[djur]

I agree, but I also think that in most cases people are more likely to be able to transition to an active, healthy lifestyle with moderate eating if they have help taking weight off. Being heavy makes exercise painful, exhausting, and often more dangerous.

I think we need a huge investment in physical therapy. Everyone who is obese and working to reduce their weight and increases their activity needs PT, and we need PT specialists who know how to work with heavy people. I know a lot of fat people (including myself) who get injured and discouraged trying to follow workout advice intended for people in substantially better physical condition, and also a lot who have had trouble finding trainers or physical therapists who know how to work with them.

[semaglp1]

Oh absolutely, which is why I said I hope people can take these and add some sort of resistance training as they lose the weight.

And also totally agree that we need to invest in PT and educating PTs on how to work with people in larger bodies. As a formerly unhealthy person who only found exercise in their 30s, it's ridiculous to me that my high school gym requirements didn't teach me how to safely lift weights or use a gym. They would just let us use a barbell without any proper training, and the first time I tried to bench press with some friends (because we probably saw someone in a movie doing it) I injured myself. Every high school student should be learning how to use a gym, get through a yoga class, learn some calisthenics, etc. Set them up for their life so it's not so intimidating as an adult. Instead, at least for me in the 90s, it was a lot of playing basketball and baseball, nothing to keep me healthy on my own in my life.

[dgfitz]

The old saying goes: abs are made in the gym, revealed in the kitchen.

Not saying it’s easy, and no it isn’t as simple as calories in, calories out, but it is close to that simple. Working out, running, weightlifting, all that can happen later. Eating “right” and just walking a lot can induce a lot of positives.

[djur]

Losing weight makes "walking a lot" achievable for many people.

[semaglp1]

Yeah, it's wild how much you need to pay attention to diet to get those abs to show. I don't work out for aesthetics, but I train pretty hard for my age (40 -- muay thai a 2-3x per week, kettlebells a couple days, ashtanga yoga a day or two, and I'll throw in 5 mile runs here and there in a week).

I'm always around 12-13% body fat, but to get them to show, absolutely, it's all diet. I'm vegetarian, so that probably works against me, but I've never had that 8% body fat ripped look even with all the activity I do in a week.