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.
Why on earth would I want to “get out of the gym”??? I’m a bodybuilder. The idea of training is to GAIN bodyweight. Unless you’re operating under some homosexual, pencilneck philosophy. So go home to mommy before I kick sand in your face.
So what is this guys magic bullet?
What a pile of crap. Work out and calorie count was what helped me to lose over 25 pounds. Nothing else did.
I thought the first line of the link was better:
“Exercise? A fat lot of good that is for weight loss . . . . . ”
But the link is a good read and expresses/reveals what common sense already knows.
Keep the pie hole shut if you wanta lose weight. Course the “goal” is to be more healthy, and that does require some amount of “moving.”
In my younger days, up at 600AM to play tennis or swim and I recall bitching about having to waste time to eat. Now, its just the reverse and a major interest is “baking.” Times have changed for the worse, right along with the metabolism.
Interesting correlation, ((if its true?))==line up people from fat to think and you have also lined up people from the lowest caloric intake to the highest.
Well DUH…if you keep eating any of the multitudes of processed pseudo food crap we produce, no matter what you do, you will be “genetically compromised”
-s
# 1 Buffet,
“Why on earth would I want to “get out of the gym”??? I’m a bodybuilder. The idea of training is to GAIN bodyweight. Unless you’re operating under some homosexual, pencilneck philosophy.”
Oh my God, a bodybuilder who can actually read and write!
A friend of mine is a personal trainer, he says that if you really want to lose weight use the spinning bicycles, cardio only begins to work after doing it for an hour.
Wow, people on bed rest lost more weight than those who exercise. What a wonderful surprise. Exercise builds muscle, which will offset some of flab you lose. This is the second article I saw about this. So now, America won’t just be a nation of fatties from eating, they’ll be atrophing themselves too.
**Exercise won’t help me…nom nom nom***
@#4 “Interesting correlation, ((if its true?))==line up people from fat to think and you have also lined up people from the lowest caloric intake to the highest.” – very untrue. Way too many other factors. Activity has something to do with it (ex. #3) but it is not be-all. Extreme example: Atkins diet. You can literally eat 5000-6000 calories and “spend” less than 1000 … and lose weight. Because metabolism on that type of food functions very differently.
Maybe the obesity boom of the 80’s has something to do with high-fructose corn-syrup starting to be produced in mass quantities at the time? When I was in Europe all the soft drinks have real sugar and you don’t see so many fat-asses.
#9–dusanmal==I suspect its not true even though I have read it a few times. I think it is certainly “possible” to selectively create such a line up==but statistically I would hope the truth is as you say.
Yes, I lost weight steadily on my “Zone Diet” a variant of Atkins. But after a while, you do find out so much of what you really like actually is carbs. Especially in baking. RATS!!!!
Exercise/Activity is important in its own right. The two issues interact with one another. silly to ignore either.
It doesn’t shock me. If I eat less, or avoid chocolate, ice cream, etc I lose weight. Otherwise I gain weight or stay put.
I run 3 or 4 days a week. All running does for me is keep me fit until ski season starts.
its taken them YEARS to figure out what HELPS loose weight.
ACTIVITY..
Weight training is nice, but its DANCE and movement and soforth that will help loose more weight.
I always found it funny that WALKING and running were prescribed, but they DONT help, EXCEPT in the legs and butt.
You must move the whole body..
Common knowledge for the knowledgeable.
A treadmill for two hours will still not be enough to burn that Big Mac you put in your pie & burger hole in 5 minutes.
Republicans should stop listening to Rush Limbaugh for dietary guidance. Drugs and hamburgers are not the way.
well no shiat exercise will counteract the goal of weight loss. Thats because it builds muscle mass, which is sort of a good thing to have. Stupid bastards are feeding us bad science which will hurt us.
Angel…Covert Bailey has made a nice living teaching just the opposite…he says during aerobic activity your body starts drawing from fat reserves in around ten minutes….once the blood sugar energy is used up.
Anyway, you prompted me to pull one of his books off the shelf and re-read it.
And the diet industry doesn’t want you to go to the gym, because you might realize its the only way to lose fat.
I call BS, simple rule to lose weight. Burn more calories than you take in this means activity. Doesn’t matter what type of activity as long as it burns calories. The typical failure for those that attempt to lose weight by exercising is that the exercise makes them hungry (duh) therefore they eat more. QED if I eat more because I exercise than no matter how much I exercise I will not lose weight. I do cardio, lift, hike and other assorted activity. If I watch my diet my weight goes down. If I don’t watch my diet I typically stay the same or gain slightly until I start to watch my diet again.
I have gotten so sick of the sanctimonious “all fat people have to do is simple: exercise more and eat less”
If it was that simple, everybody would be thin.
People who glibly say this are just showing their ignorance.
Actually it is that simple Greg. People usually just don’t have the willpower,time, and/or energy to worry about it when they can “just not eat that hamburger tommorow”.
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.