Diet plays bigger role than exercise

[lapbandtalker 0]

A good read. Exercise is important - but for those of us who can't exercise like go to a gym or run-this article says what I experienced....weightloss is still possible WITHOUT exercise.

Study: Exercise Won't Cure Obesity - Yahoo! News

[Jachut 487]

There's plenty of old studies that show this as well. In essence, I think its completely true.

Its pretty simple, any time you eat less calories than you burn, you'll lose weight. You CAN do this with exercise alone but the truth is, doing as much exercise as this requires tends to make you starving and you eat to compensate. Heck, for many people, dont ANY exercise tends to make them think that they can therefore eat more, as the study says.

I love exercise and always have, have had many times in my life where I've done it consistently without getting the diet right and I always remained fat. I never lost weight. However, when the exercise stopped and my diet remained the same, I got REALLY fat.

These studies never show either just what exercise does for your body, they always view it in terms of how many calories it burns. They dont consider stuff like how long steady aerobic exercise develops your body's aerobic systems enabling it to become much more adept at burning fat for energy. They dont consider how it reduces insulin resistance in the body, or how if you do it properly, that runners high can really help to decrease the need for that seratonin hit that carbs tend to give you. They dont consider how a good bout of interval training not only increases your calorie burn for hours after exercise but decreases your appetite markedly too. They dont consider how, when someone like me is training for a half marathon, they adjust their diet to fuel their body properly for it, adjustments and improvements they might not have made without that exercise goal.

Of course, there's also maintaining lean body mass and even increasing muscle to consider. And what these studies dont tend to consider either is how much activity in total people get. You cant call a half hour jog exercise if you sit on your behind the rest of the day and are basically an inactive person who only moves for half an hour four times a week. Exercise needs to be ON TOP of a very active lifestyle. If you go from nothing to mild cardio four times a week, well big deal. If you go from nothing to cardio six times a week, weight training, cleaning your windows yourself, doing heavy housework for an hour every day, having an evening walk after dinner every day, and walking to and from work, well that will tell a different story.

There's no doubt about it, you can lose weight without exercise, but combine diet AND exercise and the results will be exponentially better. Its like anything, science tells one story, but people's experiences (and there'll be tons here who will confirm) tell a more accurate story.

With all these factors taken into consideration and keeping in special focus the way people tend to take up exercise and then eat more and decrease incidental activity, saying that exercise does not help one lose weight is exactly like saying the high carb/low fat diet of the 80's and 90's doesnt work without admitting the fact that in reality people didnt follow it, they ate a high PROCESSED carb and high SATURATED fat diet instead.

However, I do agree, try to lose weight through exercise alone and you'll be rather disappointed with the results you get for your efforts. Diet is what results in weight loss, exercise is what acheives above average results.

Edited January 6, 2009 by Jachut