Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin
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Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin
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Re: Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin
#2I'm trying to lose weight right now. Actually, I'm trying to get in the best shape of my life, so that I feel better physically and enjoy the sports I play more.
I've been losing about 1/2 pound per week for most of this year, while spending about a half hour per day in the pool, and maybe another hour on the basketball court.
I took a two weeks off and went to France on vacation. I ate a bunch of great food (though never "stuffing" myself). I walked around to visit museums. I never thought about fitness. I lost 5 pounds in the two weeks.
There's probably a few reasons why this happened. I was on vacation, so there was no stress-triggered eating. I was getting lots of low-intensity exercise that burned calories without stimulating hunger. I was eating slowly, savoring the tastes of the different foods I was trying. I'm trying to bring these lessons back with me.
Re: Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin
#3> As science writer Gary Taubes noted in his 2007 book Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health, "The obese tend to expend more energy than lean people of comparable height, sex, and bone structure, which means their metabolism is typically burning off more calories rather than less."
Bizarre irrelevant quote from that book. I think it was made while blasting the eat-less-exercise-more crowd which does not work. Taubes argues that the wrong theory comes from a misunderstanding of the conservation of energy principle, i.e., for anyone who gains weight it has to be true but it does not explain the cause. Growing teens eat more than they expend in energy and the reason is growth hormone. Same applies to gaining weight, the cause is insulin which is elevated when we eat carbs. Cut the carbs and lose weight and possibly a raft of other modern diseases. The science is very clear and the medical field is ignoring it because they owe us a huge mea culpa.
Read the book but here is more data. http://thras.blogspot.com/2009/08/diet.html
Re: Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin
#4I recommend the mono diet. Ingredients: 1 part dirty (ex-)girlfriend. I lost 15 pounds in one month! Highly recommended.
Now that I have that weight off I feel the need to keep it that way, so I've gone from 10 beers a week (ballmer peak..) down to 1 or 2 and cut out as much stuff that has High Fructose Corn Syrup from my intake as I can. And I'm trying to do the CRON thing and eat slower and eat like half of my meals or just have more, smaller meals. Keeps my metabolism up throughout the day and helps me convert more to energy. That seems to have done the trick.
PS - rice cakes and rice/whey protein are great
Re: Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin
#5Let me summarise. If you exercise you'll feel hungrier and if you don't show some self-restraint, you'll probably eat more and either not lose anything or actually put on weight. As the saying goes "Abs are made in the kitchen, not in the gym."
Re: Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin
#6I'm trying to lose weight right now. Actually, I'm trying to get in the best shape of my life, so that I feel better physically and enjoy the sports I play more. I've been losing about 1/2 pound per week for most of this year, while spending about a half hour per day in the pool, and maybe another hour on the basketball court. I took a two weeks off and went to France on vacation. I ate a bunch of great food (though…
> lots of low-intensity exercise that burned calories
The way to lose fat is with intense and brief exercise, like weight circuit training with no rest between sets, on an empty stomach a couple times a week.
Acute exercise in the fasted state, compared with the carbohydrate-fed state, for a given exercise intensity and duration, stimulates the oxidation of fatty acids from both intramyocellular (16) and peripheral (17) fat depots. doi:10.1152/japplphysiol.01195.2007
Related: Short fast sprints 'cut' diabetes http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/edinburgh_and_ea...
Brief intense training decreases insulin sensitivity, which leads to less fat.
Working out every day to "burn calories" is a very poor use of time. Work out hard and short (20 min) a couple times a week. This will change your hormone profile, boosting growth hormone and testosterone and reducing insulin sensitivity. Those changes make you leaner.
Re: Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin
#7I'm trying to lose weight right now. Actually, I'm trying to get in the best shape of my life, so that I feel better physically and enjoy the sports I play more. I've been losing about 1/2 pound per week for most of this year, while spending about a half hour per day in the pool, and maybe another hour on the basketball court. I took a two weeks off and went to France on vacation. I ate a bunch of great food (though…
> lots of low-intensity exercise that burned calories The way to lose fat is with intense and brief exercise, like weight circuit training with no rest between sets, on an empty stomach a couple times a week. Acute exercise in the fasted state, compared with the carbohydrate-fed state, for a given exercise intensity and duration, stimulates the oxidation of fatty acids from both intramyocellular (16) and peripheral (…
The entire point of the article was that working out hard and short a couple times a week doesn't help one lose weight, and that sustained continuous activity does. The reasoning is those bursts of short activity are met with increased caloric intake, defeating the value of any exercise.
Re: Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin
#8Let me summarise. If you exercise you'll feel hungrier and if you don't show some self-restraint, you'll probably eat more and either not lose anything or actually put on weight. As the saying goes "Abs are made in the kitchen, not in the gym."
"if you don't show some self-restraint" - the articles premise was that the brief bursts of activity reduce your ability to show self-restraint. I find it interesting that people think "self-restraint" is some magical ability that isn't weakened/enhanced like any other capability of people. The reality is that managing the "Self-Restraint" muscle is probably much more important than trying to manage other muscles.
Re: Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin
#9Gee, I can eat more calories of pizza in ten minutes than I could burn off in two hours of running... if I could run for two hours at the same pace I can run for half an hour. What more explanation do you need?
On the other hand, exercise improves my mood and helps me limit my eating, and for that reason it's quite helpful.
Re: Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin
#10Here's my experience:
Running was extraordinarily effective in helping me lose weight. However, it took quite a bit to do it. I was on a cross-country team in high school. That took me from slightly chubby to rail-thin. Every single person on the team who started out over-weight made great progress. One fat kid lost at least 30 pounds in just three months. Nobody I knew who kept running stayed fat.
Still, I have to say that my experience fits with the results of the experiment mentioned in the article. At one point after spending a few years doing little but sitting in front of the computer, I decided to lose about 25 kilos. I went out and did about the amount the "high exercise" group mentioned in the article did, and I just ate more as a result. However, after going over about 50km/week, I found my appetite suppressed. It was kind of like my body had found its equilibrium and my hunger was based upon how much I actually needed. I lost weight really quickly after that.