WHY EXERCISE WON'T MAKE YOU THIN

I’m sure by now many of you have read the article from the August 17^th edition of TIME Magazine titled ‘Why Exercise Won’t Make You Thin.’

First, I want to just give you a quick overview of the article, then I’ll go into a little more detail on a few topics, and finally share an interesting discovery.

I actually have mixed feelings about this article.  The author, John Cloud, makes the assertion that exercise stimulates hunger, which causes a person to eat more (and often times to eat worse in order to “reward” the hard work), thus cancelling out any calorie-burning effects of exercising in the first place.

“Exercise, in other words, isn’t necessarily helping us lose weight.  It may even be making it harder.”

There’s even an illustration within the article that tells the reader how many minutes of various activities one would have to do in order to burn the amount of calories in 1 blueberry muffin (360 calories).  There are 8 activities listed ranging from mowing the yard (66 minutes) or gardening (66 minutes) to vacuuming (92 minutes) and folding laundry (230 minutes).  Now here’s the interesting part…lifting weights is included in the list, and it was (as the article would have you believe) only more effective at burning calories than folding laundry!  You would have to lift weights for 115 minutes, nearly twice as long as you would have to garden, to burn 360 calories.  I can’t tell you how many calories are burned during 5 sets of heavy squats or deadlifts followed by pullups and lunges, but I can assure you it’s more strenuous than vacuuming!! In TIME’s defense, the source of this data was the U.S. Department of Agriculture Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion.

Now to be fair, there was at least one good take-home point:

“Today doctors encourage even their oldest patients to exercise, which is sound advice for many reasons:  People who regularly exercise are at a significantly lower risk for all manner of diseases – those of the heart in particular.  They less often develop cancer, diabetes and many other illnesses.”

In the concluding paragraph, the author offers the readers a glimpse at the solution when he states that “it’s what you eat, not how hard you try to work it off, that matters more in losing weight.”  Then, as opposed to actually offering any insight on what to eat, he offers a final warning to readers:  “fiery spurts of vigorous exercise could lead to weight gain.”  Great.  That’s all Americans need…another excuse NOT to exercise (and to eat cupcakes instead).  It’s no wonder we are the fattest country on Earth.

Now I’m not so naïve as to believe that John Cloud wrote his TIME Magazine article for any reason other than to be controversial (which helps sell magazines).  I completely understand that, and I don’t have a problem with it.  Perhaps the only real problem I have with this article is that Mr. Cloud spends several pages trying to convince us that exercise won’t make us thin without offering a solution.

So what would make us thin?

Here’s a brief view of my take on the issue.

I don’t know who said it first, but it has certainly been said many times by many different people. You can’t out-train a bad diet.  The principle of energy balance (or G-flux) always applies!  A successful weight-loss regimen has to consider both sides of the energy balance equation (energy intake and energy expenditure).  As Dr. John Berardi put it in his G-flux article, a “complete understanding of this model leads us to realize that trying to manipulate total energy intake alone in order to alter body composition lets us down because the energy expenditure side of the equation quickly changes to accommodate intake conditions. And trying to manipulate the energy expenditure side of the equation in order to alter body composition lets us down because the energy intake side of the equation is signaled to change in order to match expenditure conditions.”  In other words, if intake is low, the body will increase hunger while decreasing metabolism.  If intake is high, the reverse is true.  Intake and expenditure do not function independently!

I have long been a fan of Dr. Berardi and his Precision Nutrition system.  About a year ago, Dr. Berardi published an article on his website titled When Exercise Doesn’t Work.  He also recently posted an article in response to the very same TIME Magazine article that I am writing about titled Why Exercise STILL Doesn’t Work.  Dr. Berardi’s conclusion from his original article was that “Exercise, ALONE, doesn’t work.”  His recommendation:  “What you really need is exercise PLUS a sound nutritional program.”  He goes on to list some of the benefits of regular exercise:  “looking better, feeling better, and performing better every single day.”  Said differently, use it or lose it.  The human body was designed for movement, so if you hope to maintain physical independence into your senior years, you’d better have it in your prime years!

Now here’s where it starts to get really interesting.  A colleague of Dr. Berardi (Hellen Kollias) recently reviewed a study by E. Ravussin and blogged about it (Why Exercise DOES Matter).  The study was designed to measure the effects of diet and diet + exercise on Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE…or metabolism).  The study found that both the diet group and the diet + exercise group lost weight.  The difference between the two groups, however, was in their TDEE.  The diet group actually had a reduction in their TDEE by approximately 209 calories/day.  The diet + exercise group actually increased their TDEE by approximately 129 calories/day despite being on a calorie-restricted diet.  That’s living proof of G-flux!  The study concluded the following:

“Furthermore, our data shed some light on lifestyle change interventions that combining diet and physical activities are probably more successful in maintaining weight loss longer term.”

Oh, you’re probably wondering why this study was so interesting…well it turns out that the author of the study was quoted in the TIME magazine “Why Exercise Won’t Make You Thin” as saying:

“In general, for weight loss, exercise is pretty useless,”

On a side note, I thought it was funny that the magazine also featured an article titled ‘Is My Child Overweight?’  The answer…yes.