Time Article: Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin

I'm wondering what people think of this article:http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20090806/hl_time /08599191485700. 

I totally agreed with it. The conclusion really summed it up

"In short, it's what you eat, not how hard you try to work it off, that matters more in losing weight."

Losing weight is really 95% eating habits. The article really just studies problems with self-control when it comes to eating. Not really saying that exercise is useless, but rather saying many people can not control their hunger urges after a hard workout. I thought this was pretty spot on. They could have improved the title of the article though, very misleading.

Well, as it says in the fitness forum FAQ "You can't out-train your diet" - I know, I wrote it there.

 'course the author is compounding the problem by focusing entirely on the wrong kind of exercise for improving body composition. And taking Gary Taubes seriously shows that he's got major problems with understanding the field he's reporting on as Taubes is so far off the mark he's not even wrong. But yep, while exercise helps and is a necessary component* of successful long-term weight management, it's not sufficient on its own.

*National Weight Control Registry. People who have successfully dieted and kept the weight off for more than 5 years have several commonalities, among other incorporating some form of calorie reduction and calorie counting, keeping a food journal, regular weigh-ins, and getting at least one hour of movement a day.

Agreed re: the title.

Like everything else, it's about balance. Too much exercise leads to its own set of problems. Excess is never the answer.

There is a limit to how much you can exercise daily, there is no way to run a marathon every day for example, the ability of the human body to create motion is limited because we are all slaves to the laws of physics. You have to balance the output with the input (or food intake) to maintain weight, or create a deficit to lose. It's possible to exercise intensely and still eat to much, that's why calorie count is usefull, helps everyone do the math.

Well, the article says the reasons why exercise isn't making people lose weight is because they get hungry afterwards.

I personally don't get hungry at all after exercise. I have a light dinner most of the times and stop eating by 7pm, and I go to sleep at around 12 am or 1, and I'm not hungry. I don't feel like eating at all after!

It depends on the person, and I think if you only diet and don't exercise you won't lose as much weight as if you DID exercise + diet.

And it says 1 lb of muscle burns about 6 calories per hour , and fat burns 2 calories, and they are sort of telling you that's it worthless, if you read it. If you had 10 lbs of muscle, thats 60 calories an hour. 60 x 24 hours = 1440 calories alone burned with 10 lbs.

10 lbs of fat, 20 calories an hour. 20 x 24 = 480 calories an hour.

See where I'm going? Muscle DOES help in burning fat.

well, I really don't agree. Like the poster above, my hunger is diminished directly after workout. Exercise was sometimes the only reason for my weight loss.

They said that fat burns 2 calories a day per pound and muscle burns 6.  If that was true, the BMR of a 172-pound man who is 23% fat would be under 900 calories!

Original Post by ranchobernardo:

They said that fat burns 2 calories a day per pound and muscle burns 6.  If that was true, the BMR of a 172-pound man who is 23% fat would be under 900 calories!

 The brain is the largest daily user of calories.

The article said 6 calories per pound of muscle per DAY, not hour.  Wouldn't it be nice if it was per hour?  Someone invent a pill for that, please!

Ranchobernardo - there are other things contributing to BMR, such as basic organ functions.  So the theoretical 172 pound man is going to have a signifigantly higher BMR than 900 calories.

My main concern with the article is this line "After all, doesn't exercise turn fat to muscle?"  Um.  WHAT?  I'm hoping I took that too literally and this guy knows that muscle and fat are two separate things.  If not, I'm cancelling my TIME subscription.

Original Post by danielle860:

My main concern with the article is this line "After all, doesn't exercise turn fat to muscle?"  Um.  WHAT?  I'm hoping I took that too literally.

Don't be too sure. A poster once said this: "Well, technically, fat is the same as muscle..."

*crickets*

I agree with this article completely. On days that I eat more, I have the energy to exercise more. For the sake of simplicity, let's say I eat 1000 calories a day, and find the energy to burn an extra 1000 calories a day, then it's really just the same net burn as it would have been if I ate nothing. If I were to eat nothing all day, there is no way I'd have the energy to do anything, let alone work out. Eating an extra 300 calories or whatever might give me the energy to walk briskly for an hour, but I could have just as easily not eaten the extra 300 at all. I suppose, though, that if I were to have a lapse in willpower or whatever, and eat a slice of cake - then I could work that off with an hour of exercise. But you can't expect yourself to sustain that sort of activity every day. Better just to not have that slice of cake, and have some fruit and yogurt instead.

 Another interesting effect when it comes to muscle and exercise: untrained muscle burns about 5.7kcal/d/lbs. Trained muscle burns about 7.2kcal/d,/lbs or 1.5kcal/d more.

 An untrained individual carrying the average of about 65lbs 80lbs-90lbs muscle mass of the non-obese and non-exercising population would boost his or her calorie expenditure by roughly 100kcal/d  120-135kcal/d simply by moving from 'untrained' to 'trained' status. This however, requires that the author gives up his obsession with endurance training and hits the weight room at least twice a week instead of playing hamster on gym equipment and 'aerobics' classes.

 (The theoretical 172lbs man would be carrying 132lbs of lean mass, but not all of that would be actual muscle. Things like internal organs and brains also take up room. Still, at 130-135lbs of lean mass he might be able to get that up to 180-190lbs at 5% body fat with serious training if he's a little over 6" tall - assuming no drug use. Example above adjusted for 172lbs man.)

 Helpful, and significant enough - but again, no substitute for calorie counting and learning what a portion actually is.

I have lost a total of 35 pounds so far with a combination of cardio and weight training. without a ton of modification to my diet, but I do count my calories. without the cardio and weight training I'm sure I would of lost no where near as much...

so whatever TIME !

Sounds to me like the author is bitter at the fact that he can't keep weight off.

I actually found that the more I exercise, the less hungry I am! I really hope some people don't read this and take it as a "well, if it wont make me lose weight I might as well sit on my butt all day".

Original Post by violetflower:

well, I really don't agree. Like the poster above, my hunger is diminished directly after workout. Exercise was sometimes the only reason for my weight loss.

Same!

Maybe I am hungrier more often in the day than when I wasn't exercising - but I want to choose healthier options, not "perfectly salted, golden-brown French fries"... and because I am hungry to begin with, it is easier to tell when I am satisfied, which stops me from stuffing my face.

I find it way easier to have a calorie deficit on the days I exercise, even though I'm hungrier. I probably eat less too.

I think it's a very poor article.

"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.

What does he mean by exercise? Yoga? A) It depends what kind of exercise you're doing and B) it's only useless without attention to diet - otherwise it's great. My deficits are only because I exercise, not because I starve myself. The study only focused on people who didn't change their diets - of course exercise alone won't do much.

And, like other posters have pointed out, this shocker:

After all, doesn't exercise turn fat to muscle, and doesn't muscle process excess calories more efficiently than fat does?

No and no. Muscle uses more calories, which actually means it is less efficient as using calories... which is a good thing.

And then: after you work out hard enough to convert, say, 10 lb. of fat to muscle - a major achievement - you would be able to eat only an extra 40 calories per day, about the amount in a teaspoon of butter, before beginning to gain weight. Good luck with that.

Yeah... but that's not counting the calories burned during that exercise.

Just... dumb, dumb and dumber.

I have never been able to lose weight without excercising.  Years ago I did weight watchers, and when I started I had already been excercising 5 days a week, and I lost weight at a rate of about half a pound a week, but then a couple months later, I left school and didn't have a gym anymore.  I tried taking the dogs on really long walks, but without the "real" excercise every day, I stopped losing weight. 

From the article:

Some research has found that the obese already "exercise" more than most of the rest of us. In May, Dr. Arn Eliasson of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center reported the results of a small study that found that overweight people actually expend significantly more calories every day than people of normal weight - 3,064 vs. 2,080. He isn't the first researcher to reach this conclusion. 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."

Thank you, Captain Obvious.  Yes, you would burn more calories dragging around an 80 pound weight with you everywhere you go too.  But, I'm short and only 10 pounds above a healthy BMI.  If I don't want to be stuck eating just 1200 calories a day, I need to excercise to create a deficit.  And yes, when I have a particularly active day, I do get hungrier and I do eat a little more, but I still wind up with a bigger deficit than most days.

well crap!  so why am I killing myself at the gym???  As of right this minute, I'm very confused about exercise/calorie burn/deficit, etc.  I have not lost any weight while eating less and exercising.    I'm about to give up.

I disagree with the article. Just like some above, I cannot lose weight without exercise.... I started last May and with healthy diet and exercise, I lost a few lbs. Fast forward to July, I barely exercised at all. As a result, I actually started gaining some of my weight that I lost back (ugh) even though I was eating properly! Exercise is definitely a must for me.

 But then, I could be an exception because I am on depo, so that may be why I need to have exercise rather than relying on 'diet' alone. *shrugs*

Original Post by naturistdiva:

well crap!  so why am I killing myself at the gym???  As of right this minute, I'm very confused about exercise/calorie burn/deficit, etc.  I have not lost any weight while eating less and exercising.    I'm about to give up.

Read the rest of the thread... the article is cruddy.