That exercise is the key to losing our collective weight is something that we know so deep in our cultural guts that to question it would be ridiculous.
Except that is what the most cutting-edge obesity researchers are now doing. The recent studies show that the benefits of exercise for weight loss have been overstated. This idea is shocking. It goes so far against the orthodoxy that it is not something many can accept. And certainly for governments and the food industry that places them under so much pressure, it is too much to swallow.
But, as Professor Boyd Swinburn, director of the World Health Organisation Collaborating Centre for Obesity Prevention, says: “This is provocative in many ways . . . but my concern is that if we put the emphasis on exercise we are unlikely to tackle the obesity problem as we are not driving at the root cause.”
The idea that exercise will help to shed pounds is fairly recent — emerging at the same time that obesity began to boom in the 1980s.
Weightlifting picture at top of thread threw everyone for a loop.
Weightlifting has never helped me lose weight, usually the reverse. I do feel more springy when I hit the weights though.
Weights help you lift heavier stuff. Long reps, low weight help if you need several minutes of “burst” energy.
If you want to do endurance sports to lose weight you need to do 10-15 hrs/wk to have a dramatic effect.
Otherwise, gains or loses of weight is due to caloric intake.
I don’t mind some extra weight. I’ve always been more focused on how I feel.
My diet is the “No effort American comparative diet.” I maintain a consistent body type and America gets fatter. I’m down from XL to L without serious effort.
If you want to feel good physically hit the pool or bike.
it’s been pretty clear as far as i have known… exercise creates muscle, which weighs more than fat. therefore exercise is not to lose weight. reduction of caloric intake is what loses weight, is anybody missing this?
as usual, understanding of basic body functions are misunderstood by most… however, as long as people are exercising (and as i see it), body image, ie. “appearance of weight loss” is what they are actually looking for. exercise will do that to a large degree.
if people who have problems with their body image would get the difference, it would reduce the market for bullshit products promising bullshit results.
look in the mirror, not at the scale…
just a thought.
Where’s the BS meter for this? Anyone believing this has no common sense. Oh, and #1, some don’t go to the gym to gain weight but to actually lose them. You kick sand in my face and I’ll MMA your slow ass any day.
It isn’t about weight, it is about Body Mass Index(BMI). Weight is a number that gets figured in to a BMI which tells you if you are obese, underweight, etc..
#22 “exercise creates muscle, which weighs more than fat” A pound of muscle weighs the same as a pound of fat. One pound of muscle is more dense than one pound of fat.
>that if you really want to lose weight use the spinning bicycles, cardio only begins to work after doing it for an hour.
Exactly. It takes a lot of exercise to change things, especially if it gets balanced with more eating.
Now if environmentalists would be as rational with global warming…
Exercise doesn’t lose weight?
WTF evar, fatties! Believe what YOU want.
I don’t understand what this is all about. What is wrong with you people?
Theory: You must eat to be fat:
Observation: People who do not eat are very thin and ultimately end up starving to death (and are skin and bones).
Solution: Eat less. If you don’t eat like a fatty you can’t be a fatty. Duh.
Exercise or not, if you simply eat less you can loose weight even if you just sit on the couch all day.
I think the valuable thing to take from this article is the idea that most peoples’ activity levels are pretty set, as with the kids who did more at school and ended up doing less at home. Of course, even if you exert half the effort of a Tour de France bicycle racer, you’ll still gain fat and weight if you eat 100% as much as one.
It _is_ possible to eat better without too much bother, just doing simple, sensible things. Put down the donut (even better, don’t bring it home in the first place), eat an apple instead. Gotta go to the fast food place? Order the fish sandwich instead of the burger. (Of _course_ it’s not as good — but at least you won’t be tempted to say “That was good, I’ll have another.”) Get the salad instead of the fried potatoes, and I DON’T mean the half-fried-meat salad, I mean the one that’s all plants, and only use half the dressing they give you. Baking? Well, if you must; but mix in some whole wheat flour; try using half Splenda (sucralose) and half sugar (probably not good for bread, though); try making half the recipe; try whipped cream instead of the usual sugar-and-fat frosting (sure, it’s loaded with sugar and fat as well, but you won’t be eating nearly the same weight of it as you would the other stuff). Instead of candy bars, keep a bowl of fruit around the house — apples, berries (straw-, rasp- and blue-), bananas, oranges, pears, peaches, grapes are all yummy. Try to eat as little as possible that comes in a cardboard box, except for (non-instant non-quick) oatmeal. Try to get to where most of your food grew up out of the ground, and is as close to when it was harvested as possible. Example, dried figs are better than Fig Newtons, fresh figs even better than that. A blueberry muffin is better than blue fruit roll-up (whatever those are made of), and a bowl of fresh or frozen blueberries with some whipped cream on top is even better. A bowl of hot buttered corn is better than a pan of cornbread. You get the idea.
I do most of these things most of the time and my main exercise is walking to the mailbox (4 short blocks round trip) and from one corner of the store to the other (some of the stores I shop in are big but not _that_ big), and my BMI is 21.5.
Sorry to go on so long, but most people have no idea how they’re sabotaging themselves when it comes to what they eat and how easy it is to eat better if you just pay a little attention. Now I think I’ll go have a snack.
Patso…fish vs meat at the fast food probably isn’t be the issue…it’s the cheese and mayo/tartar that gets you. And the carbs in the bun. And the fries. And the sugary drink.
One thing about muscle vs fat…if you replace your fat with muscle via exercise with weights or cardio, yes your weight doesn’t change. But, your calorie needs change dramatically because that new muscle needs fed all day long. Muscle requires energy whether you’re exercising or sitting in front of a computer, while fat just sits there no matter what.
Muscle mass raises you metabolism. Exercising to gain muscle mass is better than two hours of cardio it takes to run off a McDonalds lunch. You simply lose more fat by lowing caloric intake.
Even when doing cardio, you will not burn fat until you burn off all the carbs you have in your system. Cut the carbs before exercising if the goal is to lose fat. Runners are in shape already so they eat carbs for the energy of the run.
If you want to loose weight, eat less. My personal trainer said that if you skip the cardio and concentrate on die and building muscle, you will reduce your BMI which is better than losing weight.
Of course I lost quite a bit of weight lying in bed sick for three days. The doctor said it was not the flu, but I was so sick I almost rather have had the flu.
What type of stupidity is this? Exercise does help you loose weight, period. Anything that “shows” otherwise is wrong. My proof? Simply that when you vigorously exercise regularly (and safely, of course) you raise your metabolism. When your metabolism increases, the number of calories you use increases. When the number of calories you use goes up, as long as you don’t replace them all (or more) you will loose weight. It’s a simple equation that works for everyone except those with very rare metabolic problems. Every study worth its salt shows this. If some “study” doesn’t show this it’s contrary to how the human body works and is wrong.
To be specific for this study, they state that exercise alone won’t generally make you loose weight. Again, this is false considering that real exercise, done regularly will raise your metabolic rate. However, if by alone they mean you eat more to compensate for the extra calories you loose, then they are qualifying the term incorrectly and making a bad assumption. It is human nature to eat more when you burn more but it is illogical if you don’t also either reduce your caloric intake if you are gaining weight before exercise or maintain that intake if you were maintaining your weight prior to the exercise regimen.
Here’s a simple equation:
Calorie intake – calories usage = net calories gain or loss.
If you take in more than you use, you gain weight. If you use more than you gain, you loose weight with one exception for the variable of water retention which over time is more of a constant but on any one day or week can raise or lower weight. Exercise raises calories used, especially when done as a regular, not occasional activity. Therefore you must raise caloric intake to maintain weight, keep it the same to loose or cut it to really loose. Many illnesses also raise caloric use while simultaneously denying caloric intake thus resulting in weight loss.
Denying this is like denying evolution. It’s real, get use to it. Anything else is bunk.
Once again why is weight loss important. In the U.S. we’ve confused weight as the primary indicator of health. What we should really focus on is work capacity. What is your power to weight ratio? Can you climb ten flights of stairs and not be winded? Could you bale hay for an entire day? Do you sleep well and are generally content and mentally well? If you can answer yes to these questions and are still officially “overweight”, then why should you care about what your weight is?
gmknobl, that’s not what their experiment tested.
A person can lose weight by watching their calorie intake without exercise. The problem is that muscle mass is the first to go. For every 3300 Calories a person does not ingest they lose about one pound. A male can get by with 1500 to 2000 Calories a day. This will allow him about 1/2 a pound a day weight loss since a males body at rest will burn 2600 to 3500 Calories a day no matter what. If a male eats less than 1500 Calories a day his body will go into starvation mode and it will be very hard to lose the weight. LIGHT exercise is a wise choice so that bone and muscle mass don’t diminish.
Of course, talk to your physician as everybody is different and you may have health problems that need to be addressed.
16, Probably closer to 20 minutes. And when your body starts burning fat, it will continue to burn fat for up to 2 hours (even if you stop your aerobics routine).
As long as you consume nothing but water during those 2 hours, you don’t stop the fat burning process.
This would be analogous to a match you could hold under a log for 20 minutes. Once the log starts to burn, it burns for a while.
The problem is most people’s idea of aerobics is low intensity. If you do high intensity aerobics for 20 minutes three times a week and you don’t consume anything other than water, you may see some impressive and quick results. The other problem is most people can’t stick to a schedule and come up with excuses over why they couldn’t work out on a particular day.
7, Weight training helps with the fat burning process indirectly.
Which drinks up more fuel while idling at a stop light, a V8 or a 4 cylinder?
Muscle mass is similar in that the more muscle mass you have, the more blood sugar your body consumes. The less blood sugar you have floating around when you go to bed means less blood sugar gets converted to body fat while you sleep.
1. Lose only has a single o. Loose is a different word, as in “a loose fitting shirt”
2. Read “The Hungry Gene”
3. If you weigh one hundred pounds and I weigh two hundred pounds, and we both walk one mile, then I just burned twice as many calories as you. (this is a stone cold fact)
4. In order to lose a great deal of weight, one has to maintain a food intake level substantially less than normal. Eating like a normal person means you neither gain nor lose weight—you just stay at the weight you are at.
5. The body does not absorb 100% of the calories that we feed it, and can actually step up the percentage of calories absorbed if fed less food. This is how the so called ‘plateau effect” is reached. One can be on 1400 calories or even 1200 calories and not lose weight.
6. Read “the Hungry Gene” there’s no miracle cure in it–it’s mostly bad news. But it’s the straight stuff.
7. After losing more than a hundred pounds three times and then gaining it back in my adult life, I have a new attitude about people’s weight loss advice. It’s this:
get lost
There’s a lot of weight loss propaganda. Even that Tv show, “Biggest Loser”, seems to sell exercise as the main weight losing method.
But it’s the calories from processed foods, that got these people overweight. Not a lack of exercise or some genetic flaw.
Showing contestants exercising like fanatics, might be great for promoting health club memberships. But I’ll bet that it’s the restricted calorie diet plans that loses them the most weight. But Tv doesn’t want to reveal that. Their fast food sponsors would hate them.
Exercising is still a good idea, for the circulation and all. But I think it’s unreasonable to expect most viewers to attempt to do as much as is shown, to keep weight under control. Because when you do the math. Exercise doesn’t burn all that much calories.
And putting more stress on limb joints, that are already over-stressed by excess body weight, can’t be good for them. I’ll bet these contestants will be opting for knee joint replacements, some day soon.
Some people tend to eat more after exercising than they would if they didn’t exercise. This is because they sometimes workout for too long and then get hungrier than usual. Or they decide to reward themselves after a good workout, and then eat a 350-calorie muffin that negates the workout.
The answer: exercise (but not excessively) to maintain muscle tone, and moderate your eating to lose weight.