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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?"
That's because you shouldn't eat diet food.. It's pre-packaged crap for people who are too lazy to learn how to cook properly for themselves.
Shortcuts are never tasty
I highly recommend getting a book called "The Okinawan Program" which is a study of some of the healthiest people on the planet and their diet and lifestyle.
It contains some delicious healthy recipes that leave you feeling very full, are exotic and tasty as hell and yet keep you below that horrific calorie level needed for weight loss
To take what someone said earlier and expand on it. "Stop eating so much fatty, and learn to cook!"
Muscle mass is also a good way to lose weight long term. Short term, it weighs more than fat, so you get the surprising (to naive people) result that exercise can make you put weight ON if nothing else changes (and subconsciously you get more hungry due to the calorie burning).
Long term, muscle mass needs feeding. That's why your body gets rid of it if you don't use it - it's a waste of energy. You put muscle mass on, you burn calories whether you use it or not. Granted, it takes a lot. The best to focus on (so I'm told) is leg muscle, as they're already big and building them up is relatively easy (running/cycling/walking all do it).
But sure - exercise alone and diet alone isn't going to lose you weight. You need to do both.
I know a lot of people are going to talk about CoE. After all, that's the driving equation here. It is absolutely correct, but can we not glean more insight into the problem?
IWAHTE (I Was A Heat Transfer Engineer), so my guess is that what's going on is that people spend the vast majority of their calories maintaining body temperature. If you eat less, your body's first reaction might well be to reduce skin temperature, maintaining core temperature. This theory links the fact that women eat less then men by 20% with the observation that women are complain about being cold earlier than men. Less calories burnt to keep skin temperature high.
In the case of someone who is overweight, they have an additional layer of blubber (yes, basement /. denizens, you are coated in blubber) that insulates them and maintains their core temperature for free. Maybe there's a hysteresis? First the body weight comes down, then the body learns it can waste excess heat maintaining skin temperature, and then, and only then, the body is free to consume additional calories.
Now, I don't do human anatomy, so a doctor would have to chime in and confirm just how much of the body's caloric consumption is lost to heat, vs. other bodily functions.
A personal example: on an average day, I eat some 3500 calories. But I am athletic, and only weigh 70, so this is a "good" 3500 kCal. What I notice is that my skin temperature is always warm, especially compared to women. In fact, I am very comfortable when the temperature is around 15deg inside. I go outside on a 5deg day in nothing more than a sweater and a top hat. I routinely mock my friends who wear a sweater, coat, and scarf when I'm sitting around in short sleeves. Certainly, my body is horribly inefficient, and if society falls in some sort of catastrophe, I will certainly be one of the first to starve (if my 20/800 eyesight doesn't make me walk off a cliff first). However, in a society that has mass amounts of overconsumption, it seems to fit me just fine.
A second personal example: I dated a German doctor who as a 16-year-old doing a year-abroad in Minnesota, had been anorexic. After she came back, she put on a lot of weight: obviously her body reacting to the extreme abuse she had given it. Now as a 25-year-old, she was in the Bundeswehr (German army), and this girl could RUN. She ran marathons. She ran 2 hours with 25kg of weight attached to her. And yet she was always, always overweight by 8kg or so vs. her pre-American anorexia bout. Not a lot, but she was... pudgy. She'd been to doctors, etc, and could do nothing to get her weight down. I lived with her for a while, I can guarantee she ate nothing but healthy food, and only somewhere around 1600-1800kCal/day. However, she liked her rooms warm.
So I am less physically active, yet consume twice as much. The only thing that can explain this is that physical activity just doesn't use that many calories, not compared to maintaing body temperature. Since I go outside without a coat, I burn more calories than she does to maintain the same core temperature.
My two cents, but I certainly welcome other /.er ideas, though.
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Having recently lived in Tokyo gave me a new perspective. I always struggled with losing weight in North America, but once I moved to Japan the weight came off very quickly. What I think were the main contributing factors: 1) I walked everywhere, walked upstairs/downstairs at stations and work. 2) Small portions - your stomach gets used to ever-expanding portions. Portion control is unfortunately necessary. Miso soup is amazing for expanding rice in your stomach and making you feel very full for incredible low number of calories. 3) Good calories - There is, of course, processed foods in Japan, just not as in-your-face. Most grocery stores are super small and in your local market. Some only carry fresh produce and fish and meat. I cooked every meal in Japan. I did so in Canada too, the difference was that a lot of Japanese dishes are boiled / steamed instead of fried. I told one of my clients about Eggplant Parmesan and he looked nauseated. I picked up a Japanese cookbook and learned that they lightly boil/steam their eggplant. 4) I've heard that the more sugar you eat, the less flavor you can taste. I cut out all sugar while in Japan (except for alcoholic drinks - yum). For me, it was true that I could really taste food again. It's a hard sensation to describe something you hadn't been sensing before but were all of a sudden attune to. I have a feeling that this extra sugar leads to MORE extra sugar to taste said sugar and also to increased levels of 'flavor' in dishes. I've heard that the Japanese like their flavors subtle. This is definitely the experience I had in downtown Tokyo. Anyway, it worked for me - I went from 135 lbs down to 112 lbs. Now, back in Canada, I notice advertisements for HUGE portions of everything. Last anecdote, I got a Tall latte from the Starbucks in Shinagawa station and while walking to work I ran into a client who commented on my coffee, laughing, saying I had a big appetite. Considering a "Tall" is no big thing here, I both blushed and was taken aback. After that I really reconsidered if I needed so many fat and calories in my diet - don't we always upsize only because it's just a better deal, not because we actually want more food? Just my thoughts!