Can you still eat bad and lose weight through exercise?

I learned this easy formula for a healthy weight:

food intake=excersice output

That’s all there is to it, really. :)

Not really. You easily overcompensate for the calories you burn by eating badly, and more often than not one eats far in excess to negate days upon days of exercise. It really is a combination of both healthy eating and exercise that stabilizes your body and causes your body to change itself to the best form for the exercise you do, which in most cases is losing weight and in some cases gaining muscle.

Edit: You also need to define “Eating badly”. I can still go out and eat takeout once a week and be healthy and lose weight/gain benefits from exercise. I can’t eat out every single day I exercise and expect to lose weight though, or eat two packages of Oreos a week.

dynamicduo has it right. You can absolutely eat “badly” once in a while and still lose weight. But it’s a matter of knowing how many calories you’re eating and how much you’d have to exercise to burn those calories off. For instance, it would take at least three hours of steady exercise to burn off a whopper.

That said, you can still eat a whopper and lose weight, as long as you don’t eat something like that regularly and as long as you exercise regularly.

If you want to “eat badly” all the time (not just the occasional snack like above) be prepared to exercise enough to burn in excess of all of those calories you consume. Having said that, it might make you think twice if you want to eat more than 1200–1500 calories each day. It takes _ a lot_ of exercise just to burn that off, plus some, to loose weight.

Also, the types of foods you are eating obviously maeks a difference. Ex. good calories/sugars/etc. such as fruits/whole wheat v. bad calories/sugars/fats/etc. such as potato chips/candy bars/bleached flour products…

Also you should remember that just because you are “thin” or losing weight it doesn’t mean you are healthy. In fact, most “skinny” people are worse off healthwise because they eat just as poorly as “fat” people, they just store their fat in a different place—namely their organs. Which can lead to major health problems (more so than storing your fat on your stomach or ass).

You should think about eating healthy as a reason to have a higher quality of life, not to lose/gain weight. If you eat right, the proper weight for your size will follow.

it depends on how bad and how hard you exercise. calories in, calories out. You could run on the treadmill for an hour and still not work off a big mac.

if you’re burning more calories than you’re consuming, yeah. but that depends on the frequency and intensity of the exercise and your metabolism.

also, like btko said, weight is not the only telling factor of how healthy someone is.