Dirka Dirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

:)

Youre presenting the extreme end, where a person lives on junk food. Sure, you're guanteed to lose weight simply by stopping excessive food intake, eliminating fast food and soda. Again, it depends on the person's metabolism as well.

Also, you apparently didn't understand my rephrasing, since you don't think I did. For the average person, who doesn't live on MCDonalds and ice cream, you won't shed weight nearly as quickly with just dieting OR exercising as you will with a combination of the two. This is not wrong at all, as you seem to claim, but I simply think you had an issue absorbing the point. There's an old saying "The last 10 pounds is the hardest to lose".  This is because the metabolism is near its target range, so short of starving yourself, its very difficult to do without exercise. You need to actively burn those calories up with exercise.

So, yes, while youre right about your obese friend, the average normal person needs to do more than just change eating habits in order to reach target weight.

In other words, pretty much what Khuutra said.

Twenty-five pounds in eight weeks?

I'm not a doctor, but I was told by one that the safe rate at which to lose weight (in terms of cardiovascular health) was a rate of about a pound a week, taking into account daily variations in weight. Doesn't losing more than three a week seem, uh, extreme?

Actually, for him it wasn't a matter of stopping food intake so much as knocking out a couple key no-no items and changing his daily eating cycle slightly.

And here you just moved your goal posts.  Now that I've shown you can lose weight via simple dietary changes you've just changed your argument from "dieting alone is ineffective" to "it's not as fast."  Even better, now that you've changed your argument you immediately set out to knock down the strawman you just set up.  I'm sorry, but that's not even worth dissecting.

In other words, your original argument failed so you're going to agree with the person who said what you should have said in the first place.

Twenty-five pounds in eight weeks?

I'm not a doctor, but I was told by one that the safe rate at which to lose weight (in terms of cardiovascular health) was a rate of about a pound a week, taking into account daily variations in weight. Doesn't losing more than three a week seem, uh, extreme?

Twenty-five pounds in eight weeks?

I'm not a doctor, but I was told by one that the safe rate at which to lose weight (in terms of cardiovascular health) was a rate of about a pound a week, taking into account daily variations in weight. Doesn't losing more than three a week seem, uh, extreme?

I fine example of the hypocrisy prevalent in the US.

Eh, different trainers and doctors have different opinions on that. When I'm in a hurry to lose weight I do some "massive damage" to my fat and stay there. I was an obese kid for most of my life. I've been in shape since I turned 18. I started working out when I was 16, and in 2 months I lost a little over 30 pounds just off a basic diet and exercising. You know, what annoys me is seeing people in the condition I used to be in and hearing that they always want a short cut. "Take these pills," or "wear this thing around your stomach to train your skin to retain your fat more." It's stupid really. All humans need to do is get off their asses and run. Eat less, move more. Eat less, move more. Simple.