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"“In general, exercise by itself is pretty useless for weight loss,” says Eric Ravussin, a professor at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge

"“In general, exercise by itself is pretty useless for weight loss,” says Eric Ravussin, a professor at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, La., and an expert on weight loss. It’s especially useless because people often end up consuming more calories when they exercise." Study, have shown that if your energy expenditure and take-in is the same as dieting, exercise can produce the same results. I have this hypothesis that it is psychologically easier to exercise off weight than to restrict your diet below maintenance. Reason why: 1. Less willpower for exercise. Once you are on the treadmill it's easy to continue, while for dieting you will need to control yourself for at least 8hrs. So, comparing 15mins of control for getting started to exercise to 8hrs of control to diet, exercise significantly better. 2.Exercise release endorphins, ie you will be happier after exercising. Dieting leaves you irritable and tired. 3. Exercise builds metabolism, so you will burn at rest[not as much as they would have you believe in some books]. Dieting slow metabolism. 4. At moderately high intensity exercise can reduce appetite. Drawbacks to exercise: 1) Takes alot of time. Walking at 4mph for 60mins only burns 340 calories for a 150pound man[or something like that]. So, in essence 3hrs of exercise by walk a day will burn 2 pounds a week[provided that you follow a maintenance diet]

jamesbritt 16y ago
Re Will power: I've stopped buying crap food (with some rare allowances). If I do not have it in the house, I cannot eat it. The willpower issue comes up once a week while shopping, and I'm not in the mood for junk food while shopping, so it's easier to not buy it than it would be to not eat it were it in the house. Exercise, though, requires much more deliberate action, and more than once a week. Once I'm out running it's OK, and keeping going is not a problem. It's the initial choice of go running or sit on my ass and drink coffee in the morning. Dicking around seems to have a a magical sway over me. :( Despite having almost completely slagged off on exercise over the last few months I'm still just below 180lbs (down from 210 last summer), and I'm sure this is because of my diet. I still need to exercise least my body turn to complete goo, but for weight loss I find it much easier to just not have bad food in the house.
- chegra84 16y ago
  You are telling me that you eat 1000 calories less than required and you aren't tempted to break the diet? :)
  - narag 16y ago
    I can speak for myself. I've lost 15 kg since last summer, not feeling hungry at all, so it's not "1000 calories less than required", at least not what my apetite requires :) In fact, I don't feel like I'm doing a diet, it hasn't been my intention at all. I simply started eating a lot more fruit, in part by accident (didn't know how delicious is pinneaple), in part for convenience (apples are easy to bring in the backpack, salads come now in cheap bags), in part because of my son (he loves orange juice at all times, I eat the ones that remain). Also it's better to avoid prepared food. I still eat a lot of pasta and meat (I've just enjoyed a 250 g steak) and enough seafood. The only significant casualties are bread (only with meat or fish) and cheese... like Hurley said "everybody likes cheese", but it does no good to me :-( I agree that exercise is great. But I live far from sea, so I can't windsurf most of the year, and jogging bores me to death. Once year ago I went to the gym and it was really good, but it made me really hungry, so it didn't help with weight lose. In my twenties it was different, but at the time it was much more intense than what I can do now.
  - jamesbritt 16y ago
    A 1000 cal. less .. what, each day? I have no idea. I used to eat a lot of peanuts. And peanut butter. Possibly the greatest foods ever. And a lot of granola for snacks. And chips. Then I found out about the caloric cost of these things. Holy shit. (Well, the chips were not a surprise.) I was quite sad (did I mention I love peanut butter?), but also quite sad that my weight was slowly creeping up, past 200 lbs and then towards 210. And I saw some pictures of me giving a talk on stage, and cringed. (Big win for vanity, boys and girls. ) So I changed what I ate, and started going out running. Over about 4 or 5 months got down to 180 lbs (and greatly increased my endurance and improved my heart rate). Then the weather got too cool for my wussy ass, and I wasn't feeling well, and excuses, excuses. Now it's been about 3 months since I did any real exercise (aside from occasional walks around the block), yet my weight has stayed at least constant, though it may be dipping lower. The combination of exercise and diet change did wonders, but I believe that diet change alone would still have brought the weight down, albeit more slowly. I'm still amazed that when I weigh myself I never go above 180. Lately it's been 178 lbs. But simply eating less is not a good plan for a healthy body, so I still need to get my butt in gear. Maybe just boot up the Wii again ...
ewanmcteagle 16y ago
There is good evidence that you cannot simply burn off calories this way. That the body will reduce energy consumption at other times to compensate. The overall effect of exercise on energy consumed by the body is minimal. That is, exercise does not build metabolism and in the absence of increased food intake exercise will result in lower metabolism. Try reading Good Calories, Bad Calories. I've been surprised by the number of things I have thought or been taught that are directly contradicted by the experiments reported in this book.
- chegra84 16y ago
  http://www.unm.edu/~lkravitz/Article%20folder/exandwtloss.html http://www.unm.edu/~lkravitz/Article%20folder/exandwtloss.ht... "In contrast, Sopko et al. (1985) in a twelve-week study, with obese men, reported that when the negative energy balance created by diet only and exercise only are equal, the two treatments produce similar results. The participants in the diet only group (n=10) experienced a weight loss of 6.1kg by restricting their caloric intake 500 kcal/day. The exercise only group (n=6) lost 6.2 kg by performing a treadmill walking program in which they expended 500 kcal/day. The men in the diet only group went from a body fat of 31.4% to 25%, where as the exercise only group went from 26.7% to 19%" From reading this, it seem like many studies didn't attempt to make calorie deficit equal.
  - ewanmcteagle 16y ago
    I think the trouble is what they leave uncontrolled. If type of food is important and you only measure total calories you have a problem in your experiment design. It seems here there is also a subject selection problem. A 5% body fat difference for starting out is pretty significant. This is the trouble with the vast majority of this research. It's done in such a way that it's hard to learn much from it.
btilly 16y ago
My experience is the opposite of your theory. If you have any obligations (working married father of 2 here), it is darned hard to modify my schedule to include significantly more exercise. However my life follows a routine. It wasn't hard for me a few years ago to drop my soda habit, cut out my afternoon snack, and drop my dinner down to a 6" sandwich. Based on my experience, the problem with your theory is simple. Weight gain and loss is not a matter of will power. If you approach it that way then you need to maintain the thought in front of your head and focus to an extent that we find hard. It is a question of habits. And that makes it a question of what routines are easiest to stick into our lives. For me, dropping unnecessary eating sessions, and reducing what I ate at others, was a lot easier than finding a lot of time for exercise. (Now in fact I added 15 minutes/day of exercise and kept it up for several years. But while that had lots of benefits, it wasn't why I lost weight.)

jamesbritt 16y ago

Re Will power: I've stopped buying crap food (with some rare allowances). If I do not have it in the house, I cannot eat it. The willpower issue comes up once a week while shopping, and I'm not in the mood for junk food while shopping, so it's easier to not buy it than it would be to not eat it were it in the house. Exercise, though, requires much more deliberate action, and more than once a week. Once I'm out running it's OK, and keeping going is not a problem. It's the initial choice of go running or sit on my ass and drink coffee in the morning. Dicking around seems to have a a magical sway over me. :( Despite having almost completely slagged off on exercise over the last few months I'm still just below 180lbs (down from 210 last summer), and I'm sure this is because of my diet. I still need to exercise least my body turn to complete goo, but for weight loss I find it much easier to just not have bad food in the house.

chegra84 16y ago
You are telling me that you eat 1000 calories less than required and you aren't tempted to break the diet? :)
- narag 16y ago
  I can speak for myself. I've lost 15 kg since last summer, not feeling hungry at all, so it's not "1000 calories less than required", at least not what my apetite requires :) In fact, I don't feel like I'm doing a diet, it hasn't been my intention at all. I simply started eating a lot more fruit, in part by accident (didn't know how delicious is pinneaple), in part for convenience (apples are easy to bring in the backpack, salads come now in cheap bags), in part because of my son (he loves orange juice at all times, I eat the ones that remain). Also it's better to avoid prepared food. I still eat a lot of pasta and meat (I've just enjoyed a 250 g steak) and enough seafood. The only significant casualties are bread (only with meat or fish) and cheese... like Hurley said "everybody likes cheese", but it does no good to me :-( I agree that exercise is great. But I live far from sea, so I can't windsurf most of the year, and jogging bores me to death. Once year ago I went to the gym and it was really good, but it made me really hungry, so it didn't help with weight lose. In my twenties it was different, but at the time it was much more intense than what I can do now.
- jamesbritt 16y ago
  A 1000 cal. less .. what, each day? I have no idea. I used to eat a lot of peanuts. And peanut butter. Possibly the greatest foods ever. And a lot of granola for snacks. And chips. Then I found out about the caloric cost of these things. Holy shit. (Well, the chips were not a surprise.) I was quite sad (did I mention I love peanut butter?), but also quite sad that my weight was slowly creeping up, past 200 lbs and then towards 210. And I saw some pictures of me giving a talk on stage, and cringed. (Big win for vanity, boys and girls. ) So I changed what I ate, and started going out running. Over about 4 or 5 months got down to 180 lbs (and greatly increased my endurance and improved my heart rate). Then the weather got too cool for my wussy ass, and I wasn't feeling well, and excuses, excuses. Now it's been about 3 months since I did any real exercise (aside from occasional walks around the block), yet my weight has stayed at least constant, though it may be dipping lower. The combination of exercise and diet change did wonders, but I believe that diet change alone would still have brought the weight down, albeit more slowly. I'm still amazed that when I weigh myself I never go above 180. Lately it's been 178 lbs. But simply eating less is not a good plan for a healthy body, so I still need to get my butt in gear. Maybe just boot up the Wii again ...

ewanmcteagle 16y ago

There is good evidence that you cannot simply burn off calories this way. That the body will reduce energy consumption at other times to compensate. The overall effect of exercise on energy consumed by the body is minimal. That is, exercise does not build metabolism and in the absence of increased food intake exercise will result in lower metabolism. Try reading Good Calories, Bad Calories. I've been surprised by the number of things I have thought or been taught that are directly contradicted by the experiments reported in this book.

chegra84 16y ago
http://www.unm.edu/~lkravitz/Article%20folder/exandwtloss.html http://www.unm.edu/~lkravitz/Article%20folder/exandwtloss.ht... "In contrast, Sopko et al. (1985) in a twelve-week study, with obese men, reported that when the negative energy balance created by diet only and exercise only are equal, the two treatments produce similar results. The participants in the diet only group (n=10) experienced a weight loss of 6.1kg by restricting their caloric intake 500 kcal/day. The exercise only group (n=6) lost 6.2 kg by performing a treadmill walking program in which they expended 500 kcal/day. The men in the diet only group went from a body fat of 31.4% to 25%, where as the exercise only group went from 26.7% to 19%" From reading this, it seem like many studies didn't attempt to make calorie deficit equal.
- ewanmcteagle 16y ago
  I think the trouble is what they leave uncontrolled. If type of food is important and you only measure total calories you have a problem in your experiment design. It seems here there is also a subject selection problem. A 5% body fat difference for starting out is pretty significant. This is the trouble with the vast majority of this research. It's done in such a way that it's hard to learn much from it.

btilly 16y ago

My experience is the opposite of your theory. If you have any obligations (working married father of 2 here), it is darned hard to modify my schedule to include significantly more exercise. However my life follows a routine. It wasn't hard for me a few years ago to drop my soda habit, cut out my afternoon snack, and drop my dinner down to a 6" sandwich. Based on my experience, the problem with your theory is simple. Weight gain and loss is not a matter of will power. If you approach it that way then you need to maintain the thought in front of your head and focus to an extent that we find hard. It is a question of habits. And that makes it a question of what routines are easiest to stick into our lives. For me, dropping unnecessary eating sessions, and reducing what I ate at others, was a lot easier than finding a lot of time for exercise. (Now in fact I added 15 minutes/day of exercise and kept it up for several years. But while that had lots of benefits, it wasn't why I lost weight.)