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Why you shouldn't exercise to lose weight

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Re: Why you shouldn't exercise to lose weight

#131

Post by yuzi »

keithpeter wrote: post #79
yuzi wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should note I spent the first month ramping up from 20 min of jogging to 45 min of jogging which is why I put 6-7 months. If anyone decides to start jogging based on what I wrote, please don't go from nothing to 45 min a day. I didn't do that.

http://www.pcosfoundation.org/5K%20Running%20Guide.pdf I'm about to start something like this as I have the 'losing weight but losing it from the wrong bits' issue mentioned in another post. I am physically active, I don't drive, I walk around 3 to 4 miles a day as part of my commute, I go up and down three or four flights of stairs quite a lot of times a day (I'm a teacher and timetabling systems seem to have a Salt…

I know knowledge is power and the plan you linked is probably good advice, but for my personality type I don't think that would've worked. It's simply too much work :).

During the first month I did 5 min of stretching and then 20 min of jogging in one shot for the day. Every 3 days I would try to add 5 min. Sometimes I could, sometimes I had to back off and try a few days later. After a month I got to 45 min. I then did only 30 seconds of stretching before the jog. I did't think I needed it anymore (probably should have).

As I understand it the first 20 min of jogging doesn't really help you lose much weight, it's every minute after, for the session, that really burns fat.

As for miles walked, this was 14 years ago I didn't think or care about miles walked.

Probably not helping you, but that was my experience.

Re: Why you shouldn't exercise to lose weight

#132

Post by pjlegato »

fattylite wrote: post #127
pjlegato wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The theory says that as you do additional exercise, you get diminishing returns in terms of the number of calories you burn. As your exercise level increases, you have to do ever more exercise to burn the same number of calories, because the body has various compensatory mechanisms designed to avoid weight loss. The traditional model proposes a much simpler linear relationship: do an additional unit of exercise and y…

I understand that. My point was that I've never seen a plan where people tell you to eat as much as you want as long as you do x hours of activity per day. The only plans I've seen like that are for strong men competitors or where the Rock ate like $300 worth of food every day and worked out for six hours daily.

That is exactly the nutrition advice that has been promoted in various government and school health programs for decades: eat what you like, just do X amount of exercise and you'll be fine. Calories in, calories out.

The article goes into some detail about this, mentioning that a great deal of that research was funded by companies that make sugary drinks and other high-calorie food.

Re: Why you shouldn't exercise to lose weight

#134

Post by plq »

thedz wrote: post #114

I've found online reaction to this article quite interesting. Normally data and study minded folks bring out the "anecdotally, this doesn't seem true" responses, and people seem think the article is attacking exercise as a concept. It's not. It's saying that if a person's goal is to lose weight, then adjusting to a good diet is far more important than (a reasonable amount of) exercise. The article does not claim that…

Of course a healthy dose of exercise is not harmful and the article reiterates this point many times. However, it also says that exercising may make your body more efficient, which lowers the overall energy that's used to keep us alive, which in turn may "hurt", to a certain extent, the weight loss rate.

When I was running regularly, I could see my heart rate go down day after day when I measured it right after I woke up.

Don't exercise to lose weight. Exercise to keep healthy. If you want to lose weight, you need to keep an eye on your calorie intake more than you keep an eye on the calories you burn. Not everybody can perform a 2000-calorie workout in one go.

Re: Why you shouldn't exercise to lose weight

#135

Post by fleitz »

thedz wrote: post #114

I've found online reaction to this article quite interesting. Normally data and study minded folks bring out the "anecdotally, this doesn't seem true" responses, and people seem think the article is attacking exercise as a concept. It's not. It's saying that if a person's goal is to lose weight, then adjusting to a good diet is far more important than (a reasonable amount of) exercise. The article does not claim that…

everything in the article is true because they use technical terms, when you consider the overall effect of exercise and the overall goal of 'weight loss' being body fat reduction and improved fitness, exercise is an excellent way to achieve that

Re: Why you shouldn't exercise to lose weight

#136

Post by paulsutter »

thedz wrote: post #114

I've found online reaction to this article quite interesting. Normally data and study minded folks bring out the "anecdotally, this doesn't seem true" responses, and people seem think the article is attacking exercise as a concept. It's not. It's saying that if a person's goal is to lose weight, then adjusting to a good diet is far more important than (a reasonable amount of) exercise. The article does not claim that…

"Why you shouldn't /rely/ on exercise to lose weight" would be a less controversial title. Instead they chose a provocative, click-baity title and tone to the article.

The most accurate title would be "Don't exercise in order to earn the right to eat junk food later". Which is the meager point they're actually making.

The article deserves all the criticism - it has been designed specifically to provoke it. Journalists love to divide ho-hum issues into polarized opposing sides.

Re: Why you shouldn't exercise to lose weight

#137

Post by revelation »

tzs wrote: post #81
revelation wrote: post #23

The title says "you shouldn't exercise to lose weight", which seems to suggest that exercise will negatively affect your ability to lose weight. There isn't a single study here that proves this rather lofty hypothesis.

You are taking the title as meaning lose weight => ! exercise or equivalently exercise => ! lose weight That's not what the title is saying. What it is saying is ! (exercise => lose weight)

Well, the title was changed, which makes this somewhat silly.

Re: Why you shouldn't exercise to lose weight

#138

Post by jypepin »

yuzi wrote: post #43

I went from 190 lbs. to 138 lbs. over 6 or 7 months. The only exercise I did was jogging for 45 min a day. What I noticed was that jogging made me feel better, which somehow got me to consistently eat better. After a days jogging I didn't want to put crap food in me and ruin what I had accomplished and by doing it everyday I felt good enough, often enough to stick with it. So, based on my experience, I simply can not…

I do agree with the feeling that doing exercise makes you feel better, and that this feelings motivates you to eat better food.

I don't see how you say you simply can not agree with the article tho.

The article stipulates that exercise itself has less effect than diet. Maybe exercise helps to keep a good diet, but exercise + keeping same crapy diet won't be as effective as what you did yourself.

Re: Why you shouldn't exercise to lose weight

#139

Post by revelation »

Retric wrote: post #54
revelation wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans are about 25% efficient, so feel free to multiply any number with 4 to get actual expended energy. That doesn't change the calculus, obviously. I can easily sustain 150W for an hour on a bike, I can't lift 225kg half a metre against gravity 500 times (the equivalent). (The idea here is that you try to back up lofty claims with some science numbers.)

Don't forget to add your body weight. Lifting ~110kg 6 feet (4 times 1/2 meter) 25 times in about 3 minutes ~= 6 mintues @ 150W on a bike. Plus whatever lifting your body weight from a squat adds up to. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_and_jerk Start playing with the numbers and Weight lifters can get into crazy high energy diets. PS: Works out to around 110kg / ~.82 ~= 135kg max lift. At 230 lb the record is 246…

These are maximal efforts that are not sustainable for any period of time.

Meanwhile, you can do 150W on a bike all day, just keep adding CHO.

Re: Why you shouldn't exercise to lose weight

#140

Post by fattylite »

pjlegato wrote: post #132
fattylite wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand that. My point was that I've never seen a plan where people tell you to eat as much as you want as long as you do x hours of activity per day. The only plans I've seen like that are for strong men competitors or where the Rock ate like $300 worth of food every day and worked out for six hours daily.

That is exactly the nutrition advice that has been promoted in various government and school health programs for decades: eat what you like, just do X amount of exercise and you'll be fine. Calories in, calories out. The article goes into some detail about this, mentioning that a great deal of that research was funded by companies that make sugary drinks and other high-calorie food.

Everything I've ever seen has had more emphasis on the calories in portion. It feels like they're searching for a boogeyman that isn't there.

http://health.gov/paguidelines/guidelines/chapter2.aspx

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