Regarding the hunger problem - is increasing calorie consumption a viable option? A physically active male with significant muscle mass can fairly reasonably find himself needing about 3000 kcal a day without having to be a pro athlete. Would becoming much more active and gaining lean mass help, or would the amount of food needed to feel sated just increase?
I heard a radio program a few years ago about childhood obesity. They had an expert on who said something I'd never really thought of before: They said the conventional causality of sports curing obesity is the wrong way around. The reason you don't see fat marathon runners isn't because running makes you thin, it's because being thin makes it easier to run.
The guy's reasoning was: You exercise for an hour doing something like walking or golf, then reward yourself with a snack? Net intake of calories [1]. And it's easier to cut a snack from your diet than to find the time and motivation to do an hour's exercise.
To put it another way, when you're obese exercising is like a job that pays ten cents an hour.
Of course, once you've become thin and athletic, you gain access to more time-efficient types of exercise. But that snack might still need 15 minutes of vigorous cycling, or competitive soccer or basketball.
[1] e.g. an hour's dog-walking or golf are roughly equivalent to a 16 fl.oz can of Coca-Cola and a 2 oz packet of skittles, respectively.
It's viable, but only if you also adjust your diet. Burning 100kcal / day extra from being buff doesn't do much if you're also eating 100kcal / day extra.
Plus getting buff costs a lot of effort, it's easier to reduce intake.
But, besides weight loss, anyone should probably do both, especially if bound to a computer; back pain isn't primarily caused by obesity, but also due to under or overdevelopment of certain muscles, posture, movement or lack thereof, etc.
And being on a healthy weight whilst still being weak or low in energy is no fun.
You have to be pretty careful. It's actually quite common for people to _gain_ weight when training for a marathon because they often end up eating more than they burn during the runs. For me at about 185 pounds, I'll burn around 870 calories by running 10k:
I could gain those calories back and more in 15 minutes just eating a burger. A lot of people do exactly this and sabotage themselves a bit.
Personally if I bump up my running training and want to lose weight, I can never depend on it happening naturally. I always gain weight if I don't actively try to lose it. So I think no matter what you need to be careful. If you exercise more, you'll be able to eat more, but if you want to lose weight, you'll still need to eat less than your body wants. So I still think fundamentally losing the pounds starts in the kitchen.
I tried that theory for 20 years, and it didn't work for me. I've always been active, playing lots of sports and going to the gym regularly, hiking, biking, running, etc.. Unless I'm counting calories, I always compensate for exercise by eating more. I finally realized exercise alone wouldn't help me lose weight.
In general, you probably can't get rid of a little hunger. If you want to lose weight and be in a calorie deficit, you might be 500 calories short. If you add 1,000 calories of exercise, and 1,000 calories of food, you're still 500 calories short, and still likely to experience hunger.
I feel stupid for how long it took me to "see" my own evidence. Like many people, I have a mental aversion to paying extreme attention to what I eat, to eating less, and to counting calories. The very idea of doing that is off-putting, and I didn't notice how subconsciously strong that mental aversion is until recently. It wasn't easy, but I did the hard mental work before I started the diet. Once I got going and formed some new habits, I didn't have to think about it much. One of my mental tricks was to realize that a little hunger is exactly how I'm supposed to feel. Rather than focusing willpower on combating my hunger and reminding myself not to eat, I came to the realization that not being hungry at all is the bad state, that is the feeling I have when I've eaten too much. Being a little hungry is a good thing.
Counting calories worked for me relatively quickly, and it worked regardless of whether I was exercising (as long as I tracked my exercise calories too.) It took less time than exercising, and it helped me see the differences more clearly between losing weight and getting strong. Those are two mostly different things. There's some cross-talk between them, but the main way to target each of them is different. Gyms all advertise weight loss, but now I see gyms as a place to get strong, and eating less as the way to lose weight.
I should have been a bit more explicit - I meant life after weight loss. The problem was apparently that maintaining a healthy weight requires being perpetually hungry. I was wondering if being able to afford 3 solid meals and some snacks without gaining weight would help with that appetite issue.
I understand. FWIW, in my mind what I said applies to life after weight loss. I still speculate that exercising more to eat more doesn't solve the appetite issue. At least for me anyway. Here's why. The comment you replied to made the hunger out to be an issue so large that it affects quality of life drastically and negatively, and so significant that the alternatives - not losing weight and the problems that come with that choice - are preferable to the extreme hunger. I have no doubt some people legitimately feel this way.
My experience counting calories and adjusting to the hunger are all about being just a little more hungry. I'm not starving or ravenous at any point, I stay only a sliver shy of satisfied. I don't let the hunger get uncontrollable, and if I'm ever crazy starving, I eat. I never get crazy starving when I'm counting calories, though, because if I exercise a lot I eat a lot, and if I don't work out then I don't get as hungry.
Before I mentioned adjusting mentally to seeing a little hunger as good rather than bad. That helps. Quality of life is a relative and subjective idea, and within reasonable limits, people can and do adjust to being equally happy with less. If weight loss is a goal, then I'm suggesting that seeing a little hunger as a good thing is a way to re-calibrate your quality of life detector, not a way to compromise. If you want to lose weight, then the feeling of being sated, and the weight gain that comes with it, isn't a higher quality of life. It's more than you need and includes potentially negative side effects.
Another mental change I made that I didn't mention before is that when I had success counting calories, I set my calorie limit to what it "should" be forever, based on standard age / height / goal weight charts. I never had a life after weight loss, I didn't temporarily reduce it further than that like most people who diet try to do. I just set it to what it should be for the long term. I knew this would make it take longer to lose weight, but I wanted to form a habit and feel like I was always eating a normal amount, rather than suffering a temporary sacrifice. I wanted to set it and forget it, rather than have to adjust again later. I was still eating 3 solid meals a day, and having snacks. Just a little less than before, controlled and accounted for so I knew when I was about to go over.
I also like to go a little light during the day so I have a calorie budget for a dessert treat after dinner. This way I usually feel like I'm splurging just a little rather than suffering through hunger. Instead of feeling like I need to summon more willpower, I feel like I'm always cheating just a tiny bit.
From my own experience, I didn't find that counting calories and being a little bit hungrier on average than I was before affected my quality of life negatively. Not at all. My appetite changed when I changed my diet. I became more comfortable with being just a little hunger, and perhaps surprisingly, I think I have more energy.
Anyway, it depends, I don't judge anyone's choices, and I think this is a lot more complicated and difficult than having willpower or overcoming hunger. But I also think an adjustment is an adjustment - the steady state of living with weight loss should be expected to feel different than before.
There are foods that help with feeling hungry. High fiber and low calorie foods can be eaten in larger volumes than high fat foods.
