Working out isn’t the primary path to losing weight, though it is of course a big part of staying healthy.

You burn quite a lot of calories in a day just from being alive. The additional calories you’d burn from a brisk 20 minute walk might about to one cookie. It’s far easier to just not eat the cookie.

Going from doing nothing to something one day a week will have dramatic effects. But didn’t expect it to happen overnight or to have the same effect as going 3 or 4 times a week. Even just doing however many pushups you can once per day is a very good way to start condition yourself so you can handle and enjoy getting into a gym eventually. Sit ups are pretty trash. Six packs are made in the kitchen is a common adage for a reason. If you can’t work your core any other way I’d suggest planks over sit ups though. If you can, get a pull-up bar and power blocks. I would strongly recommend intending to get to a gym eventually though. From personal experience having a home gym was a bit of self sabotage

Cook, shower and then I’m exhausted AF.

This probably because you don’t exercise. Exercise gives you energy and is an excellent anti depressant. Starting is always the hardest part but you’ll have more energy the rest of the day.

And more than anything, even what you’re doing, stick with it. Results take time. You’ll have days you think it’s doing nothing, you’ll miss days and think what’s the point of starting again, you’ll be disappointed with rate of progression and that’s always the biggest test.

When I say exhausted I mean I’ve been active from 7am until around 8pm non stop. I just don’t have energy to go to a gym or something and I’d rather just wind down.

And I do a lot of cycling. I know it’s not “ultra mega workout” but I am active and when I mountain bike I can maintain my heart rate pretty well. I noticed my calves getting meatier and my stamina was pretty good at the end of the season.

So id like to think I’m fairly active… but a lot less when I was younger (drumming, skating, snowboarding, biking. Every day. 365)

You’ve gotten a lot of advice on here, but I don’t think I’ve seen this…are you able to “suck in your gut” if you try hard and it improves how it looks? If so, it might not even be visceral fat, but just poor muscle tone in your abdominal area. If this is it, then core strength exercises are the way to go. Practice sucking in that gut more and more until it becomes the default, and strengthen your abs and obliques.

Anything helps, of course. Anything is so much better than nothing.

You are skinnyfat, yes? You don’t want to lose weight, you want to add lean mass. Weights are what do that best. Ideally you would want to lift heavy at least thrice a week if you are trying to shape up.

I can only lift once a week lately (lady, mid 50s) but do yoga 4x/week too. It’s maintaining me reasonably lean.

I have been where you are (single working parent) and what I did back then was wake up at 5am and run, because that was the only time of day nobody needed anything from me, and running is nearly free, just shoes. It sucked, but the days I ran I did feel better later on, it was worth it overall I think. If there is any way you can wake up a half hour earlier and do something vigorous, and then add weight training once a week I think you will get good improvement. Just maybe not as much mass as you ideally want.

if you stick to your workouts and train to failure, your muscles will grow.

however to eliminate fat, you don’t exercise. you eat less. when you are eating below caloric maintenance, your body makes up the difference in fat. you can’t control where the fat comes from. you just have to maintain that for a long time and it’ll go away. everyone stores fat differently. some in legs, some in stomach, etc.

but you cannot exercise away body fat. it’s like 80/20 diet exercise

you don’t even have to work out.

you can get there simply with diet.

that said, dieting doesn’t target where the fat comes from.

Core strength training (like sit ups, push ups, etc,) will help with muscle definition, and that can improve the appearance, but if you break down how much say, a pound of body fat is in excercise vs how much that pound is in hambergers… well. restricting calories will always be more effective for weight loss.

has your doctor said you need to lose weight? 130 pounds sounds not-overweight.

I think the conventional wisom is diet is more important than exercise in losing weight, although I think most people would recommend working out once a week regardless if you would lose weight or not, basically any working out would be positive if you aren’t at all, it couldn’t hurt to do sit ups and push ups and see where that takes you.

Your beer belly, is it hard or jiggly?

If it’s a hard beer belly, that means you have lots of visceral fat, fat inside the rib cage. This is a strong indicator of metabolic syndrome.

The single best way to tackle that beer belly is to go low carb, this reduces your blood sugar, letting your insulin levels come down, allowing your body to actually function properly. The human body, really, really, really, really does not like visceral fat, and will remove it with urgency when allowed to.

If you like data, buying a continuous glucose monitor, then playing a game where you keep your glucose as flat as possible all day. The beautiful thing about this is you get instant feedback and know exactly how well your doing.

A absolutely great resource on doing this intervention is: https://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb

This is the hormonal model of human metabolism, other people have mentioned calorie in calorie out CICO - which is technically correct, but practically unhelpful. Humans are amazing hormonal homeostasis machines, the hormones need to be functioning properly. You can eat 100 g of uranium, and have trillions of calories in your body, but you’re not going to be able to use it. It’s much better to get your hormones into balance and allow the body to self-correct and stay at optimal.

The great thing about going low carb, is you will lose that visceral fat, your blood pressure will improve, sleep will improve, pre-diabetes will improve, sexual function will improve… Basically everything, the metabolism touches every part of the body! Insulin is extremely important, getting it into control has massive benefits.

All of this! And you won’t even be hungry! If you’re doing low carb, you can eat as much as you want, as long as you keep your blood sugar down. BBQs steaks eggs bacon cheese, as much as you like at any time. Alcohol : avoid beers, if you must drink vodka or whiskey. – all of this works because your body will be able to tell you when you’re full. Have you ever eaten a steak, and it tastes absolutely delicious at the beginning, but the more you eat it the less and less delicious it tastes? That’s how all foods should be. that’s the human body self regulating. Sugar messes that system up!

The human body is absurdly efficient. Fat weight is tackled by reducing calorie intake (using whatever tactic works for you). Exercise only makes a small difference by comparison.

Edit: for example, you could jog for almost an hour to burn approx 460 calories. Or you could just not eat 1 cinnamon swirl krispy kreme. Ate two at the family BBQ? You just gave your body enough fuel to light jog for 2 hours. A large vanilla milkshake has enough fuel to keep you jogging for an hour and a half. Stop overeating first or gym weightloss is useless.

The fact that you describe yourself as skinny and low weight suggests that this is not about calories. Do you have a high carb diet? That tends to cause fat to collect in the midsection. If you’ve ever seen starving children in Africa, you may have noticed that a lot of them have a similar stomach bulge, despite being clearly malnourished. It’s from their diet that’s high in grains.

Humans are horribly, miserably energy efficient.

Seriously we evolved as exhaustion predators: pick an animal and just keep walking after it until it drops, then eat it. That’s our whole schtick. We are the goddamn terminator.

Just being alive and breathing uses up about 1500-2000 calories a day.

An absolute bastard of a workout will use up maybe 100 on top of that, which makes up for like a spoonful of peanut butter.

As such, you can’t practically lose weight via exercise alone. You need to bring calories-in down to less than calories-out.

The tricky part is doing it in a controlled and sustainable manner so you don’t just say fuck it and scarf down two whole pizzas for lunch in a week’s time because you’re hangry and don’t care any more.

Do strict keto, the majority of a beer belly is water which bonds with fat at a 3:1 ratio so when you’re burning fat as your primary fuel you’ll piss half of it out in the first month without any change in physical activity.

sorry for hijacking, i am also interested in the subject, commenting here to hopefully get some info. i’m 174cm / 84kg. i wear medium clothes, but my beer muscle shows up, it’s quite big. even through a sweater.

i don’t exercise (i work in it, from home mostly), but also, i barely eat. today i had 3 coffees (no sugar, little milk), some leftover stir fry (veggies, chicken, mie noodles) and an apple, and that’s common. i don’t eat sweets or junk food.

i cook almost every day, usually curries & rice, stir fry, pizza/pasta, soups and stews, but i rarely eat myself. i switch daily between chicken/pork/seafood/tofu/legumes for protein, but there’s always rice or pasta or bread.

i drink a couple beers in a week (on average), i drink very little water throughout the day, maybe half a liter.

i sleep very little too, about 5h on average (less during the week, more on weekends).

where should i start? what’s the most blatant issue on my list? i know, all, but… what would be the first?

I agree with the comment saying that 130lbs doesn’t sound overweight, unless you’re 5’0 or under. Does your belly look obviously big to you in photos, or has anyone else ever mentioned it? Your perspective when you look down at your belly will make it look larger to you, so it might only be you that sees your belly as too big.

Keep in mind as well that in any photos of men you see who are body building, they have often dehydrated themselves to make their muscles stand out more. If you’re properly hydrated you’re never going to look like that, even if you exercise every day.

But strengthening your core muscles is really good for your back, so it’s probably not a bad idea to do sit ups and push ups.