This actually makes a little sense to me… after seeing people very close to me lose over 30lbs each on weight watchers, which requires very little exercise.. and seeing the bellies on some of the people I know whom go to the gym all the time and play hockey, etc..etc.. I read this article with great interest.
Thankfully, I am not one of the people that pay for a membership to a gym.. sadly, I am not a ‘gym person’.. I’m a sports and active person. I would rather play 4 games of hockey a week than spend an hour in a gym working out. I’ve done it before for an extended period of time, and perhaps I will get into that kick again.. but I don’t know.. I doubt it.
“As recently as the 1960s, doctors routinely advised against rigorous exercise, particularly for older adults who could injure themselves. Today doctors encourage even their oldest patients to exercise, which is sound advice for many reasons: People who regularly exercise are at significantly lower risk for all manner of diseases — those of the heart in particular. They less often develop cancer, diabetes and many other illnesses. But the past few years of obesity research show that the role of exercise in weight loss has been wildly overstated.”
“In general, for weight loss, exercise is pretty useless,” says Eric Ravussin, chair in diabetes and metabolism at Louisiana State University and a prominent exercise researcher. Many recent studies have found that exercise isn’t as important in helping people lose weight as you hear so regularly in gym advertisements or on shows like The Biggest Loser — or, for that matter, from magazines like this one.
The basic problem is that while it’s true that exercise burns calories and that you must burn calories to lose weight, exercise has another effect: it can stimulate hunger. That causes us to eat more, which in turn can negate the weight-loss benefits we just accrued. Exercise, in other words, isn’t necessarily helping us lose weight. It may even be making it harder.
This article from Time.com I read with great interest as this is something that all of think about at some point, and whether we’re looking for natural fat burners in the supermarket, or some other product (which of course I have bought and used.. hello hydroxicut).. the bottom line is pretty well summed up at the end of the article:
In short, it’s what you eat, not how hard you try to work it off, that matters more in losing weight. You should exercise to improve your health, but be warned: fiery spurts of vigorous exercise could lead to weight gain. I love how exercise makes me feel, but tomorrow I might skip the VersaClimber — and skip the blueberry bar that is my usual postexercise reward.
Great article, very interesting.Most cases its a simple maths calculation of eating less and more output.