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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

#201

Post by kazinator »

Exercise didn't work for me until I stuck with it consistently, and progressively.

The problem is that what doesn't work is "strawman exercise": for instance, the kind of exercise that a sedentary volunteer test subject is able to handle in some study.

Before exercise works for fat loss, you have to train up to the intensity and volume that is required. That takes months. Consistent months during which you not only don't give up, but pile on the challenges. If you quit, you lose your progress and slide back to the start.

You can't measure exercise just by the time put in and the theoretical calories, by the way. There is a quality component to it.

Another thing is that once you have a decently low body fat, the remaining areas where fat accumulates on your body will show to be "exercise resistant". It's very hard to get rid of that centimeter of fat from the back of your thigh, calves, upper back and arms, or central abs. Or that pesky "love handle" area. That, I can attest, either can't be done with exercise, or requires exercise to be a full time job. But that's not what this article is about; the claim is that exercise isn't effective against obesity.

Re: Why you shouldn't exercise to lose weight

#202

Post by dragonwriter »

brashrat wrote: post #163
epimetheus wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exercise makes me ravenous, I'm certainly not the only person for which that is true. Swimming is the worst offender, IME. I can be vigilant, but even knowing that I didn't burn enough calories to counterbalance that meatball sub I want to get after my workout, doesn't help all that much in keeping me from actually buying it anyway. This is similar to the problem of calories in = calories out. Dieting isn't a chemist…

you can put your hunger to work for you, but you need to remind yourself that, if you carry extra pounds, hunger is what weight loss feels like. That ravenous feeling if you can keep it going, that right there is the success. celebrate it, and stop killing it.

No, it's not. Learning how to eat and hydrate properly (both in terms of what and when) with your exercise pattern so that you don't feel ravenous while maintaining a calorie deficit is success. Feeling ravenous isn't success, and generally isn't sustainable.

Re: Why you shouldn't exercise to lose weight

#203

Post by ChemicalWarfare »

billmalarky wrote: post #88
ChemicalWarfare wrote: post #46

Anecdotal evidence from being a gym rat for 20 years, although I'm sure there are studies out there to prove this. Maybe :) No doubt that diet+exercise is the way to go when it comes to long-term weight management. The thing is, "weight loss" in and of itself is a misleading metric. You're losing weight! Great! But hold on a minute - your gut is the same size but your biceps is smaller and your strength is way down.…

Muscle requires a lot of energy to maintain, so when your calories drop your body starts shedding it to be more efficient so long as you are also inactive . If you stay active you will lose strength on a calorie deficit but you will not lose muscle mass. That's why you can do a cut, and your lifts will go down but you still look great at the lower body fat. The muscle mass is still there. http://fitnessblackbook.com/…

Trained individual on a reasonable diet, taking an intelligent approach to cutting will lose 'some' strength and 'some' muscle when cutting body fat, yes.

Someone who is out of shape might actually be able to gain both muscle and strength while losing weight when starting out as long as they are lifting in addition to cleaning up their diet/reducing calories. The less fit they are the better the gains, which I guess is borderline captn obvious territory :)

Re: Why you shouldn't exercise to lose weight

#204

Post by spinlock »

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…

I think you make a lot of good points but I would contend that the title of the article is click-bait. It's all well and good that the article itself is well reasoned but people read the title and hold on to that.

Re: Why you shouldn't exercise to lose weight

#205

Post by spinlock »

tomp wrote: post #175
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to continue to posit that weight is a factor of genetics / epigenetics and / or body function first and foremost. Why is it that some people, regardless of how much they eat and how little they exercise, never put on weight? That, to me, is the elephant in the room. What is going on in these peoples bodies that is kept out of popular science with regard to weight loss? We know that thyroid hormone function…

> regardless of how much they eat and how little they exercise, never put on weight? If I had to choose between thermodynamics and medicine being wrong, and people not being able to accurately estimate how "much" they eat and how "little" they exercise, I'd bet all my money on the latter. The simple reality is, people have vastly different appetites. I eat fast and am always hungry. I have two coworkers, one eats qui…

Your body is not a bomb calorimeter. If you're looking to thermodynamics to explain weight loss or gain you'll be disappointed.

Re: Why you shouldn't exercise to lose weight

#206

Post by CryoLogic »

The title to this article is very manipulative and misleading.

Weight loss seems to be a mysterious science to the everyday man and woman, but is well known by most top athletes and has been for many years.

It is simple chemistry. The calories you eat are stored in fat, which is comprised of O, H and C. Roughly ~3500 calories will become one pound of bodyfat. By this logic, yes you can eat less calories and lose weight. If you are burning 2500 calories per day, and you opt to eat only 2000 calories per day you should lose aprox. 1 lb of body fat per week (500 * 7 = 3500).

On the other hand, exercise is very important in weight loss. Muscle mass is expensive to maintain, and every lb of muscle mass can take 30-50 cals per day just to maintain. This increases your daily calories burned, allowing you to eat more food w/o weight gain or keep the same food and lose weight.

Additionally, when you exercise and convert the fat to energy the fat is released in various forms of O, H and C. Most of it is breathed out, and some comes out in liquid form. This is literally weight you are losing. Each atom has a molecular weight, be it O, H or C. And if you want to do the math you can figure out how much weight you are losing per exercise per hour.

The reason some people believe low carb diets are the best for weight loss, is directly tied to exercise. Quickly avail. energy known as glycogen is stored in your muscles and used up before fat. It is created from carbohydrates. Without glycogen in your muscles, you will burn fat first.

Re: Why you shouldn't exercise to lose weight

#207

Post by spinlock »

kazinator wrote: post #201

Exercise didn't work for me until I stuck with it consistently, and progressively. The problem is that what doesn't work is "strawman exercise": for instance, the kind of exercise that a sedentary volunteer test subject is able to handle in some study. Before exercise works for fat loss, you have to train up to the intensity and volume that is required. That takes months. Consistent months during which you not only d…

The other thing that the article doesn't address is how much weight you gain in muscle when you exercise. When I go from out-of-shape to back-in-shape, I know that I've increased my muscle mass as well as loosing fat. That doesn't show on the scale but it definitely is what I'm going for.

Also, increasing your muscle is going to increase your resting metabolic rate. So, as you exercise and get stronger, you'll burn more calories while resting. (this probably only holds for men who build muscle when they work out. if you're a marathon runner who's rail thin, I don't think you'll burn much fat at all while resting.)

Re: Why you shouldn't exercise to lose weight

#208

Post by dragonwriter »

You shouldn't exercise to lose weight, because for most people you shouldn't be aiming primarily to lose weight; weight loss should be a component of the broader goal of improving overall health. For which you probably should exercise, regardless of whether it's optimal for the narrower goal of weight loss.

Re: Why you shouldn't exercise to lose weight

#209

Post by ChemicalWarfare »

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…

"The education in popular culture around exercising presents it as a magic pill, as being a major driving force behind weight loss. You see this on magazine covers and on tv, "belly fat exercises", "toning exercises""

There's def some of that going on, but there's also a fair amount of fad diets - atkins, south beach, paleo etc etc popping up here and there.

The fact that you get the 6 pack by dieting and not by doing crunches is common knowledge in the "lifting community", on the flip side - lifting when dieting is also important to maintain body comp.

And then of course there's the obvious fact that "losing weight" != "losing fat" which makes articles like this not only click-baity but also bordering on being misinformative.

Re: Why you shouldn't exercise to lose weight

#210

Post by crpatino »

misterspaceman wrote: post #84
paulsutter wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly - percent bodyfat is a much better target metric than weight.

Agreed. The problem is that weighing yourself is easy, but measuring body fat is way harder. Most of the at-home measurement tools are wildly inaccurate; the accurate ones are either expensive or inconvenient.

The gut-to-hip ratio is a rough, but effective, alternative. At least if you start from an overweight/obese body type.
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