To me exercise is more important to lose weight and maintaining a weight loss than diet. When I started tracking my exercise on SP, I was burning 7000 calorie a week exercising on the regular basis: the first six weeks according to my reports. I lowered that to a more manageable level of 3500. That is still a pound a week by additional exercise (exercise outside daily living.) I had been in such pain before starting to exercise that I was lying in bed most of the time so I went from very little exercise to several hours a day disappointed that I could do as much exercise a day as the people on Biggest Loser.

I now have my fitness tracker at 2300 calories to burn a week. Most weeks I'm still burning far more. I changed it from 3500 since it was difficult to reach that number with two rest days a week and often I need two rest days. I hoped lowing it to 2300 would encourage me to take two rest days a week. I'm still averaging more than 500 calories of exercise a day.

When I first started I was having trouble even eating 1200 calories a day and I was burning around thousand calories a day at the gym. No wonder, I lost around two pounds a week. Now, I'm eating around 1550 and I'm burning on the average slightly over five hundred calories a day at the gym and maintaining my weight. When I read somewhere that it takes a lot of exercise to burn a thousand calories, I laugh to myself. I can burn that in one afternoon and I'm a small woman.

We're all individuals. All I know is when I stop exercising even if I eat the same I regain the weight that I lost. If I stop exercising and eat less, I can maintain a weight loss. I know adding exercise (without changing my diet) causes me to lose weight. Adding exercise is the only way, I can lose weight. Even when I was on WW, I worked retail (lots of walking) and did exercise when I got home. Calories matter; but to me, exercise makes the difference.