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Don't exercise to lose weight
Here's what an exercise-based weight loss program looks like: Monday is cardio day - 20 minutes of climbing stairs to nowhere, followed by 30 minutes of slightly uphill walking back that also goes nowhere. Wednesday is personal trainer day – a full hour in which someone I pay for the privilege of telling me how to work like a farm animal. Then on Fridays it's off to my body shaping class to bend, bend and jump around with a bunch of other people in the hopes that I look different than I did when I walked in. Don't most of us do it that way? We grunt and sweat during our workouts and are...
Don't exercise to lose weight
This is what an exercise-based weight loss program looks like:
Monday is cardio day – 20 minutes of climbing stairs to nowhere, followed by 30 minutes of slightly uphill walking back that also leads nowhere.
Wednesday is personal trainer day – a full hour in which someone I pay for the privilege of telling me how to work like a farm animal.
Then on Fridays it's off to my body shaping class to bend, bend and jump around with a bunch of other people in the hopes that I look different than I did when I walked in.
Don't most of us do it that way?
We grunt and sweat during our workouts, smugly satisfied that our efforts burn more calories than the piece of chocolate cake we had for dessert last night.
Despite our best efforts, our weight and shape seem to be stuck in the exact spot where we try to escape.
Eventually we give up hope of losing the last 20-30-40 pounds and the exercise routine becomes just another part of our social circle, or we quit the program altogether.
Well, as a doctor, I'm here to tell you that the common belief that exercise is THE WAY to lose your excess weight is wrong.
Your inner couch potato can rejoice because while exercise is a good thing for many other healthy reasons, it's not your most important tool for losing weight.
The basic problem is that exercise burns calories but also stimulates hunger. This causes us to eat more, and if we don't know exactly how much or what we're eating, this will negate any weight loss benefit from exercise.
In other words, in most cases, exercise will make your weight loss challenge even more difficult than before.
Check out the results of this study...
In 2009, researchers at Louisiana State University tracked the weight loss of 464 overweight women for six months. They found no significant difference between women who exercised and those who did not exercise.
Dr. Timothy Church, chair of health wisdom at LSU, calls the lack of an exercise bonus a “compensation.” What he specifically means is that the women who exercised rewarded themselves in two ways later in the day: eating more or doing less.
Even a quick stop at Starbucks for a coffee and a muffin for a little “treat” will erase 300-400 calories of exercise time.
Colleague Eric Ravussin, chair of diabetes and metabolism and prominent exercise researcher at LSU, agrees: "In general, exercise is pretty useless for weight loss."
For those of you who are more mathematically inclined, chew this next time you get back from the gym... Our bodies require 6 calories per day to maintain a pound of muscle, but only 2 calories per pound of fat.
This means that when you finally manage to convert 10 pounds of fat into muscle - which is a major achievement - you can eat an additional 40 calories per day with no weight gain effect.
Impressive!
Exercise is good for many reasons, but the exercise that works best for weight loss is just plain old self-control. We wrote an article about this a while back – The Top Reason for Failing to Lose Weight – but if you missed that, just drop us an email and I'll be happy to send you a copy.
Inspired by Dr. Stacey Glines