval… so, according to the doctor, not worth mentioning unless I ask explicitly, because I am still technically healthy. I guess being technically healthy is important from the official medicine point of view, but I would rather get closer towards the optimal health, so… I bought some iron supplements, and...
With the level of iron fixed, it was a completely different game. I suddenly felt full of energy, which was something I only remembered happening decades ago. Suddenly, exercising hard became possible. (At the risk of making a pseudoscientific explanation, I suppose that iron plays an important role in the process of converting “calories in” into energy available for exercising.)
Then, after a few months of exercising hard I lost some fat, gained some muscles; people who haven’t seen me for a longer time say I have visibly changed. (I don’t even check my calories, but I started eating more fresh vegetables, so maybe it happened as a side effect.)
So my experience is that exercising more, and eating less calories (not by eating less in general, but by eating different food) worked for me, but I had to “unlock” this option by doing something else first. In other words, when “calories in, calories out” finally started working for me, the problem was already halfway solved.
Agreed. Some people have significantly higher metabolisms.
Agreed. I’m not talking about nutrition, just weight loss.
I mentioned the nutrition because that used to be my problem in the past.
I had low level of iron, so the answer “just exercise and burn some calories” was quite useless to me—I was barely able to wake up in the morning. Repeatedly I tried to exercise regularly for a few weeks, but the outcome was always pathetic: after a few moves I was exhausted, and there was no visible long-term progress. Of course, after doing a difficult thing with zero benefits, after a few weeks my motivation was gone.
Meta problem was that “checking my levels of iron” wasn’t even on the list of things I was thinking about, when I was thinking about how to get rid of some fat. (People around me assumed the opposite causal model: I have a problem with energy, because I am not doing any sport or exercise, duh!) It happened quite randomly; a friend of mine was reading somewhere on internet a list of symptoms of iron deficiency and mentioned it to me, and I was like “huh, sometimes I have similar symptoms, too”. Yet it took a few years until once I asked a doctor to measure my iron level. Turned out, it was at the lowest end of the “healthy” interval… so, according to the doctor, not worth mentioning unless I ask explicitly, because I am still technically healthy. I guess being technically healthy is important from the official medicine point of view, but I would rather get closer towards the optimal health, so… I bought some iron supplements, and...
With the level of iron fixed, it was a completely different game. I suddenly felt full of energy, which was something I only remembered happening decades ago. Suddenly, exercising hard became possible. (At the risk of making a pseudoscientific explanation, I suppose that iron plays an important role in the process of converting “calories in” into energy available for exercising.)
Then, after a few months of exercising hard I lost some fat, gained some muscles; people who haven’t seen me for a longer time say I have visibly changed. (I don’t even check my calories, but I started eating more fresh vegetables, so maybe it happened as a side effect.)
So my experience is that exercising more, and eating less calories (not by eating less in general, but by eating different food) worked for me, but I had to “unlock” this option by doing something else first. In other words, when “calories in, calories out” finally started working for me, the problem was already halfway solved.