Diet vs Exercise

Exercise strengthens and builds muscles, improves our cardiovascular health, our complexions, boosts beneficial neurotransmitters that improve our mental state, our awake and sleep cycles, and our metabolic rate. Exercise does a lot of wonderful things for us, very healthy things. But, when it comes to weight loss, exercise is not the answer.

To lose weight we must cut our caloric intake.

On August 9, 2009 Time published an extensive article explaining why. In fact, as he documents the case, it often has exactly the opposite effect – for some very “human reasons,” as well as physiological.

Why Exercise Won’t Make You Thin

By John Cloud [Excerpted]

As I write this, tomorrow is Tuesday, which is a cardio day. I’ll spend five minutes warming up on the VersaClimber, a towering machine that requires you to move your arms and legs simultaneously. Then I’ll do 30 minutes on a stair mill. On Wednesday a personal trainer will work me like a farm animal for an hour, sometimes to the point that I am dizzy — an abuse for which I pay as much as I spend on groceries in a week. Thursday is “body wedge” class, which involves another exercise contraption, this one a large foam wedge from which I will push myself up in various hateful ways for an hour. Friday will bring a 5.5-mile run, the extra half-mile my grueling expiation of any gastronomical indulgences during the week.

I have exercised like this — obsessively, a bit grimly — for years, but recently I began to wonder: Why am I doing this? Except for a two-year period at the end of an unhappy relationship — a period when I self-medicated with lots of Italian desserts — I have never been overweight. One of the most widely accepted, commonly repeated assumptions in our culture is that if you exercise, you will lose weight. But I exercise all the time, and since I ended that relationship and cut most of those desserts, my weight has returned to the same 163 lb. it has been most of my adult life. I still have gut fat that hangs over my belt when I sit. Why isn’t all the exercise wiping it out?

It’s a question many of us could ask. More than 45 million Americans now belong to a health club, up from 23 million in 1993. We spend some $19 billion a year on gym memberships. Of course, some people join and never go. Still, as one major study — the Minnesota Heart Survey — found, more of us at least say we exercise regularly. The survey ran from 1980, when only 47% of respondents said they engaged in regular exercise, to 2000, when the figure had grown to 57%.

And yet obesity figures have risen dramatically in the same period: a third of Americans are obese, and another third count as overweight by the Federal Government’s definition. Yes, it’s entirely possible that those of us who regularly go to the gym would weigh even more if we exercised less. But like many other people, I get hungry after I exercise, so I often eat more on the days I work out than on the days I don’t. Could exercise actually be keeping me from losing weight?

[...]But the past few years of obesity research show that the role of exercise in weight loss has been wildly overstated.

“In general, for weight loss, exercise is pretty useless,” says Eric Ravussin, chair in diabetes and metabolism at Louisiana State University and a prominent exercise researcher. Many recent studies have found that exercise isn’t as important in helping people lose weight as you hear so regularly in gym advertisements or on shows like The Biggest Loser — or, for that matter, from magazines like this one.

The Compensation Problem

[...]The findings were surprising. On average, the women in all the groups, even the control group, lost weight, but the women who exercised — sweating it out with a trainer several days a week for six months — did not lose significantly more weight than the control subjects did.

[...]What’s going on here? Church calls it compensation, but you and I might know it as the lip-licking anticipation of perfectly salted, golden-brown French fries after a hard trip to the gym. Whether because exercise made them hungry or because they wanted to reward themselves (or both), most of the women who exercised ate more than they did before they started the experiment. Or they compensated in another way, by moving around a lot less than usual after they got home.

The basic problem is that while it’s true that exercise burns calories and that you must burn calories to lose weight, exercise has another effect: it can stimulate hunger. That causes us to eat more, which in turn can negate the weight-loss benefits we just accrued. Exercise, in other words, isn’t necessarily helping us lose weight. It may even be making it harder.

Continues at link, please be sure to read the entire article.

The Take Shape for Life program recommends light movement exercises, such as walking, during the active weight loss phase, and only then if at a healthy enough weight to allow for pain free walking. Until then, you will still lose weight on Take Shape for Life even without the light exercise the program recommends, but gentle movement exercises, such as walking, should be undertaken as soon as possible to increase your metabolic rate, build and strengthen muscles, and just feel better generally.

Traditional exercises and workouts are put off until the transition and maintenance phases of your weight loss journey. While on the Take Shape for Life 5-and-1 plan movement exercise should not raise your heart rate significantly or for a prolonged period. Walking, if physical condition allows it, will not raise your heart rate to the degree that will trigger a demand for more fueling [eating] above what the 5-and-1 plan provides.

So as you contemplate how you are going to shed those excess pounds you are carrying around consider that “joining a gym” is probably not the way to go about it. But do remember that once you do shed those pounds, exercise is an integral part of the formula to permanent weight loss – and Take Shape for Life covers that with the BeSlim philosophy: