
Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin - emontero1
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1914857,00.html
======
mr_luc
The article itself it insightful. But, brother hackers, can we allow an
article whose title is a _blatant_ _lie_ to be voted to the top of Hacker
News?

Running is exercise.

Running 1600 meters, on average, burns 124 calories for a man. ("Energy
Expenditure of Walking and Running", Syracuse Uni study). This only takes a
few minutes.

Even if a person is taking in massively more calories than their body needs --
let's say, overeating by _1000_ calories a day -- they _could_ burn it all off
with a few miles of jogging. Increase the amount of running they do still
further, and you won't find anyone who will seriously suggest that they
_won't_ get thinner.

Or how do you think that cross-country runners got so skinny?

Olympic marathoners?

...

So ...

Exercise CAN make you thin; thus, the statement that it won't is incorrect.

~~~
codahale
1,000 calories, considering the modern possibilities, isn't that much. I mean,
that's a bit less than two slices of toast with Nutella.

Weight loss programs _have_ to focus on preempting and managing appetite.
There's a wealth of studies connecting exercise to increased appetite (c.f.
OP), especially focused, running-at-the-gym, doing-penance-for-those-donuts
exercise. (Low-level activity—walking around, say—doesn't seem to provoke the
same uptick in hunger. But it also burns way, way less calories.)

Your counterfactual assumes that the runner isn't more likely to eat an
additional 2,000 calories, which is to say, _they're already managing their
appetite._ If you can manage your appetite, then go for a goddamn run already.
You'll be happier for it. If you're not managing your appetite, work on
that—exercise will not help you lose weight until you do.

There's a great book— _The End Of Overeating_ —which details the intersection
of modern food science, evolutionary psychology, cognitive psychology, and
human physiology. If you're interested, give it a go.

(BTW, bringing up elite athletes doesn't help the discussion—elite athletes
regularly have 1.5-2 times the VO² max of even extremely fit people. Hell,
five-time Tour de France winner Miguel Indurain could circulate 7L of
oxygenated blood per minute compared with the 5-6L of his competitors and 3-4L
for the fitter of us regular people. Human physiology has a statistical
distribution, and bringing up people many standard deviations from the mean
doesn't help any of us regular schmucks. My mutant power certainly does not
involve my metabolism.)

~~~
gaius
_1,000 calories, considering the modern possibilities, isn't that much. I
mean, that's a bit less than two slices of toast with Nutella._

Yes, it is VERY difficult to out-train a bad diet. There is an example I use
with friends, which is if you drink 5 pints of beer, you'll need to run 10
miles to burn that off (really). Have a pizza or a kebab on the way home,
another 10 miles. Have a fry-up for breakfast, another 10 miles. So even if
you ran a Marathon tomorrow, with your hangover, you've still gained fat from
one Friday night. And you're doing again on Saturday night too.

On the subject, of athletes, everyone at the top of any sport is a genetic
freak. That's not to disparage the effort they put in. But hey, Michael Phelps
didn't get his extraordinarily long armspan from _training_. He didn't get his
flipper-shaped feet from _training_. He was born with them. And he was born
with an extraordinary metabolism too.

~~~
mr_luc
I agree that it's difficult to out-train a bad diet. But

1) Remember, we're counting the _difference_ between what you need to eat and
what you do eat. So although crazily irresponsible people doubtless _are_
regularly eating 5000+ calorie diets, day in and day out, the amount they need
to burn off to zero out would then be around 2000+ calories.

2) Impractical is not impossible. Even if you OVEREAT by 3000 calories per
day, if you spent all day running and resting/drinking water from running, you
could do it.

Exercise CAN make people thin. ;) I'm not saying that for a given someone, you
couldn't eat enough to take yourself out of contention, but the answer to "Can
exercise make you thin?" is "yes."

What I object to most in the article title is the implication that people are
working hard, but somehow wasting their effort.

"Oh, the problem is that you've been getting up an hour early every morning to
run and run and run, and have been undoing all of your hard work by eating
Hardees Thickburgers 3 times a day!"

If you have the self-discipline to run regularly, you have the self-discipline
necessary to complement it with the MINIMUM of dietary caution necessary to
let it work for you.

~~~
caffeine
It's important to distinguish weight loss from fat loss. We want the latter -
the former in itself is not particularly desirable (except perhaps for ice
fishing).

\- When I exercise, I tend to build muscle (and sore legs).

\- When I eat less, I tend to lose some weight.

\- When I exercise but eat more, weight goes up - because I'm gaining
_muscle._

So far, so good. But the above is completely meaningless. What really matters
is:

\- If I'm exercising a lot and eating reasonably, my weight goes up, BUT my
%BF (percent body fat) goes down, because I'm gaining more muscle than fat.

\- If I'm doing low-intensity exercise and eating sparingly, my weight goes
down, but my %BF remains stable.

\- If I exercise like crazy and eat very little, my weight goes down and my %
BF goes down. This happens rarely because it requires inhuman willpower.

The point of this (admittedly anecdotal) chart is that _weight_ change and %BF
change are NOT correlated. In particular, the way one achieves a low body fat
is:

1\. Increase muscle, lowering %BF.

2\. Lower overall weight, causing net fat loss AND muscle loss, probably
increasing %BF slightly.

3\. GOTO 1.

If you lose more %BF on step 1 than you gained on step 2, you win. This zig-
zag is what body builders do, because it's nearly the only method that works.
And step 2 is very diet-sensitive, and rather finicky.

And that is why the article sounded stupid to me. The study, in particular, of
women who exercised intensively compared to those who didn't. I hope they
measured % body fat in that study, because it's the _only_ thing that matters
when talking about obesity.

When the article says something like "Everybody lost a bit of weight, but some
of the exercisers gained weight! So exercise doesn't make you thin." That's
crap. "Lean" is a measure of % body fat, not total body mass. The exercisers
probably decreased %BF if their weight remained stable. In other words, they
probably look better now than they did.

------
fizx
I'm trying to lose weight right now. Actually, I'm trying to get in the best
shape of my life, so that I feel better physically and enjoy the sports I play
more.

I've been losing about 1/2 pound per week for most of this year, while
spending about a half hour per day in the pool, and maybe another hour on the
basketball court.

I took a two weeks off and went to France on vacation. I ate a bunch of great
food (though never "stuffing" myself). I walked around to visit museums. I
never thought about fitness. I lost 5 pounds in the two weeks.

There's probably a few reasons why this happened. I was on vacation, so there
was no stress-triggered eating. I was getting lots of low-intensity exercise
that burned calories without stimulating hunger. I was eating slowly, savoring
the tastes of the different foods I was trying. I'm trying to bring these
lessons back with me.

~~~
kingkongrevenge
> lots of low-intensity exercise that burned calories

The way to lose fat is with intense and brief exercise, like weight circuit
training with no rest between sets, on an empty stomach a couple times a week.

 _Acute exercise in the fasted state, compared with the carbohydrate-fed
state, for a given exercise intensity and duration, stimulates the oxidation
of fatty acids from both intramyocellular (16) and peripheral (17) fat depots.
doi:10.1152/japplphysiol.01195.2007_

Related: Short fast sprints 'cut' diabetes
[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/edinburgh_and_ea...](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/7852987.stm)

Brief intense training decreases insulin sensitivity, which leads to less fat.

Working out every day to "burn calories" is a very poor use of time. Work out
hard and short (20 min) a couple times a week. This will change your hormone
profile, boosting growth hormone and testosterone and reducing insulin
sensitivity. Those changes make you leaner.

~~~
ghshephard
The entire point of the article was that working out hard and short a couple
times a week doesn't help one lose weight, and that sustained continuous
activity does. The reasoning is those bursts of short activity are met with
increased caloric intake, defeating the value of any exercise.

~~~
kingkongrevenge
I read the article and it does not really say that. In fact, the only bit that
comes close is this: _Another British study, this one from the University of
Exeter, found that kids who regularly move in short bursts — running to catch
a ball, racing up and down stairs to collect toys — are just as healthy as
kids who participate in sports that require vigorous, sustained exercise._

I would agree with the general idea that daily walking at a relaxed pace is
better than "jogging".

I think proper intense 10-20 minute workouts are so outside of the field of
view of people who read and write articles like these they don't understand
them. Doing a few sets of no-rest olympic lifts and then five minutes of
double-unders with a jump rope does not boost your appetite much. It will make
you a bit nauseous. It is not at all like going on a 15 mile bike ride or
swimming a mile, which leaves you ravenous 30 minutes after.

~~~
sophacles
Thats not the only part. Near the beginning about 4 groups of women, and the
ones who exercized a lot did not lose a significant amount of weight over
those who did not exercise beyond normal. The heavy work out group did however
report eating more calories. Then there are 2 or 3 pages about low intensity
workouts being good because they stimulate calorie burn without stimulating
hunger (with a tangent on brown fat in rats).

In fact there are several examples in the article about compensatory eating,
such as the women who would get muffins after jogging, canceling any extra
calorie burn.

~~~
trunnell
The study referenced in the beginning (with the 4 groups of women) did not
sufficiently control diet. OP: <i> All the women were asked not to change
their dietary habits... </i> They were asked, but did the women comply? Not
likely, due to the compensation problem.

Bottom line: Regulating exercise without regulating diet is not likely to
produce results. I don't think this is news.

It has been shown that one's metabolic rate has a certain momentum; it
naturally seeks an equilibrium that is different for everybody. Exercise a
little more and your body will crave more food; eat a little more, and you
will naturally burn off the excess. (For most people).

If one desires a physique that differs from their "natural" __state, one must
very carefully control BOTH exercise and nutrition. Both are usually necessary
to lose fat and gain muscle. And this requires discipline. One cannot exercise
regularly and then simply "watch what they eat" and expect certain results.
You need to eat certain foods at certain times in certain volumes. Amazing
results can be achieved.

 __"natural" because there is nothing natural about having close to zero food
scarcity. Most people eat whatever they want, which happens to be WAY more
than they need, which isn't really "natural."

Recommended reading: \- _The Paleo Diet_ \- Precision Nutrition,
<http://www.precisionnutrition.com/> \- their forums are highly recommended.

------
xiaoma
Here's my experience:

Running was _extraordinarily_ effective in helping me lose weight. However, it
took quite a bit to do it. I was on a cross-country team in high school. That
took me from slightly chubby to rail-thin. Every single person on the team who
started out over-weight made great progress. One fat kid lost at least 30
pounds in just three months. Nobody I knew who kept running stayed fat.

Still, I have to say that my experience fits with the results of the
experiment mentioned in the article. At one point after spending a few years
doing little but sitting in front of the computer, I decided to lose about 25
kilos. I went out and did about the amount the "high exercise" group mentioned
in the article did, and I just ate more as a result. However, _after going
over about 50km/week, I found my appetite suppressed_. It was kind of like my
body had found its equilibrium and my hunger was based upon how much I
actually needed. I lost weight really quickly after that.

~~~
ghshephard
"cross-country team in high school" - I presume that means you were exercising
more than 3 times a week at 30 minutes?

The premise of the article isn't about athletes (which you were) won't lose
weight by engaging in their activity. Of course people who _regularly and
continuously_ exercise are going to lose weight. Anybody who works with a
bicycle rider who commutes more than 10-15 miles into work knows that there
are no fat cyclists - And those who bicycle more are usually worrying about
getting _enough calories_ to maintain their weight and keep up their
conditioning/muscle mass.

The article was talking about whether it makes sense for your average cube-rat
to go out to the gym three times a week for a 60 minute excercise regime - and
the conclusion is no. It really doesn't help you lose weight because you end
up eating more than you just spent in caloric expenditure from the exercise.

~~~
xiaoma
Yes. As I said, the turning point for me seems to be at about 50km/week. I
probably did double that in high school. That came out to about 10 hours of
running per week.

I agree completely about "cube rats" not being able to lose much weight from
30 minutes 3 times a week. The research mentioned in the first part of the
article seemed pretty much in line with my experience. It really does take
about an hour to an hour and a half a day to make a big difference in terms of
weight loss.

I still think that it makes sense for cube rats to do cardio, though. Even if
it's only 30 minutes a day, they'll still be quite a bit healthier, lower
their risk of heart disease more than losing weight would, and even promote
neurogenesis.

The human body just isn't well adapted to being a cube rat.

------
dmfdmf
> As science writer Gary Taubes noted in his 2007 book Good Calories, Bad
> Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health,
> "The obese tend to expend more energy than lean people of comparable height,
> sex, and bone structure, which means their metabolism is typically burning
> off more calories rather than less."

Bizarre irrelevant quote from that book. I think it was made while blasting
the eat-less-exercise-more crowd which does not work. Taubes argues that the
wrong theory comes from a misunderstanding of the conservation of energy
principle, i.e., for anyone who gains weight it _has_ to be true but it does
not explain the cause. Growing teens eat more than they expend in energy and
the reason is growth hormone. Same applies to gaining weight, the cause is
insulin which is elevated when we eat carbs. Cut the carbs and lose weight and
possibly a raft of other modern diseases. The science is very clear and the
medical field is ignoring it because they owe us a huge mea culpa.

Read the book but here is more data.
<http://thras.blogspot.com/2009/08/diet.html>

------
ajg1977
I find it annoying that either through ignorance or a need to create an eye-
catching headline the author interchangeably uses the words "thin" and
"weight" to describe a metric used to measure some undefined-but-ideal body
shape,

There is an incredibly difference between being a 180lb man who exercises
regularly and one who does not.

Perhaps the author was never asked the "which weighs more, a ton of feathers
or a ton of lead?" question as a child.

~~~
californiaguy
> ignorance or a need to create an eye-catching headline

What is it about being a hacker that makes us so surprised and/or upset when
marketing works on us? As if we just lost an intellectual battle?

Marketing works, people. It's just hacking curiosity. You all read the
article, didn't you? I finished it to the end.

------
jzdziarski
Hmm I exercise daily and have been more tempted to eat healthier foods, rather
than undo all the work my body has put in exercising. I'm down 30LB in the
past 45 days. Time can suck it.

~~~
kreneskyp
agreed.

The title is misleading. Of course, just exercise, or just diet, is not going
to get you very far. It has to be both together.

~~~
zmimon
Actually, I lost a lot of weight just by cutting 10% from my calories. I did
no additional exercise and no extravagant changes to diet ... just identified
a few places where there was a big calorie win and knocked it out. Then, I
just waited. It takes a long time, but I hardly modified my life at all. I
think half the problem with the struggle people have to lose weight is just
that they are impatient - if they don't see results within a week or two they
just give up. The key ingredients to me are moderation and time.

------
Hates_
Let me summarise. If you exercise you'll feel hungrier and if you don't show
some self-restraint, you'll probably eat more and either not lose anything or
actually put on weight. As the saying goes "Abs are made in the kitchen, not
in the gym."

~~~
ghshephard
"if you don't show some self-restraint" - the articles premise was that the
brief bursts of activity reduce your ability to show self-restraint. I find it
interesting that people think "self-restraint" is some magical ability that
isn't weakened/enhanced like any other capability of people. The reality is
that managing the "Self-Restraint" muscle is probably much more important than
trying to manage other muscles.

~~~
dkarl
Self-restraint is a hackable psychological phenomenon in one's brain. I agree
that it is not an innate moral power, but I disagree that it is a distinct
human quality that can be strengthened. Self-restraint boils down to optimism.
People can put themselves through anything if they have faith that it will pay
off in the end. Rational knowledge doesn't help, and it isn't a matter of
simply being harsh with oneself, either: harshness and pessimism just produce
a paralyzed, chubby, self-loathing person. If passing up a cheeseburger leaves
you with a dead feeling inside -- "I'm deprived now and screwed in the long
run anyway, what a waste" -- then you won't be able to keep it up. If you have
faith that passing up the cheeseburger will have a long-term payoff, then your
brain gives you a down payment of happiness that cancels out the displeasure
of depriving yourself.

That's why thinking about a distant, glorious end result (like a smoking hot
beach body) works for some people but is counterproductive for others. It's
motivational if you really believe in it. For many people, though, it's just a
reminder that they're making sacrifices for something that they don't believe
in at all. Those people are better of thinking of less distant payoffs that
they can really believe in, even if the payoffs are trivial by comparison.

Some people think that your brain will simply not accept passing up food that
your body thinks it needs, that it's completely unnatural and therefore
impossible. But you do things all the time that have energetic costs and
distant, uncertain payoffs. Hard work, saving money, hell, even just getting
out of bed: these are things that impose immediate costs. Your brain does
emotional bookkeeping to incline you to avoid costs that have no payoff. If
you've ever been depressed, you know that getting out of bed is sheer misery
if you believe that nothing good will come of it. Yet it's normal to get out
of bed, get to work on time, and work at a job for a payoff that comes a few
weeks later. (Or, for a startup, months or years later.) In the same way, it
can be normal to pass up food. You just have to have faith in the payoff. You
might think that food has some special status in your brain, and it might, but
your brain is surprisingly abstract and adaptable. (Consider the recent
article about money!) Also consider that physical labor is basically the
opposite of food, but people manage to habituate themselves to physical labor
despite the complaints of their body (which are, initially, totally out of
proportion to the physical cost.)

Having faith isn't easy; in fact, it's really hard. But it demystifies the
question of why people eat or don't eat, and why they feel good or bad when
doing so. I find it much easier to deal with my "faith" than to struggle
directly with my impulses.

EDIT: Hmm, I got upvoted while in the process of making a major revision.
Sorry about that. I should stop using the "edit" page for preview/composition.

~~~
ghshephard
I'm not really able to comprehend what you are trying to get at here, though I
recognize you are putting a lot of effort into trying to explain your
worldview.

By "improving Self-Restraint" I mean "Making changes so one is not motivated
to eat".

o Stomach Stapling

o Avoiding High Glycemic/Carb Rich foods

o Not going out to the Gym for 60 minute work outs.

Trying to rely on some moral-superiority is pretty much going to lose out in
the long run (though most people have pretty good 6-12 month runs, and a nice
30-50 pound drop in weight - then it all comes back and more.)

~~~
dkarl
You frame it as an opposition between two opposing forces, a person's appetite
for immediate reward and his self-restraint. The strength of one's restraint
is measured against the strength's of one's desires. You improve results by
strengthening restraint and weakening appetite.

I see self-restraint as a limited amount of discretion that a person has to
override his natural tendency to maximize emotional reward. As the article
says, self-restraint is tiring and unnatural; it's a stopgap measure at best.
The primary conflict is in your emotional brain's cost/benefit analysis of the
situation. You have to hack your emotional reward system so you don't have to
employ as much self-restraint. When you naturally derive satisfaction from
eating well, because you have faith in the ultimate payoff, your natural
tendency will not be as strongly tilted in favor of overeating.

Your subconscious/emotional/whatever brain is smarter than most people think.
You aren't doomed to have an out-of-touch brain that fills you with
irresistible, self-destructive impulses to overeat. We may have evolved on the
savannah, but if you can stand on a subway platform, surrounded by strangers
whose personal feelings about you are unknown, waiting for a huge steel
structure to come whizzing by you at high speed, _without feeling scared_ ,
you can learn to leave food on your plate. You just have to program your brain
properly (cultivate faith) so that you feel, subconsciously, that limiting
your eating leads to well-being and happiness (and, according to the highly
publicized recent study, more sex if you're a man.)

~~~
ghshephard
Actually, what I'm saying is that you strengthen restraint _by_ weakening
appetite. Not to say there isn't some small percentage of people who can rise
about their stomachs desire for food, I'm just saying that for 85% plus of the
(mostly sedentary) human population in the west, the key to success is to
eliminate that basic need for food in the first place.

I'd be interested in reading about successful diets/studies that tackle this
from the angle you are talking about - rewiring the brain/emotions so that
they are able to overcome the hunger reflex over the long term.

------
jasonkester
Actually, I suspect the point of the article is to help fat people feel better
about being fat. People (especially American people) need reassuring that
nothing is ever their fault.

You didn't get fat by eating too much because it's all determined by genetics,
and you actually have a medical condition. You don't need to worry about
trying to lose weight because it's been scientifically proven that you can't.
That's why those diets failed. Not because of any fault or lack of
determination on your part.

I have no idea why it works this way, but I've observed it happening all my
life, so I've just accepted it as the way things are. Not surprisingly, living
in Europe, where being fat is generally considered to be a condition you got
yourself into all by yourself, you don't tend to see many fat people around.

~~~
codahale
You're ignoring the fact that the food industries in Europe and America are
_very_ different. When Italy has an Applebee's in each strip mall then
Italians will be as fat as Americans. People are people; neither you nor
Europeans are magical in their limited appetites. They simply haven't been
conditioned from birth to overeat.

Or, alternatively, fat people are sissies. It's an, uh, interesting theory
you've put forth. Best of luck in getting that paper published.

~~~
jasonkester
It still comes down to self control. I didn't move to Europe until I was 36,
and I'm not fat. I've cut my share of Applebees Chicken Fried Steaks in half
to box up for dinner, while my co-workers finished theirs off. It has just
always seemed readily apparent that if you eat every meal until you are full,
you will get fat. I don't, so I haven't.

So yeah, it's entirely possible that we're conditioning our kids to overeat.
But then we're also going out of our way to make them feel better about
themselves because you're special just the way you are.

~~~
codahale
I don't think you've read the OP.

It addresses self-control: evidence exists to support the idea that human have
a limited amount and range of focus of self-control, and can suffer from self-
control fatigue:

[http://www.stolaf.edu/people/huff/classes/GoodnEvil/Readings...](http://www.stolaf.edu/people/huff/classes/GoodnEvil/Readings/Baumeister.Ego.PB.pdf)

Hell, that paper was on HN not long ago.

Self-control is not a great vehicle for weight loss, as is evidenced by the
recidivism rate for diets, fad or otherwise. "Use self-control" is shitty
advice for weight loss. "Avoid the cue-dopamine-behavior-opioid reinforcement
cycle by using cognitive psychology self-talk to associate negative emotions
with salient cues, consciously pre-determining behavior for when one is
presented with salient cues, and avoiding hyperpalatable foods with high
levels of salt, sugar, and fat" is closer to the mark, though it's not as
punchy. Also doesn't provide the same sense of moral self-satisfaction from
being stronger than fat people.

I have no idea where you're coming from with the special snowflake crap. The
article was not titled _Exercise Won't Make You Thin (So Buy A Mu-Mu And Eat
Up Fatty Because You're Never Going To Change And That's OK)_. In fact, the
article concludes with: _"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 fail to detect the self-esteem happy-talk fatalism to which you're reacting.

------
pohl
The first thing that jumped out at me is that weight is the wrong metric in
the first place. I'd rather be the same weight but have more, and better
proportioned, muscle mass. (Muscle burns calories even when you're
resting...it's a much better knob to tweak than the number of calories burnt
during exercise.)

The author might be better off by giving away his bathroom scale and thinking
about his body as a system.

~~~
absconditus
The article does address this to some extent. For example:

"According to calculations published in the journal Obesity Research by a
Columbia University team in 2001, a pound of muscle burns approximately six
calories a day in a resting body, compared with the two calories that a pound
of fat burns. Which means that after you work out hard enough to convert, say,
10 lb. of fat to muscle — a major achievement — you would be able to eat only
an extra 40 calories per day, about the amount in a teaspoon of butter, before
beginning to gain weight."

~~~
jodrellblank
Assuming a direct conversion of calories in to fat, as you do when you talk
about eating 40 calories, leads to this quote:

"If you eat 2,700 calories per day, that's roughly 1 million per year, 10
million in a decade. ~12 tons of food in a decade. To maintain your bodyweight
to within 5lbs in a decade would require an accuracy of 0.1% in your calorie
counting. Under this model, the question isn't why do people get fat, it's how
does anyone avoid it?" - Gary Taube's Big Fat Lies lecture.

~~~
gaius
This Gary Taube is an idiot. Here's how it actually works: you notice yourself
getting fat over a period of weeks, and then you correct it over a period of
weeks. It's a process of continual adjustment. You don't weigh yourself once
every 10 years!

~~~
StrawberryFrog
No, but I think that you're missing that he's pointing you at that conclusion
- that the system is self-regulating to a large degree.

------
tocomment
On a related note, has anyone found any studies examining how much your
metabolism actually decreases when you diet?

I've been tracking my weight and calories/exercise for over a year, and I've
noticed the oddest thing. I can eat up to 3000 calories/day with no exercise
and not gain weight. But I have to eat under 2000 calories/day to lose any
weight.

I seem to have this dead zone 2000-3000 calories where my body seems to set my
metabolism to whatever I eat.

(Of course the math and statistics confused the bejezus out of me, so I may be
completely wrong.)

------
dkarl
Gee, I can eat more calories of pizza in ten minutes than I could burn off in
two hours of running... if I could run for two hours at the same pace I can
run for half an hour. What more explanation do you need?

On the other hand, exercise improves my mood and helps me limit my eating, and
for that reason it's quite helpful.

------
yangyang
Nobody is ever going to agree on this. Different things work for different
people. Everyone's got their "I did this and lost loads of weight" or "this
didn't work for me" story.

Some form of exercise combined with less and better food is probably going to
get you somewhere. Learning to live with being hungry helps :-).

------
tallanvor
At the end of the day, you lose weight by using more calories than you take
in.

While the results of the Time article may apply to some people, I've found
that I do a better job of losing weight when I go to the gym at least 4 times
a week, and I've lost 45 pounds so far this year, most of it since March. At
the end of the day, though, you still have to be conscious about what you eat,
and find things that satisfy cravings without destroying the work you've done.

------
Tiktaalik
The problem is that every few weeks an article comes out with some blanket
statement like this, like "Excercise won't make you thin" which is only a
partial truth. If you read many articles about fitness and nutrition you'll
realize that there are no black and whites when it comes to nutrition and
weightloss and there is no one easy answer.

Staying healthy and losing weight is a combination of good habits.

The reality is of course that exercise is a fantastic way to lose weight and
stay healthy, but as this article says if you don't pair that healthy eating
habits it means absolutely nothing.

------
PStamatiou
I recommend the mono diet. Ingredients: 1 part dirty (ex-)girlfriend. I lost
15 pounds in one month! Highly recommended.

Now that I have that weight off I feel the need to keep it that way, so I've
gone from 10 beers a week (ballmer peak..) down to 1 or 2 and cut out as much
stuff that has High Fructose Corn Syrup from my intake as I can. And I'm
trying to do the CRON thing and eat slower and eat like half of my meals or
just have more, smaller meals. Keeps my metabolism up throughout the day and
helps me convert more to energy. That seems to have done the trick.

PS - rice cakes and rice/whey protein are great

------
Locke1689
What I find interesting is that there may be an even better way to lose
weight. Let's say you run five miles. That burns around 100 Calories or 100
kcal or 4.184 x 10^3 J.

Now, consider this. Let's say that a 165 lb (72.57 kg) human male is around
100% water (this is not true, its about 60% water, but for our purposes it'll
be ok). Now, since this person is made of water, we'll consider that the
specific heat of a human being is about that of water, thus 4.186 J/(g.C).
Now, how much energy is expended in order to raise 72.57 kg 3 Celsius degrees?
Q=c.m.dt = (4186 J/(kg.C)).(72.57 kg).(3 C) = 911,334 J.

What's interesting is this: by decreasing the temperature of your thermostat
by 5.4 degrees fahrenheit, you can burn more than _double_ what you get by
running 5 miles. Of course, there are other benefits to exercise, but if your
only gain is to lose weight, why not take advantage of the Laws of
Thermodynamics? Of course, I'm simply restating what doctors have known for
years. Unless you're a world-class athlete, your diet isn't providing energy
for your various activity, it's providing "living energy." This is all the
energy that your body requires simply to stay alive. The proper name for this
term is the "basal metabolism." It makes up _far_ more of the average person's
metabolism than anything else. Thus, by using it to your advantage, you can
lose weight quicker and easier.

Edit: You can also stop shoving calories into your face, but I don't get to do
math/physics with that.

------
rmanocha
As someone who's been trying to lose weight for a while, I have to say that
trying to control your diet without working out is hard. Ever since I started
working out and playing squash (for the last 2 months) I have significantly
reduced my daily calorie intake (from ~3500 calories to between 1200 - 1500
calories). I tried this in the past but could never keep it going beyond a
couple of weeks.

I think the reason working out has helped me is 'cause in the back of my head,
I'm thinking about all the work I'd have to put in at the gym to make up for
those 1000 extra calories I had. So, while controlling your diet is essential,
doing some physical exercise to support that is just as important IMHO.

------
sachinag
Now I know why I can't hack it as a radio talk show host or freelance writer.
I just don't have the ability to stretch a single sentence - "Losing weight
requires a calorie deficit." - into four pages.

~~~
calcnerd256
Nor can you come to the wrong conclusion at the end.

------
jaymon
My favorite part of this article was a part in another article linked in the
"Related stories" section:

Indeed, exercise was more strongly associated with weight loss than any other
factor, including diet. Overall, the more the women exercised, the more weight
they lost.

[http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1827342,00.ht...](http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1827342,00.html?iid=sphere-
inline-bottom)

So yeah, diet is more important than exercise, and exercise is more important
than diet. Glad we solved that, thanks Time.

------
christofd
Actually, intense thinking, as I recall, burns a lot of calories.

The trick is diet, as mentioned on here (next to moderate levels of exercise).
Eat mostly veggies, rice, pasta, avocados, fruit. Drink water and no pop.

The other thing: look up glycemic index of foods. The easier it is for the
body to turn something into sugar (processed foods, e.g. white bread), the
more likely the body will create an insulin rush, which wrecks havoc by
flipping a switch to make your body store fat. Many people don't know about
this fact.

~~~
nathos
The fruit, rice and pasta are pretty high up on the glycemic index.

~~~
kingnothing
Pasta isn't a high GI food.

"Q: Why does pasta have a low GI?

A: Pasta has a low GI because of the physical entrapment of ungelatinised
starch granules in a sponge-like network of protein (gluten) molecules in the
pasta dough. Pasta is unique in this regard. As a result, pastas of any shape
and size have a fairly low GI (30 to 60). Asian noodles such as hokkein, udon
and rice vermicelli also have low to intermediate GI values."

from <http://www.glycemicindex.com/faqprint.htm>

As a reference for anyone unfamiliar with the glycemic index, a piece of white
bread is typically set to be at 100, and lower is better.

------
jhancock
All I know is when I exercise regularly, I'm thinner. Just about everyone I
know that exercises regularly is thin (and healthier). There are a few
exceptions.

------
quellhorst
Ok, I'll speak as someone who has actually lost 70 pounds without diet pills,
surgery or anything unhealthy. I had to change how I thought about food, eat
stuff thats less processed, and find things that I really liked to do for
exercise.

I love to bicycle and some days I will be on the trails for 3 hours. I burn
1000 calories per hour while exercising. Also by exercising more and eating
better I actually started eating less.

------
justin_vanw
Yea, that is why (if you took off those numbers they wear) you wouldn't be
able to tell marathon runners from random people at walmart...

------
calcnerd256
The article mentioned the energy gap. Energy gap is the only metric that
matters for weight loss. Anything else is just a means to that end, and the
wrong abstraction can lead to the wrong medium-term goals and short-term
decision biases ("Should I do this right now or this?").

------
physcab
I remember the days when I was on the collegiate crew team and I worked out
twice a day for 3 hours. At the end of the season I gained 20 lbs (probably of
muscle) but I remember distinctly eating about 5 times a day compared to my
normal 2-3 times a day now.

------
zokier
So you need to BOTH watch your eating and exercise. Color me surprised...

------
asdlfj2sd33
_Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin

10 Sex Tips To Drive Your Man Crazy

Jon And Kate What Now

Bat Boy Born in Boise_

Subscribe to HN and get headlines just like the ones on the magazine rack in
the checkout isle of the grocery store!

------
JanezStupar
A lot of bad logic in this article. The main point being - that author feels
like she's exercising a lot. 30 minutes cardio a day is not a lot (the biggest
exercise being an 1 hour intensive interval training), otherwise the author
runs 5.5 miles (1 hour?).

That is not a lot of training. Lets assume that this is mostly all exercise
the author is doing (she's probably sitting through most of her day). That is
barely making up for the lack of exercise.

If she (or anybody else for that matter) stopped loosing weight at her current
intake/expenditure level it's merely an indication that she either eats too
much or exercises too little.

But the basic problem being that people believe that 30 minutes or 1 hour is a
lot exercise. At those levels you don't even get your body going yet. What a
person thinks about their fitness level is irrelevant. A person doing only 1
hour of exercise a day is barely fit. Really fit people (athletic - thin) can
go on for 3-5 hours without problem.

So if you want to lose weight drop any meals after 4 pm (4 pm being last snack
- a fruit). Start eating in the morning, eat every 3 hours (breakfast - snack
- lunch - snack - over) and exercise at least 1 hour a day (2 being super
good). Don't work yourself too hard. Go for low intensity workout (walking,
light running, cycling). You HAVE to stay under 70% HR (sub 140 BMP for 20-30
yr old).

You can eat anything in any combination. This kind of diet is kinda hard for
first two weeks but then it becomes a habit.

~~~
gaius
I downvoted you as your last meal of the day should be high protein, low GI.
Fruit is the opposite.

~~~
ars
You've been here long enough to know that this is not how HN does things.

You do NOT express disagreement with downmods.

~~~
cma
From pg: <http://news.ycombinator.net/item?id=117171>
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=392347>

~~~
ars
Yes, I know about those, and despite what he says, that is not the current
norm. (Those posts are from quite a long time ago.)

