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Why Doesn't Exercise Lead To Weight Loss?
antdude writes "The New York Times' Well blog reports that 'for some time, researchers have been finding that people who exercise don't necessarily lose weight.' A study published online in September 2009 in The British Journal of Sports Medicine was the latest to report apparently disappointing slimming results. In the study, 58 obese people completed 12 weeks of supervised aerobic training without changing their diets. The group lost an average of a little more than seven pounds, and many lost barely half that. How can that be?"
The Hackers Diet makes it clear: Exercise just doesn't burn that many calories. You can lose weight just by eating less calories than you burn, no exercise required.
http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/www/hackdiet.html
Putting stuff in your mouth is just step one. How you chew your food, how well it is digested, how active your metabolism is, all these will affect how much energy you actually get out of your food.
Still, physics still stand: Use more energy than you get through food you _will_ lose weight.
.: Max Romantschuk
Well, a 3.5 to 7 pound weight loss over 12 weeks isn't such a bad result. You can't just diet, you have to change lifestyle. TFA seemed kind of whiny, like one expects to magically melt the pounds off if you run around a while. Even moderate physical activity only burns a couple of hundred calories per hour - that's one brownie.
Then there is the issue of converting fat to muscle (which weighs more) and the fact that people in general don't exercise as much as they think they do. For most people, weight control is hard, it's basically a lifetime commitment to minimizing calories and maximizing physical work.
The world continues to deteriorate
Give up.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
But..but...it's just thermodynamics! There's no way that the human body could be a complex organism that adapts to it's environment or anything like that! If you're fat it's because you're lazy! Exercise and you must lose weight! 2nd law says so!
Oh, wait...
"Where quality is like a dead stinking rat - you just can't miss it."
if you are still munching your way through 6 soft drinks, 2 packets of doritoes, a couple of chocolate bars and fried chicken each day you are still sucking in a hell of a lot more calories than you can burn off with just exercise?
The main role of exercise in weight loss is to help you maintain your metabolic rate ( or increase it a bit) while eating a normal amount of calories.
For a regular guy this should be about 2500 to 3000 Calories depending on your body size.
If you just cut your calories, your body is going to tend to just drop it's metabolic rate, so it's harder to lose weight with diet alone.
Oils and fats have 4 times the energy packed in them as carbs and protein, so if you are eating a lot of fatty food it is going to give you a lot of calories without filling you up much.
a normal healthy diet (ie. balanced protein/carbs and healthy fats, like from nuts, fish & avocados) plus exercise is the way to really succeed. Have a big heap of non-starchy veggies and it will really help fill you up without too much extra calories compared to having say, fries with your steak.
Oh. and diet drinks have been found to have a tendancy to fool your body it is starving, which gives you a bigger appetite, so avoid those & just drink fewer sugary beverages instead.
Losing weight isn't rocket science. Increase /maintain your metabolism a bit with 30 min excercise a day and reduce your calorie intake to below what your body burns is all you need to do - and be patient. Don't expect to lose more than about 2 pounds a week - any more is too fast and unsustainable in the long term.
The muscle you put on with exercise also helps you maintain your weight loss because muscle burns more energy than fat.
Break out of the overweight geek stereotype and be a healthy fit geek - you will think better too when you improve your circulation.
Like all good science, that's true in an ideal world. In reality, it's a bit more complex. Stop eating so much and your metabolism slows, which means you burn less and need to eat less still. In fact, it's quite possible to starve to death with excess body fat still in place, simply because your metabolism slows too much and available energy stores aren't being depleted.
Weight loss requires the one-two punch of diet and exercise. Dieting reduces intake, and exercise burns energy and, crucially, maintains metabolic rate. Dieting can't do it alone, and nor can exercise, for that matter.
The report tells us nothing new - this has all been known for a long time.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
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When you're a tub of lard, it's the lard that'll go.
Simple explanation: That's what the body stores it for...
No sig today...
Also, something that often seems to be forgotten is that fat is an excellent insulator. I believe this is why, once you put on even a small amount of chub, you find it _drastically_ harder to lose weight. Every hour of every day you're burning far less energy simply staying warm. When you have negligable body fat, the increase in lost heat keeps your metabolism high enough to continue to stay thin.
Even if you're a tub of lard, the body reduce your metabolism and metabolize unused muscle mass before using fat reserves.
McDonald's hasn't been around long enough to have an evolutionary impact. Starvation has.
Show me a overweight Olympic level marathon runner, and I might believe it.
Me thinks you have cause and effect mixed up here. People are Olympic runners because they have a body that's optimal for it, not vice versa.
The sole purpose of fat reservoirs is to extend the time of survival in times of malnutrition. On the contrary people who do "exercise" in pre-historic times (meaning to do what everyone had to do) and were not able to retain or even gain weight, are more likely going to die in times of need. So people who fall into that pre-historic ultimate winner group and who want to loose weight need to eat less, much less.
Everytime I exercise I gain weight, I started overweight about a year ago and am now 16 pounds heavier. I lost fat and gained muscle and I feel better for it.
Obsessing over weight is pointless as muscle is 3 times heavier per unit of volume than fat. BMI is a really stupid measure as it can't tell muscle from fat.
Yup, burning muscle sucks.
I've had two major weight loss periods in my life:
First was from 130 kilos down to 80 kilos. I did this through eating 1500 kcal per day exclusing green veggies AND doing intensive cardio on the treadmill five times a week, hitting 500kcal on the calorie counter each time.
Now I did drop a load of weight, but a good portion of that was muscle. I did regular max-lift tests on biceps and my legs, and over the course of my weight loss the weights I could lift more than halved.
Second major weight loss is from 108kg to 94kg. It's still ongoing, with the final goal being 80kg again. This time I didn't want to loose muscle, so joined the local gym and took professional advise. This resulted in a combination of diet and mixed training plan being made. For the food, my intake drops to 1500-1700 kcal per day for six days a week, split into 6 meals. For the training, I do 3 weight sessions a week (upper body, lower body, upper body, lower body etc etc), 3 cardio sessions doing interval training and 1 session which combines cardio and weights focusing on endurance.
The result? At the half way point I'm stronger than when I started. I've increase my weights by about 30% since the start (about 4 months now). I'm also getting some muscle definition. Weight loss is now steady - it's slower than my first but the actual inches being lost around my waist more than the last time.
So through my experience you're right. Cardio training combined with diet for weightloss is really counter productive. Adding weights in there is clearly the way to go.
Its kind of like watching an ice berg melt, it takes a long time for not much to happen, and then all the sudden it accelerates and disappears.
When you have more muscle mass, you also burn more calories at rest, and can reach higher levels of exertion thereby burning more calories per hour. So the whole process starts to accelerate.
Fat is less dense than muscle. You may weigh a bit less but it'll be muscle, not fat so you'll be significantly smaller.
It takes about 12 weeks to see results. Then you just have to keep it up, which is why I chose karate and jujutsu. You get fit and it isn't mind numbingly boring.
Btw, the failure rate for diets is something like 95%[1] which it pretty bloody significant scientifically.
[1]http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/2725943.stm
Deleted
For the actual very top level, like the Olympics, that may be the case, but in general, he's got the cause and effect chain right. I know a girl who in high school was really overweight and dumpy, then in college she started running and eventually lost about 80 lbs, joined the college track and cross-country teams, and became a ranked women's runner in the state. Apparently she had an aptitude for running, but never the less, her previous sedentary high-calorie lifestyle had left her in poor shape, and a lot of hard work put her into great shape.
Maybe the very top competitive runners in the world could only reach that status due to genetics PLUS tons of hard work, I think the jury's still out on what the contributions of each are. Surely not just anyone could be an olympic runner by working really hard, because lots and lots of runners who work really hard can't make the Olympics. But if you're talking about just being in good shape vs. being fat, ANYBODY, short of people with certain diseases and similar constraints, could be thin and strong and in good cardiovascular condition if they just ate enough less and exercised enough more for long enough. Likewise, any Olympic runner or other athlete could be fat and unhealthy by sitting around eating all day.
Certainly some people have a much easier time of it than others, but I know people who are obese and in terrible health who actually have a hard time putting on weight but absolutely stuff themselves like gluttons nearly continuously, people who eat more calories at dinner than I eat in a day, almost always of terrible food, and who drink almost as many calories again each day in soda as I consume all together. (Seriosuly - a "blooming onion appetizer with dip, 16oz steak with baked potato with sour cream, a 16 oz Coke, bread and butter, and a slice of cheese cake for dessert is over 3,000 calories - I eat about 2,000 a day, and 4 liters of Coke a day is 1,690 calories.) I also know people who put on weight very easily, but who keep themselves under 2,000 calories a day, with lots of fruits and vegetables and whole grains and such, and exercise regularly, who are thin and fit. People who often WANT to eat more, but don't. People have a tremendous amount of control over their weight, which most choose not to bother with.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
Cut sugar, sugar contained foods. Potato, bread...
Drop your blood sugar to burn your fat.
Plain simple.
Or mock me with your high knowladge about this than.
And while you mocking me, I'm melting just sitting down here and slasdotting...
[My english is better than most other people's Turkish, so please point out mistakes politely. Thank you.]
I was once obese, 300 lbs. I lost 100 pounds over an 18 month period by going on a low carb diet, with no significant extra exercise. My thoughts on that are that if your body is capable of going into ketosis (the mode where it gears up for using fat as energy, both from food in the stomach and fat stores throughout the body) then it is effective for weight reduction. Also, eating a low carb diet got very boring for me, and I found myself eating less because of this (was never hungry or starving myself though). This of course is different for everyone.
Next major body change was when I joined the Navy. I went into boot camp weighing 199, I got down 8 weeks later weighing 199 but with vastly less body fat. My physical structure changed significantly. I started off not eating to much, but ending up consuming pretty large amounts of calories (and drinking tons of water, that is very much forced on new recruits to avoid dehydration problems which are very common when you are exercising in one form or another for most of the day.) Most of the people in my division did not lose weight, some gained a few pounds, all were in vastly improved physical condition. Not big body builder type musles, but lean endurance muscles.
The best method of weight control/weight loss I know is to not eat until I feel full. If I am hungry I will eat until the hunger stops, and then wait 15 to 30 minutes. Sometimes I find there is more room, usually I find that I am full. It seems to take food some time to settle in and for my stomach to give the feedback to the brain that it is doing alright. The stomach is actually a pretty small organ and the digestive system seems to operate best when working on small loads. Full loads both have the effect of stretching and enlarging the stomach (thus making it more difficult to feel full) and diverting energy to digestion (alot of energy is consumed for digestion, thats why people go on health fasts, to give the rest of the body a period of time where the body's energy can be continuously applied to other systems for repair and maintenance. Thats the idea anyway) that could be used for other things, like keeping one alert and full of energy and providing for the immune system to do its job.
My $0.02
you forget the fundamental psychological effect.
7 pounds, in 12 weeks - some claim it's not bad, some claim it's weight loss so it's okay and so on.
First off, if you weight 238 pounds, going down to 232 pounds is just a pathetic joke. It took you 3 months to get there. It will take you 5 years to get there at current speed. It would be a reachable goal if it was fun, but...
But the second problem is that it's a dull, boring, miserable exercise. From a slim person's point of view, exercise makes you feel far less miserable than from an obese one's.
The thermal isolation makes you sweat like a pig and overheat in matter of minutes.
If lifting a weight uses 50 joules of energy, a fit person will easily lift it, expending the 50 joules distributed equally throughout the volume of thick muscles. A person with poor muscles will expend the same 50 joules but concentrated in thin, weak muscle that aches, hurts and throbs with exertion, it uses the same insignificant amount of energy but feels vastly worse.
The fat gives you extra weight for exercises like push-ups, sit-ups or pull-ups. Sure you use more energy but don't neglect the psychological effect, how miserable and ashamed you feel without breath after two push-ups.
Then you start feeling hungry, and the body which has a tendency to gain fat, usually gains it because your hunger feels more intense to you than to most slim people who just shrug it off. Take it from an obese person, getting really hungry feels somewhat like drug starvation, you feel ultra-miserable. And still you need to cut on the calories.
Oh, with even little strong will you will go like that for a month easily, suffering and feeling miserable, but telling yourself you're doing it to lose weight to be able to do all the things you can't do because you are obese.
After second month of being miserable like that you start having second thoughts.
After third month, when you went from 240 pounds to 220, you can see it will take you another 3 years of feeling miserable before you get out of this swamp. You say "fuck it", drop the exercise and start eating again.
If you can devise a diet that is low-calorie but filling and tasty, if you can devise exercises that are fun, it could work.
And even worse if eating is your method for stress. It becomes a habit. Something stresses you out and you won't calm down until you fill up your stomach. It's a habit like smoking or drinking. Unfortunately, the fundamental rule of dropping any habit is to drop it entirely. If you're a chain smoker, no one smoke a day, you just have to stop. If you're an alcoholic, you can't drink one and stop, you can't drink alcohol at all. But what about eating? You can't drop eating entirely. It's a horrible habit to drop, really.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Thing is, though: They're right.
If you haven't read "Good Calories, Bad Calories" by Gary Taubes, you should. This book outlines how 40 years of bad science and personality cults in nutrition research has lead to a serious misunderstanding of the causes of heart disease and obesity.
At the very least you should read his eye-opening NY Times article, which pre-dated the book by a couple of years.
In the course of every project, it will become necessary to shoot the scientists and begin production.
Genetic doesn't matter much for most people: if your genetics is a bit worse than average for some task, you can compensate with practice and skill to become a bit above average. For the extreme ends of the spectrum, it matters a great deal. Two decades of continuous training are unlikely to turn either you or me into an olympic style athlete.
That's not "geneticism" (which is an outdated and disproven theory) but simple biological fact.
I lost 25 pounds this year, and it mostly came from a diet change. Excersizing is great, and can speed things up but the biggest factor to losing weight and keeping it off was just eating less. Cut out the crap like snacks and pop soda, try to "feel hungry" more often it won't kill you. Excersize makes you look great and develop some muscule but that alone won't take off the weight until you change your diet.
did you forget to take your meds?
I have gone through large weight swings at different periods throughout my life. I was ectomorphic growing up, and matured into a mesomorph. Because my job is IT, I'm sedentary for long periods of time, and as such, will accumulate fat, especially given that in my mid-30's I still eat just like I did in my mid-teens.
Due to my particular personality - mild OCD, extremely impatient - I am very, very good at modifying the way I look in short periods of time. I lost 19 pounds in a week, just to prove a point. I ate 3 hard boiled eggs per day, 1 slice of whole wheat toast, lots of water, lots of coffee, and never stopped chewing sugarfree gum. I also exercised for 4-5 hours per day. It takes incredible willpower. It absolutely sucks. You'll feel like shit. But it does work.
Swimmers who cross the English Channel and Florida Straits also lose huge amounts of weight in very short periods of time. Susie Maroney lost 22 pounds in just over a day when she swam from Cuba to Key West. Not all of it fat, to be sure, but a lot of it was.
Much hype was made about Michael Phelps' diet when he trains. He consumes between 10,000 - 12,000 calories per day while training. So imagine your daily food intake, and quadruple it. That's how much he eats. And that's just to prevent him from losing weight. He has to eat that much to stay the same.
I also freedive. Freedivers are some of the leanest athletes in the world. They tend to stay away from gyms as too much muscle burns too much oxygen. The repeated depletion and replenishment of O2 across the cell membrane really burns the calories. After a 4-day freediving training session off the coast of Florida, I had lost 6 pounds of fat in 4 days.
As others have noted, most people feel like they're doing a lot of exercise, but they simply aren't.
Exercise absolutely works. Just just aren't doing it intensely enough or long enough if you aren't burning fat.
"Study your math, kids. Key to the universe." -The Archangel Gabriel
There's a difference between a runner and an Olympic runner.
Yes your good competitive runner likely isn't fat and their training probably got them that way.
An Olympic level runner on the other hand combined that training with some genetics or with some drugs/etc. Either way it was more than just the training.
...if you run the numbers and then understand them you will realize that Adkins is a pretty intense "starvation" diet. It's pretty easy to lose weight on a starvation diet assuming that you can tolerate the "starvation" part.
It takes rather a bit of effort to flee carbohydrates to that degree.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Have you never seen those pictures of obese mothers in the 3rd world with starving, emaciated children? It's more complicated than calories in, calories out--because under certain circumstances your body CAN'T burn fat (specifically, when insulin levels are kept high by a diet too rich in carbohydrates and too low in protein/fat.) Now, I grant you that in a true starvation diet you'll lose weight--but you have to get to VERY low calorie levels for that to happen.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
The problem is people don't know how to exercise. I'm at the gym a lot, and I see people who think they are getting a good workout but are not.
You can't walk for 20 minutes on a treadmill, go home and eat two cookies as a reward, and expect to lose weight.
Run 10 miles and get back to me.
[FromTheMorning]