anybody...

Has anyone here lost weight by just exercising and cutting out fast food and cooking at home? I have recently started doing 30 minutes of Tae Bo 3-5 times a week and have cut out fast food to maybe one time a week. I was eating it up to 4x a week up until a month ago.

i never really ate fast food, but by far the biggest change i've made was adding exercise.  i've hardly changed my eating habits at all.

What you;re asking is if anyone has been successful loosing weight by following a half-ass diet?  No.  If you insist on eating fast food- I would stick to the McDonalds grilled chicken sandwich or grilled chicken from wherever you insist on eating.  Eat half the bun, keep the cheese, bacon and mayo off and you'll do OK.  Excercise is key to loosing weight with anything.  I would bag the Tae Bo and get on a stairmaster or something and do 30 minutes of High Intensity Interval training.  Eat 6 well rounded meals a day consiting of a high protein, low carb and fat diet.   

Original Post by spencew:

What you;re asking is if anyone has been successful loosing weight by following a half-ass diet?  No.  If you insist on eating fast food- I would stick to the McDonalds grilled chicken sandwich or grilled chicken from wherever you insist on eating.  Eat half the bun, keep the cheese, bacon and mayo off and you'll do OK.  Excercise is key to loosing weight with anything.  I would bag the Tae Bo and get on a stairmaster or something and do 30 minutes of High Intensity Interval training.  Eat 6 well rounded meals a day consiting of a high protein, low carb and fat diet.   

No, I asked if anyone lost weight by just exercising and cutting out fast food. No calorie counting, just simply eating smarter.

As long as you're not cooking yourself up alfredo every night, I think you will see weight loss doing your tae bo and cutting out fast food. I don't think you have to count, but I think it is very helpful to see the number of calories in things so I recommend counting at least for two weeks. I was shocked when I realized a simple peanut butter and jelly sandwhich could have 600 calories.

It is very possible, though I'm not sure how long it would last or how much weight could be lost from it because you can make home-cooked meals high in calorie just as fast food. 

Original Post by llama4u447:

No, I asked if anyone lost weight by just exercising and cutting out fast food. No calorie counting, just simply eating smarter.

There is only one way to lose weight: burn more cals than you take in, but keep the two numbers (what you burn/what you eat) within 1000 of each other.

If you are always gradually gaining weight with your old diet, there is no guarantee the new plan will help you lose; you could be cutting out just enough to maintain your current weight, for example. And, as others have said, just eating home cooked doesn't mean fewer cals. The only way you can be sure you are eating fewer cals than you are burning is to . . er, count calories.

Having said that, if you guesstimate and cut as needed, you might lose eventually. I think it would be a lot faster to practice calorie counting for a while until you have a pretty good idea of the cal content of the foods you are most likely to eat AND portion size, and then drop the more stringent counting. IF you stay fairly "honest" with portion size and stick to foods you know,  you might continue to lose . . . But most people seem to need to be pretty careful with measuring b/c it makes a difference!

Good luck; if it works for you, more power to you and you can ignore everything we said!