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I've found online reaction to this article quite interesting. Normally data and study minded folks bring out the "anecdotally, this doesn't seem true" response
by thedz 10y ago
I've found online reaction to this article quite interesting. Normally data and study minded folks bring out the "anecdotally, this doesn't seem true" responses, and people seem think the article is attacking exercise as a concept.
It's not.
It's saying that if a person's goal is to lose weight, then adjusting to a good diet is far more important than (a reasonable amount of) exercise.
The article does not claim that exercise is harmful. In fact, it explicitly states that there are very many health reasons why exercise is important, and that exercise+diet is still better than diet alone.
It also goes into the culture surrounding exercise, and how it tends to be misleading. The education in popular culture around exercising presents it as a magic pill, as being a major driving force behind weight loss. You see this on magazine covers and on tv, "belly fat exercises", "toning exercises", all sorts of exercises that serve to reinforce the idea that weight is primarily a result of physical activity rather than (for most people) food consumption.
Ultimately though, I think the studies referenced back up the conclusion pretty well: weight loss effectiveness goes diet+exercise > diet > exercise, given standard amounts of each.
- hvoiiita 10y agoI think to accurately display the relative effectiveness of diet and exercise for weight loss is something like this: diet & exercise >> diet >>>>>>>> exercise I like this quote: "You work hard on that machine for an hour, and that work can be erased with five minutes of eating afterward"
- x0x0 10y agoeven easier (as weightlifters, powerlifters, bodybuilders all know): weight comes from your mouth, not from the gym abs are made in the kitchen 80% diet, 20% training
- 3pt14159 10y agoAbs are made in the kitchen, but as someone who went from 22% bodyfat to 11% they are pretty puny abs if you don't pair it with some pretty frequent exercise.
- ffumarola 10y ago80% diet, 10% training, 10% sleep is the one I like. A lot of people overlook how important sleep is.
- peteretep 10y agoCan't outrun a fork!
- Latty 10y agoWhile that's true in isolation, if you do the birth control thing of success rate with average usage, I imagine diet alone will massively win out. Diet and exercise, to someone who does not enjoy the exercise, is significantly harder to do than just dieting. People who struggle to lose weight generally struggle to achieve just one of dieting or exercising, so advising them to focus on the easier and more effective option is best. Obviously, it varies person to person - if someone enjoys a team sport enough to exercise and still combine it with good diet, great. Those people don't tend to be the ones struggling with weight loss, however.
- plq 10y agoOf course a healthy dose of exercise is not harmful and the article reiterates this point many times. However, it also says that exercising may make your body more efficient, which lowers the overall energy that's used to keep us alive, which in turn may "hurt", to a certain extent, the weight loss rate. When I was running regularly, I could see my heart rate go down day after day when I measured it right after I woke up. Don't exercise to lose weight. Exercise to keep healthy. If you want to lose weight, you need to keep an eye on your calorie intake more than you keep an eye on the calories you burn. Not everybody can perform a 2000-calorie workout in one go.
- fleitz 10y agoeverything in the article is true because they use technical terms, when you consider the overall effect of exercise and the overall goal of 'weight loss' being body fat reduction and improved fitness, exercise is an excellent way to achieve that
- paulsutter 10y ago"Why you shouldn't /rely/ on exercise to lose weight" would be a less controversial title. Instead they chose a provocative, click-baity title and tone to the article. The most accurate title would be "Don't exercise in order to earn the right to eat junk food later". Which is the meager point they're actually making. The article deserves all the criticism - it has been designed specifically to provoke it. Journalists love to divide ho-hum issues into polarized opposing sides.
- oalders 10y agoIndeed. Something like "You can't outrun your fork" would have been succinct and to the point.
- visakanv 10y agoThe running joke in reddit fitness communities is that the best workout for losing weight is Fork Putdowns
- thedz 10y ago> The most accurate title would be "Don't exercise in order to earn the right to eat junk food later". Which is the meager point they're actually making. Except that's not the only point the article makes. You might disagree with the title, but the article does attempt to back it up. Many paragraphs are dedicated to explaining why for many people, exercising might actually be harmful to their weight loss goals, due to how we tend to overestimate how many calories were burned and other factors (such as studies showing that the body may attempt to balance energy output in other areas). In that sense "Why you shouldn't exercise to lose weight" is precisely the thesis that the article is trying to support. You might disagree with it, but I don't really think its egregious clickbait. Even if the title is meant to be catchy and provocative. They clearly state why exercising could be detrimental to weight loss goals for some people. Things that the article title doesn't say: - You should never exercise to lose weight - Exercise is bad for you - You can only lose weight by dieting
- paulsutter 10y ago
- agumonkey 10y agoIt's all interrelated. Exercise may (it did to me) shift your brain into seeking other kinds of food and drinks. I'm much more willing to drink simple water after a long soccer match. Exception being swimming, which makes me wanna eat all cakes in sight. It also leads to a different lifestyle if I may say so. Being sedentary means low amount of sensation, leading to the eating for pleasure reflex, all this without a way to consume. Sport will keep you busy, probably make you feel weird, sore then not sore = good feeling. Hinting your mind that you can have good times this way.
- thedz 10y agoOh, definitely. I've lost upwards of 30 pounds over the past year and a half. Much of it is related to changes in my diet, but exercising regularly has definitely helped my diet. Personally, I'm much less likely to eat in excess after exercising because I don't want to "waste" my efforts.
- agumonkey 10y agoI felt this way too, but often I ended up eating bad food because after a while I didn't value exercises as much (went back into a OK zone). Also, told this already, massive health failure forced me out of sugar coated, processed food and beverage. Our life styles is way too easy onto eating to satisfy our tongues and not our body. When stuck in this corner, eating raw veggies, you'll start to notice a lot of enjoyable tastes, and drop in fat aftertaste and overall a realization that how much sugar 'drugs' your brain. It's very hard to not want to take a big bite of cake or chocolate, hamburger etc etc, and inside the comfy zone of our culture, if your health allows it, you'll never have a way to sense that.
- oalders 10y agoIt helps you keep your choices in perspective for sure. Also, for me, if I'm getting a lot of exercise, I actually just don't feel like I need the junk food, so I mostly just do without it.
- TheSpiceIsLife 10y agoI'm going to continue to posit that weight is a factor of genetics / epigenetics and / or body function first and foremost. Why is it that some people, regardless of how much they eat and how little they exercise, never put on weight? That, to me, is the elephant in the room. What is going on in these peoples bodies that is kept out of popular science with regard to weight loss? We know that thyroid hormone function affects weight and metabolism. In women reproductive hormones also affect weight, oestrogen is a hormone present in both males and females, so there's some crossover there. We know that adrenal function can affect weight. We know that insulin resistance can affect weight. There has to be more to it that calories in - calories out = weigh gain or loss. If you have an unaddressed thyroid, reproductive hormone, insulin, or adrenal issue you're going to be working hard to address your weight. It is my suspicion that fixing the diet first improves weight control better than exercise because food is medicine. Anything you put in your body on a daily basis can be medicinal in that it can act to help your body restore homoeostasis or move further away from it.
- colbyh 10y agonot saying that these people don't exist, I've just never seen a controlled study to investigate whether they really can eat more and not gain weight. anecdotally I know these people as well, I just don't trust anecdotal evidence.
- thedz 10y agoIndeed, I've known a few people in my life who say "I can eat as much as I want and I never seem to gain any weight". But then when I actually accompany them, it's mostly that they don't overeat. "As much as they want" is a portion that is aligned with their body.
- bigtunacan 10y agoThis is purely anecdotal... I'm now almost 40 years old and have never been overweight a day in my life. Over the past 20 years my weight has always stayed within about a 15 pound range no matter how much/little I ate and/or exercised. I participated in a caloric intake study at one point in time and I had a higher caloric intake than anyone in the study group. I was not trying to eat more; it was just that until I hit my mid 20s I had to consume excessive quantities of food just to keep from losing weight.
- spinlock 10y agoI think you make a lot of good points but I would contend that the title of the article is click-bait. It's all well and good that the article itself is well reasoned but people read the title and hold on to that.
- ChemicalWarfare 10y ago"The education in popular culture around exercising presents it as a magic pill, as being a major driving force behind weight loss. You see this on magazine covers and on tv, "belly fat exercises", "toning exercises"" There's def some of that going on, but there's also a fair amount of fad diets - atkins, south beach, paleo etc etc popping up here and there. The fact that you get the 6 pack by dieting and not by doing crunches is common knowledge in the "lifting community", on the flip side - lifting when dieting is also important to maintain body comp. And then of course there's the obvious fact that "losing weight" != "losing fat" which makes articles like this not only click-baity but also bordering on being misinformative.
- chillwaves 10y ago> "losing weight" != "losing fat" Does the article say so? And your so called "fad diets" that are low on processed carbohydrates out perform other traditional diets. I doubt that staying away from processed carbohydrates will go away any time soon.
- orionblastar 10y agoI went from 260 pounds to 199 pounds in about a year or so simply by eating less food and cutting out junk food. Only eating fast food when in a hurry and then only a small sandwich like the McDouble which only had one slice of cheese and the Double Cheeseburger had two slices of cheese. I didn't exercise much just did some walking. I took in less calories by eating less food for the tl:dr people.
- Aelinsaar 10y agoThe issue sadly, is that a lot of people online just respond to the headline, not the content of the article.