Manage weight

[B3]

I am a 4 foot 10 inches female who weighs 121 pounds and I want to manage my weight, does anyone know how I can do that and what is the difference between surculose and sugar?

[Glenda · Accepted solution]

B3,  Being short really does limit the number of calories we can eat.  Everyone likes to eat a doughnut now and then but it hurts us more.  I'm very short too.  Surculose is = Splenda an artificial sweetener.  If you google your question there is a whole page of stuff you can read about it.  Splenda may increase blood glucose & insulin levels.  Google "how many calories a day can you eat at your age, height, gender and weight, and lose weight."  Exercise doesn't help in general to lose weight.  But if you suddenly stopped all activity you would gain weight.  I have because of a sudden attack of gout arthritis.  What you weigh is determined by what you eat.  You need fewer calories.  Best wishes.

[SunsetRunner]

I have to disagree with your statement that exercise doesn’t help with weight loss. Weight is lost when a person burns more calories than they consume. Exercise burns calories so adds to calories burned. Of course diet is important, too. there is a saying that you cannot out run a bad diet. But exercise and a healthy diet work together. 

[Glenda]

Exercise is critical for good health.  I walked on my treadmill every day for 40 minutes for decades.  But studies show that people who go on a more extreme exercise program just to lose weight usually eat more and don't lose weight.   I've been forced to stop walking any extra steps due to gout arthritis which might go away soon I hope but I have gained weight due to less activity.,  Activity counts, if you can manage it.   Maybe you can help others to be successful with that with some suggestions on how to make it work.??  Even a succes report on how much weight you lose might help?

[shipo]

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@Glenda wrote:

Exercise is critical for good health.  I walked on my treadmill every day for 40 minutes for decades.  But studies show that people who go on a more extreme exercise program just to lose weight usually eat more and don't lose weight.   I've been forced to stop walking any extra steps due to gout arthritis which might go away soon I hope but I have gained weight due to less activity.,  Activity counts, if you can manage it.   Maybe you can help others to be successful with that with some suggestions on how to make it work.??  Even a succes report on how much weight you lose might help?

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I have no idea where those studies come from, but in my case, they couldn't be more wrong.  Three times in the last 19 years I've been faced with losing 50 or more pounds of weight gained due to injury (two broken legs) or illness (Pneumonia and COVID); in each of the three instances I dialed up my exercise to the point where I absolutely needed to eat more, often as much as 4,000 to 5,000 calories per day, and yet I lost weight on average of 1 to 2 pounds per week.

[t.parker]

@Glenda I think I know what studies say that and there is a truth to it if you understand the context. Some forms of activity will trigger appetite. Simply, there is a difference between a very intense HIIT workout and a walk or easy run. The human body always tries to recover and asking for food is one of the ways it does it. If you see all those fancy weight-loss programs that include exercise then you'll notice that most of them use very intense exercise (as if sweating more made you lose more fat... well.. it doesn't). When in the diet you should rather try to suppress hunger, such form of exercise does quite opposite. If you reach for food right after such activity you will probably overeat and the exercise won't have the effect you'd like it to have. That's why during weight loss steady-state low-aerobic cardio is a preferred form of activity. There are a few reasons why. Low-aerobic doesn't make you tired so quickly, doesn't make you hungry so much and you can sustain it for a longer period. I cycle on my bike trainer for two hours either reading or watching TV and staying in a warmup/low-aerobic zone and don't end up dripping with sweat and hungry. The same applies to walking. Long walks will help to maintain a calorie deficit, too. The more intense exercise is possible as well but (and this is just from my experience) you must resist eating right after. If you wait it out until your body cools down and goes back to a pre-workout state then it's easier not to overeat. The problem is that when your body asks for food it's hard to say no once you started eating.

[Glenda]

Shipo,  I weigh between 117 and 122 pounds  always.  Probably nothing that works for you and me would  ever be the same.  LOL  To lose a pound a week you have to reduce what you eat by 3500 calories a day or something.  (I should have googled)  I only eat about 900 calories a day to maintain.  If I lost 50 pounds I would weigh 67 pounds.  ho ho ho  You are probably a foot taller.

[shipo]

At 5' 8" (171cm) I'm not very tall, but I carry a lot of muscle, especially in my legs; right now I'm hovering around 220 pounds (100kg), which is after losing about 40 pounds since starting to get back into shape and I figure I need to lose at least another 20 pounds to get back to a good racing weight.  If I can get under 200 pounds, then guys in the 65-69 year age group are going to be looking at my back side at the finish line of races in the 5K to Half Marathon distance.  🙂