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There is claim that exercise contributing to significant weight loss is a myth. I beg to disagree, while exercise itself might not be significant contributor to

There is claim that exercise contributing to significant weight loss is a myth. I beg to disagree, while exercise itself might not be significant contributor to weight loss, no exercise means lower metabolism and overall health. As always there is no silver bullet, you need to have a balanced lifestyle to be healthy.

0xdeadbeefbabe 13y ago
Science is a silver bullet or at least a bullet or at least a way of getting at the truth, but so far this field of science seems like a joke. How nice for them to use thermodynamics.
jp555 13y ago
Exercise can stimulate profoundly positive physiological changes, and that alone is a good enough reason to do it. But people forget that they burn more calories during a single night of sleep than they do doing 3 hours of cardio a week. Balance is important, but shedding nutrition & health mythology is even more so.
- cab_codespring 13y ago
  The Gluten Free nonsense drives me the most crazy. Of course they don't have Celiac disease, but they are "Sensitive" to it, which there is no way to refute. There is so much pseudoscience crap floating around I'm glad there's one book out there refuting it, I just wish he was a nutrition researcher doctor or something instead of a pharmacist, which doesn't sound very impressive for a diet book.
  - smacktoward 13y ago
    There is one benefit from it, though: a much larger market of gluten-free products than would exist if the only people buying them were people who legitimately suffer from celiac. In that respect it's a net positive: stupid people are out some money, but it's hard to get too worked up about that since (being stupid) they would have probably found some other pointless thing to waste it on anyway, and at least this way their waste makes it possible for celiac sufferers to have a better quality of life. The only hitch is that fads are by their nature transitory, so at some point the stupid people will flit away from gluten-free to some other fad, and the market of gluten-free products will collapse. Which will kind of suck for those who actually need them.
  - jp555 13y ago
    It's frustrating. But I've been there. First coupe years slow-carb, low-carb, plaeo, grain-is-poison. All diets work. But it was only after I got the fundamentals really down, and just did the work required that my body snapped into amazing shape, remarkably quickly. And it's possible for virtually everyone, at nearly any age.
    - minikomi 13y ago
      I'm interested in what you mean by "fundamentals"?
      - jp555 13y ago
        I wish there was a way to answer that appropriately in the space of a comment. Regarding nutrition, this is what I tell people to start with: http://www.amazon.ca/Advanced-Nutrition-Metabolism-Sareen-Gropper/dp/1133104053/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pd_S_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=2PI8WC1C7MYFV&coliid=I1YQJVXEMKKV4M http://www.amazon.ca/Advanced-Nutrition-Metabolism-Sareen-Gr... It's a great book, and more accessible than you might think.
        minikomi 13y ago
        my nick at gmail, I'd love to open a conversation on this if you're willing
        jp555 13y ago
        These are an EXCELLENT resource - http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/articles http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/articles Read them all, or only the topics that matter to you; Lyle is one of the best in the world.
grannyg00se 13y ago
Where does he claim that exercise doesn't matter? "Exercise: You can’t out-exercise a bad diet, but regular exercise helps keep weight off, and changes your attitude for the better. And exercise has enormous health benefits beyond any impact on weight. What exercise? Something. Anything. “Some is good, more is better, everything counts” Freedhoff suggests."
- TrainedMonkey 13y ago
  "Sweating is the next myth, with The Biggest Loser epitomizing the belief that exercise can contribute to significant weight loss."
chrisgd 13y ago
The first line sort of agrees with what you are saying, but the second line paints a more clear picture: >Sweating is the next myth, with The Biggest Loser epitomizing the belief that exercise can contribute to significant weight loss. You can’t outrun your fork- not in the long run.
- TrainedMonkey 13y ago
  Good point. If you eat shitty food, no amount of exercise or vitamins can help you. However, first sentence mentions that exercise contribution to weight loss is a myth. I disagree with that notion, in hindsight I should had been more more careful with my choice of words. Edited my original comment to reflect this.
npsimons 13y ago
In my experience, it really is down to lifestyle choices. I've never been really overweight; the closest I've come is about 200lb (90kg), but I also had a 40in (100cm) waist. What helped is I did diet, then I got a septoplasty for borderline sleep apnea, then I joined a volunteer search and rescue organization in which I hiked every weekend. No special diets (just calorie restriction), no special workouts (just hiking in the mountains regularly). I inherit high cholesterol (above 220 at one point), but I've managed to lower it through diet alone by drinking a lot of fruit juice (but I also have to watch out for diabetes . . . ), and I've also got it lower through very heavy exercise alone (but I also have to watch out for skeletal/joint injuries . . . ). As I've gotten older, I've noticed more and more that what I eat has a noticeable effect on my mood, alertness and just physical feeling of well-being. I've also noticed that every time I exercise now, I feel really good afterwords. I don't think that diet and exercise are a panacea, but they could at least go a very long way to alleviating symptoms and preventing illness. I also think there is way too much pseudoscience and BS going on around exercise and diet that it makes it that much harder, and a lot of programs (high intensity workouts like CrossFit and exclusionary diets like Paleo) are completely irresponsible and very likely worse for people in the long run. It also doesn't help that most of these programs are faddish and very dogmatic, with no tests to back them up.
Quaro 13y ago
>no exercise means lower metabolism and overall health For those who have a controlled weight already, is a higher metabolism actually something to aim for? People who practice calorie restriction for life extension do seem to exercise but not to raise the metabolism, they view that as a tradeoff.
- npsimons 13y ago
  For those who have a controlled weight already, is a higher metabolism actually something to aim for? Perhaps not; as I get closer and closer to my ideal weight, I wonder if I should taper off my exercise routine. The problem is that exercise has more benefits than just higher metabolism. There are hormones that get released by exercising, not to mention that functional fitness is necessary if you are trying to reach a goal. I'm not an expert, nor have I seen any research along these lines, but I've heard arguments made that since exercise speeds up metabolism and gets the blood flowing, it should clean out things like histamine (reducing allergic reactions) and disease faster. There's all sorts of reasons to not take my experience as scientific, but I certainly seem to have less allergies, heal faster and get sick less often the more regularly I exercise. I also tend to be more relaxed, have higher clarity and am on more of an even keel emotionally after I workout (and it tends to last most of the day, so I prefer to workout first thing in the morning).
Dewie 13y ago
Is a high metabolism necessarily healthy?
- TrainedMonkey 13y ago
  I am not aware of any drawbacks aside from requiring more energy intake to maintain weight.

0xdeadbeefbabe 13y ago

Science is a silver bullet or at least a bullet or at least a way of getting at the truth, but so far this field of science seems like a joke. How nice for them to use thermodynamics.

jp555 13y ago

Exercise can stimulate profoundly positive physiological changes, and that alone is a good enough reason to do it. But people forget that they burn more calories during a single night of sleep than they do doing 3 hours of cardio a week. Balance is important, but shedding nutrition & health mythology is even more so.

cab_codespring 13y ago
The Gluten Free nonsense drives me the most crazy. Of course they don't have Celiac disease, but they are "Sensitive" to it, which there is no way to refute. There is so much pseudoscience crap floating around I'm glad there's one book out there refuting it, I just wish he was a nutrition researcher doctor or something instead of a pharmacist, which doesn't sound very impressive for a diet book.
- smacktoward 13y ago
  There is one benefit from it, though: a much larger market of gluten-free products than would exist if the only people buying them were people who legitimately suffer from celiac. In that respect it's a net positive: stupid people are out some money, but it's hard to get too worked up about that since (being stupid) they would have probably found some other pointless thing to waste it on anyway, and at least this way their waste makes it possible for celiac sufferers to have a better quality of life. The only hitch is that fads are by their nature transitory, so at some point the stupid people will flit away from gluten-free to some other fad, and the market of gluten-free products will collapse. Which will kind of suck for those who actually need them.
- jp555 13y ago
  It's frustrating. But I've been there. First coupe years slow-carb, low-carb, plaeo, grain-is-poison. All diets work. But it was only after I got the fundamentals really down, and just did the work required that my body snapped into amazing shape, remarkably quickly. And it's possible for virtually everyone, at nearly any age.
  - minikomi 13y ago
    I'm interested in what you mean by "fundamentals"?
    - jp555 13y ago
      I wish there was a way to answer that appropriately in the space of a comment. Regarding nutrition, this is what I tell people to start with: http://www.amazon.ca/Advanced-Nutrition-Metabolism-Sareen-Gropper/dp/1133104053/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pd_S_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=2PI8WC1C7MYFV&coliid=I1YQJVXEMKKV4M http://www.amazon.ca/Advanced-Nutrition-Metabolism-Sareen-Gr... It's a great book, and more accessible than you might think.
      - minikomi 13y ago
        my nick at gmail, I'd love to open a conversation on this if you're willing
        jp555 13y ago
        These are an EXCELLENT resource - http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/articles http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/articles Read them all, or only the topics that matter to you; Lyle is one of the best in the world.

grannyg00se 13y ago

Where does he claim that exercise doesn't matter? "Exercise: You can’t out-exercise a bad diet, but regular exercise helps keep weight off, and changes your attitude for the better. And exercise has enormous health benefits beyond any impact on weight. What exercise? Something. Anything. “Some is good, more is better, everything counts” Freedhoff suggests."

TrainedMonkey 13y ago
"Sweating is the next myth, with The Biggest Loser epitomizing the belief that exercise can contribute to significant weight loss."

chrisgd 13y ago

The first line sort of agrees with what you are saying, but the second line paints a more clear picture: >Sweating is the next myth, with The Biggest Loser epitomizing the belief that exercise can contribute to significant weight loss. You can’t outrun your fork- not in the long run.

TrainedMonkey 13y ago
Good point. If you eat shitty food, no amount of exercise or vitamins can help you. However, first sentence mentions that exercise contribution to weight loss is a myth. I disagree with that notion, in hindsight I should had been more more careful with my choice of words. Edited my original comment to reflect this.

npsimons 13y ago

In my experience, it really is down to lifestyle choices. I've never been really overweight; the closest I've come is about 200lb (90kg), but I also had a 40in (100cm) waist. What helped is I did diet, then I got a septoplasty for borderline sleep apnea, then I joined a volunteer search and rescue organization in which I hiked every weekend. No special diets (just calorie restriction), no special workouts (just hiking in the mountains regularly). I inherit high cholesterol (above 220 at one point), but I've managed to lower it through diet alone by drinking a lot of fruit juice (but I also have to watch out for diabetes . . . ), and I've also got it lower through very heavy exercise alone (but I also have to watch out for skeletal/joint injuries . . . ). As I've gotten older, I've noticed more and more that what I eat has a noticeable effect on my mood, alertness and just physical feeling of well-being. I've also noticed that every time I exercise now, I feel really good afterwords. I don't think that diet and exercise are a panacea, but they could at least go a very long way to alleviating symptoms and preventing illness. I also think there is way too much pseudoscience and BS going on around exercise and diet that it makes it that much harder, and a lot of programs (high intensity workouts like CrossFit and exclusionary diets like Paleo) are completely irresponsible and very likely worse for people in the long run. It also doesn't help that most of these programs are faddish and very dogmatic, with no tests to back them up.

Quaro 13y ago

>no exercise means lower metabolism and overall health For those who have a controlled weight already, is a higher metabolism actually something to aim for? People who practice calorie restriction for life extension do seem to exercise but not to raise the metabolism, they view that as a tradeoff.

npsimons 13y ago
For those who have a controlled weight already, is a higher metabolism actually something to aim for? Perhaps not; as I get closer and closer to my ideal weight, I wonder if I should taper off my exercise routine. The problem is that exercise has more benefits than just higher metabolism. There are hormones that get released by exercising, not to mention that functional fitness is necessary if you are trying to reach a goal. I'm not an expert, nor have I seen any research along these lines, but I've heard arguments made that since exercise speeds up metabolism and gets the blood flowing, it should clean out things like histamine (reducing allergic reactions) and disease faster. There's all sorts of reasons to not take my experience as scientific, but I certainly seem to have less allergies, heal faster and get sick less often the more regularly I exercise. I also tend to be more relaxed, have higher clarity and am on more of an even keel emotionally after I workout (and it tends to last most of the day, so I prefer to workout first thing in the morning).

Dewie 13y ago

Is a high metabolism necessarily healthy?

TrainedMonkey 13y ago
I am not aware of any drawbacks aside from requiring more energy intake to maintain weight.