Time Magazine Says Exercise Won’t Make You Lose Weight
The August 17, 2009 issue of Time Magazine contains an article that is going to piss off a lot of people in the fitness industry, because it challenges one of the biggest myths that have been lining the pockets of gyms, trainers, and equipment companies for years: that exercise will make you lose weight.
The article by John Cloud, Why Exercise Won’t Make You Thin, explains how exercise, which does not burn a significant amount of calories to begin with, stimulates an increase in appetite and compensatory eating. According to one study, this compensatory eating may exceed the calories burned during the activity by as much as 100 – enough to cause a fat gain of over 10 pounds per year. One study mentioned showed no difference in fat loss between three exercising groups and a non-exercising control. This is bad news for aerobics instructors and trainers selling various types of “cardio” classes as an effective method of fat loss.
Actually, this is not news at all. I’ve been telling people this for years, and the people at Nautilus were saying the same thing way back in the ’70s. No activity burns enough calories to be worth doing solely for that purpose. The biggest contribution exercise makes to a fat loss program is the preservation of lean body mass while fat is lost. Any contribution to increased calorie expenditure, either as a direct result of the workout or indirectly as a result of increased muscle mass, is minor compared to the role of diet.
Aerobics, “cardio”, endurance training, etc. is a waste of time for fat loss.
If you are not measuring and restricting calorie intake all that activity will make no difference in fat loss, and may very well make you fatter. Even if you are restricting calorie intake to avoid the compensatory eating mentioned above, all that time and effort won’t result in a significant increase in fat loss, and may even result in muscle loss if overdone. A greater reduction in net calorie intake can be accomplished by simply cutting another couple hundred calories, without wasting any time or risking the kind of injuries and joint problems associated with popular “cardio” activities.
Of course, the fitness industry is going to respond to this the way they always do when profitable nonsense is being threatened: they’ll continue making the same ridiculous claims they have been for years and hope people keep believing them. Unfortunately, most people will keep believing them, because it is a lot easier to spend an hour or so performing some mindless activity a few times a week than to exert the kind of effort and discipline required to change one’s eating habits. People want to believe things like hitting the gym on Monday can make up for a weekend of drinking and overeating, or that going for a brisk walk will burn off those Oreos they had at lunch.
It can’t.
Unfortunately, although the article starts out sensibly enough, it ends up going horribly wrong, by simply recommending that rather than waste time doing traditional “cardio” activities people should try to incorporate more lower-intensity activity into their daily routine. The assumption being the more distributed but easier activity will still burn enough calories to significantly reduce energy balance without stimulating the same increases in appetite. The problem with this is, the reason so many people are overweight or obese is not due to a lack of activity, according to a study presented at the 2009 European Congress on Obesity (Swinburn BA, et al “Increased energy intake alone virtually explains all the increase in body weight in the United States from 1970s to the 2000s” ECO 2009.), it is because they eat too much. They state:
“Weight gain in the American population seems to be virtually all explained by eating more calories,” said Boyd Swinburn, M.D., of Deakin University in Australia, lead author of the study. “It appears that changes in physical activity played a minimal role.”
People don’t need more activity. They certainly don’t need “cardio”. In fact, research has shown that obese people actually tend to have higher metabolic rates than people with lower bodyfat levels. What people need is better eating habits. I have never had a client fail to lose fat if they were strict with their diet. However, I don’t know anyone who was able to lose a noticeable amount of fat, much less dramatically transform their physique with “cardio” or any other activity alone.
While fat loss is almost entirely a matter of nutrition, exercise does have a role. Not as a way to burn calories, but to maintain muscle as fat is lost. As long as adequate protein is consumed and calorie intake is not reduced too far, strength training will prevent the loss of muscle while fat is lost. Without strength training muscle may be lost along with fat, resulting in a gradual reduction of metabolic rate along with strength and a decline in related aspects of health and fitness. “Cardio” can accelerate this muscle loss if overdone. Muscle also serves as storage space for glycogen, and the more glycogen that can be stored in the muscles, the less of what is consumed is likely to be stored as fat.
The bottom line is, if you want to lose fat, you need to eat fewer calories, and it helps to also proportion your macronutrients properly (in my experience a Paleo or Zone-style diet consisting of moderate protein and fat, moderate to low carb works best). You should also perform high intensity strength training to maintain muscle mass while fat is lost, but forget “cardio” for fat loss.
Great article!
Just in time, I would say. For the last couple of months I’ve been having more free time around lunchtime and I have decided to do higher volume training and cardio everyday and see how it goes. Well…this past weekend I was evaluating I am overtrained and fatter than ever. Compensatory eating is a huge issue for me. With the volume of training I was doing, I was able to eat virtually non-stop and craving more carbs than usual (hunger is greater too when trying to cut calories under these conditions).
The lowest bodyfat I’ve been I was doing twice a week training and no cardio. I’m taking at least a week off to get back on track.
Yes, good article, and I agree with most of it. However the blanket statement that “eating more or fewer calories” seems to leave out an important segment, that content of those calories is more important than the number. If content were irrelevant we could do a 2oz shot of gasoline each morning right?
I linked over here from Anthony’s site, I’m very intrigued!
Thanks,
Tom
The content of the calories is very important, but still second to the amount where fat gain or loss is concerned. Even if a person was eating nothing but free-range meat and poultry, fish, eggs, vegetables, fruit, and nuts, and avoiding all the garbage that makes up the typical modern diet, it’s still possible to get fat by consuming too many calories. However, when you eat that way, it is actually extremely difficult to overeat. The protein makes you feel full sooner and longer and it is actually very difficult to consume too many calories from most vegetables and fruits, particularly leafy vegetables and berries. You’d have to eat several cups of most vegetables – in some cases a dinner plate piled full of them – to get the same amount of calories in a single cup of rice or pasta or a large dinner roll.
There seems to be more to a paleo/low carb. diet than just protein making you feel fuller. Gary Taubes makes the best argument for how the energy equation is viewed. It seems eatting high fat, moderate protein and low to no carb. makes it damn near impossible to get fat. Low insulin being the reason.
Hi Drew,
Sounds like we both feel the same way about the fitness industry.
To me I see it as another victory for the Nautlilus researchers even if thirty plus more years later. What really makes me angry is that a researcher in 2009 publishes an article in the Times magazine on the “cardio/weight loss myth” gives no acknowldgement to the true leaders in the field of exercise – the Nautilus researchers. Arthur Jones and Mike Mentzer said something along the lines that “first they will ignore it, hope it goes away and at a later time they will claim credit for it as their own idea”.
In one of my fitness classes the other day I said to the students that anyone who does cardio exercise to burn calories was “dumb” – you could hear the silence in the class. In the past I competed at National level triathlons and know from personal experiences that regardless of how much or how many hours you think you can train if the diet is not right you will put on weight.
Over thirty years experience in the fitness industry tells me that the cardio/weight loss myth like most other fitness industry myths including the current “the functional movement training” or “circus act/skills training” will eventually be replaced by some other fitness industry myth/fad/fallacy.
Hopefully the book is going along well and that you have it published soon it will be good to read about exercise based upon real science.
I’m glad to see the right information leaking out to the public, even if in small amounts. A few people are starting to get wise. The internet has allowed the truth to start spreading, and people are no longer dependent on fitness industry magazines and so forth for their knowledge about diet and exercise.
It’s so hard to tell people about high intensity and cardio, though. It’s so ingrained and it does seem sensible from a certain standpoint that more work equals more gain. It’s just not true. And, they don’t really understand the work involved in a HIT workout.
Any diet based on whole healthy foods, whether paleo or vegan or whatever, makes it harder to overeat because you feel full and you get vitamins, minerals, and nutrients that your body is craving but are lacking in the standard diet. I’m sure you could do it, but it’s certainly harder.