
Why you shouldn't exercise to lose weight - DiabloD3
http://www.vox.com/2016/4/28/11518804/weight-loss-exercise-myth-burn-calories?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits
======
thedz
I've found online reaction to this article quite interesting. Normally data
and study minded folks bring out the "anecdotally, this doesn't seem true"
responses, and people seem think the article is attacking exercise as a
concept.

It's not.

It's saying that if a person's goal is to lose weight, then adjusting to a
good diet is far more important than (a reasonable amount of) exercise.

The article _does not_ claim that exercise is harmful. In fact, it explicitly
states that there are very many health reasons why exercise is important, and
that exercise+diet is still better than diet alone.

It also goes into the culture surrounding exercise, and how it tends to be
misleading. The education in popular culture around exercising presents it as
a magic pill, as being a major driving force behind weight loss. You see this
on magazine covers and on tv, "belly fat exercises", "toning exercises", all
sorts of exercises that serve to reinforce the idea that weight is primarily a
result of physical activity rather than (for most people) food consumption.

Ultimately though, I think the studies referenced back up the conclusion
pretty well: weight loss effectiveness goes diet+exercise > diet > exercise,
given standard amounts of each.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
I'm going to continue to posit that weight is a factor of genetics /
epigenetics and / or body function first and foremost.

Why is it that some people, regardless of how much they eat and how little
they exercise, never put on weight? That, to me, is the elephant in the room.

What is going on in these peoples bodies that is kept out of popular science
with regard to weight loss? We know that thyroid hormone function affects
weight and metabolism. In women reproductive hormones also affect weight,
oestrogen is a hormone present in both males and females, so there's some
crossover there. We know that adrenal function can affect weight. We know that
insulin resistance can affect weight.

There _has_ to be more to it that calories in - calories out = weigh gain or
loss.

If you have an unaddressed thyroid, reproductive hormone, insulin, or adrenal
issue you're going to be working _hard_ to address your weight.

It is my suspicion that fixing the diet first improves weight control better
than exercise because _food_ is _medicine_. Anything you put in your body on a
daily basis can be medicinal in that it can act to help your body restore
homoeostasis or move further away from it.

~~~
tomp
> regardless of how much they eat and how little they exercise, never put on
> weight?

If I had to choose between thermodynamics and medicine being wrong, and people
not being able to accurately estimate how "much" they eat and how "little"
they exercise, I'd bet all my money on the latter.

The simple reality is, people have _vastly_ different appetites. I eat fast
and am always hungry. I have two coworkers, one eats quite a bit less than me
(often struggles to finish a standard portion), the other eats mich more but
quite slowly.

3 different people, 3 vastly different eating habits. The reason people gain
different amounts of weight most likely isn't in the differences between our
bodies, but the differences between our minds.

~~~
ericb
I never understand the thermodynamics argument in terms of weight gain. Surely
you acknowledge that some solar cells and mechanical engines are more
efficient than others?

Additionally, do you acknowledge that some drives are more irresistible than
others? Can you hold your breath until you pass out?

Is it so hard to imagine these drives might differ from person to person? I
fully acknowledge that, irrespective of your body's efficiency, if you could
ignore your drive magically, you would lose weight with no problem, but that
is far from a useful endpoint because _the drive matters_.

~~~
baudehlo
Some people's bodies just burn more calories in resting than others. Or their
resting isn't as resting as they think - look at people who sit but their leg
twitches up and down.

Ultimately it's still calories in vs out. But the out isn't just burning 500
calories running. It's what you burn doing your day to day too.

------
yuzi
I went from 190 lbs. to 138 lbs. over 6 or 7 months. The only exercise I did
was jogging for 45 min a day. What I noticed was that jogging made me feel
better, which somehow got me to consistently eat better. After a days jogging
I didn't want to put crap food in me and ruin what I had accomplished and by
doing it everyday I felt good enough, often enough to stick with it.

So, based on my experience, I simply can not agree.

~~~
specialp
This is very true. Exercise has more of an effect than the calories burned. It
improves your health and you feel much better than when you had a sedentary
life. As always the answer is that decreasing calorie consumption with
moderate exercise is key to maintaining weight loss.

Just as exercising cannot offset massive overconsumption of food, massive
underconsumption of food will make one that is dieting feel terrible, and thus
not as likely to continue.

In addition the amount of exercise done is never going to really offset a
sedentary job. Someone walking on their feet all day vs me being at a desk is
going to consume much more energy than me even if I workout after work
intensely for an hour. So I am still going to need to consume less than them.
But if I did not do the hour of exercise, my body would break down from not
being used, and my overall feeling of health would decline.

~~~
yuzi
From my experience: I didn't have a sedentary life, well at least lets just
say I wasn't sitting at a computer all day. I was always out and about. My
extra weight was from a mix of overconsumption and poor food choices.

I noticed there were unforseen changes in behaviour due to diet that I still
find strange. Things like quitting pop. I used to grab McDonald's food more
often, but since quitting pop I avoid the place. Sometimes I still grab a
burger from there, like 5 times or so over the last 14 years, but I'll never
get a pop and I don't have a desire to go there and still avoid it with ease.

I still think diet changes are the single most important thing, but I just
don't think I could have gotten there without exercise.

~~~
mholmes680
I have also decided this past Jan 1 to stop Soda. And I've phased out sugar in
my morning coffee. Not being a big juice drinker in the first place, I think
I'm better off as a long term goal to limit the amount of sugar i "drink".
I'll stick to just "eating" it, focus on cutting out more processed sugar and
being smart about balanced diet in general.

I do crave it still tho, I have not found myself avoiding fast food either.
With two kids under 2, it just kind of makes life easier when I make them good
meals and can pick up something quick.

~~~
yuzi
One trick I've learned is to not have pop in the house. My girlfriend hates me
for it :). Honestly I couldn't have quit pop if I did have it there. At one
point she would buy it for her, but somehow I found myself drinking it so we
had to have a discussion; thankfully she accommodated me.

Ideally you and your family can get on the same page in terms of diet, but I
imagine with kids that can be extremely challenging. It's worth it if you can
do it.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
This works, but then if you have a job with free soda...discipline is still
needed.

~~~
HappyTypist
I like water more than soda. If you'd like some flavour then try squeezing a
few drop of lemon juice

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Addiction doesn't really work like that. Surely water is better for you, and
also "feels" better after a good work out. But put coke in front of people who
are semi-addicted to it, they will choose coke.

BTW, almost all water served at restaurants in China is lemon flavored. The
best halfway point I've seen is flavored soda water. Fizzy, slightly flavored,
gives you some of the feeling of pop without the sugar. Still, put coke in the
same fridge, and it requires some willpower to take the flavored soda water.

------
ChemicalWarfare
Anecdotal evidence from being a gym rat for 20 years, although I'm sure there
are studies out there to prove this. Maybe :)

No doubt that diet+exercise is the way to go when it comes to long-term weight
management. The thing is, "weight loss" in and of itself is a misleading
metric. You're losing weight! Great! But hold on a minute - your gut is the
same size but your biceps is smaller and your strength is way down. What
happened? You lost weight alright but its muscle you're losing, not fat.

So where I'm going with this is exercise is very important to make sure you
don't negatively impact your body composition by losing muscle weight when
dieting.

~~~
billmalarky
Muscle requires a lot of energy to maintain, so when your calories drop your
body starts shedding it to be more efficient _so long as you are also
inactive_.

If you stay active you will lose _strength_ on a calorie deficit but you will
not lose muscle mass. That's why you can do a cut, and your lifts will go down
but you still look great at the lower body fat. The muscle mass is still
there.

[http://fitnessblackbook.com/main/starvation-mode-why-you-
pro...](http://fitnessblackbook.com/main/starvation-mode-why-you-probably-
never-need-to-worry-about-it/)

~~~
ChemicalWarfare
Trained individual on a reasonable diet, taking an intelligent approach to
cutting will lose 'some' strength and 'some' muscle when cutting body fat,
yes.

Someone who is out of shape might actually be able to gain both muscle and
strength while losing weight when starting out as long as they are lifting in
addition to cleaning up their diet/reducing calories. The less fit they are
the better the gains, which I guess is borderline captn obvious territory :)

~~~
billmalarky
I wouldn't say it's captain obvious territory. I don't think most people
realize how fast muscle development drops off after a year of serious
training.

------
mholmes680
But, wait....

#10 - eat less fat? That runs counter to science too...

[http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/apr/07/the-sugar-
con...](http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/apr/07/the-sugar-conspiracy-
robert-lustig-john-yudkin)

~~~
falcolas
Fat is very dense in calories, so if your goal is to reduce caloric intake,
_reducing_ the fat will go a long ways towards that goal.

~~~
falcolas
I'm regretting commenting now. Like a bikeshed next to a nuclear plant,
anybody who has ever lost any amount of weight has an opinion on how it's
done.

Reducing fat reduces caloric intake. Note the word reduce (I even emphasized
it), instead of remove, or replace. Yes, fats are a healthy part of a good
diet. No, you should not omit them.

Of course, don't take my word for it. RTFOP, _which made the recommendation in
the first place._

~~~
e40
_Reducing fat reduces caloric intake._

Looks like you're doubling down. Your statement is 100% correct. The problem
is, fat calories are more satisfying than non-fat calories, so you are more
likely to eat less if you eat protein + fat instead of protein + carbs + less
fat. That's just the wait it works.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
One _should_ eat less fat and carbs, but in doing so one _will_ be less
satisfied and be more likely to snack or eat larger portions later, negating
the effect.

The problem is that while I am a good and level-headed person, my future self
is a hungry bastard.

------
beloch
What other people see when they look at you is determined almost entirely by
your diet. Nobody can see your muscles if they're buried under blubber.

How you feel, on the other hand, is hugely impacted by your physical
activities. Not only does exercise give you energy and focus, it has a huge
impact on mood. Exercise is more effective at fighting depression than most
medications.

There's more to being healthy than being a healthy weight. It's probably
better to be active and a little bit overweight than it is to be skinny and
inactive.

Note: I said a litle bit overweight, _not_ obese. Health risks add up quickly
if you're obese. Being cut and defined like a fitness magazine model is not
realistic for most people and confers few benefits beyond aesthetics. Getting
out of the obese range is realistic for most people and does confer
statistically significant health benefits.

~~~
Gibbon1
An idea that carries some weight (heh) with me is that your weight consists of
four 'compartments'

    
    
       Skeletal: Hard to argue that more skeletal mass is 'bad'
       Muscle: Also hard to argue more is bad
       Subcutaneous Fat: This is what people don't like.
       Visceral Fat: This is the stuff that kills you.
    

If you're judging the progress of your cunning diet and exercise plan using a
bathroom scale, you're going to be disappointed because muscle/skeletal mass
increases.

~~~
beloch
People who build up a lot of muscle sometimes fall into odd BMI
classificiations.

e.g. Phil Heath, Mr. Olympia winner of 2015, is 5'9" and 250 lbs at
competition weight, which would classify him as severely obese (BMI 36.9),
even though at that weight his body fat is probably close to the minimum a
human can tolerate.

For most people, there's simply no way to build up that amount of muscle
without some form of chemical assistance (e.g. steroids). If your BMI falls
into the obese range, it's exceedingly unlikely that you're just big-boned and
muscular.

------
Scramblejams
FWIW, my experience disagrees with this. I was overweight, started running
(starting around 9mi/wk, when I got bored and stopped I was up around
24mi/wk), and started losing weight quickly, lost a ton of it over a year,
after which I was at a very good weight for me. Now, as the piece touches on,
that exercise did change my eating, but the outcome of that isn't clear to me
-- I stopped eating/snacking for a few hours before a run so I wouldn't cramp.
But I also started eating a lot more outside of those exercise windows, as
running so much made me quite ravenous at times. Ate anything and everything I
wanted and I just kept dropping weight as long as I kept running.

Haven't looked at the data cited in the article, but my guess is that these
studies are looking mostly at what's often defined as "moderate" exercisers,
that is, people who walk an hour every day or something similarly unintensive.
Which is vastly better than nothing, but it isn't exactly a hard workout like
what I was engaging in, and I wouldn't expect to drop much weight if that's
all I was doing.

~~~
fattylite
It's just a bad title. The title should have been "Why you shouldn't exercise
to lose weight without changing your diet". If you eat the same amount as you
did before, assuming that was maintenance calories, you will lose weight if
you begin exercising. The problem is when you're intaking 1500 more calories
than necessary before you start exercising. You can't burn that off to the
point of a deficit with exercise alone.

~~~
Scramblejams
Except I didn't eat the same as before. I ate more, way, way more.

~~~
dpark
I bet you didn't, and this is the problem with anecdotal evidence. People are
terrible at tracking their actual caloric intake and expenditures.

24 miles a week is a decent bit, but it isn't _that_ much. If you add 24 miles
a week but eat a _lot_ more, you will gain weight.

~~~
Scramblejams
No, it's not _that_ much. But they were very high intensity miles. My typical
routine was to do a half mile walking warmup, then over the course of 5-8
minutes of running, gradually adjust my pace so my breathing was very close to
my sustainable max. Then I'd continue adjusting my speed to keep my breathing
there for the rest of the run. (All those running guides that say you should
be able to carry on a conversation while you're running? Yeah, that wasn't me
at all. I was huffing and puffing like mad the entire time.) I accumulated
that mileage over 3 runs/week, no more than one hour total each time, so that
distance was done in a 3 hour period.

And about the food? Umm, it wasn't even close. Before the running, my idea of
a snack was a little piece of cheese or a yogurt. After I started running, a
snack was a Carl's Jr. Famous Star cheeseburger. Sometimes I'd order two. I
became notable among my football player brothers-in-law for my capacity,
regularly demonstrated, for out-eating them. My wife still talks about a
particularly memorable restaurant visit where I basically ate 3 large,
complete entrees. My calorie intake was ridiiiiiculous. Eating like that was
both enjoyable and entertaining, and it didn't seem to interfere with my
fitness, so I did it all the time.

And still I lost weight. Crazy. The body is a strange machine.

------
ghshephard
Depends on how quickly you want to lose weight, and whether that's your only
goal. If, as a 150 pound male, your RMR is about 1500 kcal/day, and you eat at
least 1000 kcal/day (anything less probably isn't healthy - you do need to
supply your body with nutrition, and also avoid going into starvation mode) -
then you are running a 500kcal/day deficit - about 3500 kcal/week, or 1 pound
of weight loss. If you want to lose any more than that, eating less, outside
of a metabolic lab environment, is probably not going to be effective (you
either have your RMR drop as your body goes into starvation mode, or you end
up binge eating as your body reacts to the massive deficit of calories).

This only allows for increased caloric output - and it's relatively simple to
do 500 kcal/additional aerobic exercise/day - an hour of brisk walking, with
maybe 30 minutes of stair climbing does the trick. This gets you from 1 pound
of weight loss a week, to 2 pounds, and has the additional benefit of
increasing your VO2 Max.

This doesn't even touch on the importance of resistance strength training
exercise, and how key that is to maintaining a healthy body while dropping
weight - it's all to easy to turn into a lightweight flabby weak person by
just not eating/exercising.

------
agrona
The article claims that

>We have no control over our basal metabolic rate

and then links to a page[1] that explains

>Muscle cells require more energy to maintain than fat cells, so people with a
higher muscle to fat ratio tend to have a higher BMR.

and

>Muscle tissue burns more calories than fat tissue, so increasing your muscle
mass will help you lose weight.

It doesn't seem to address this discrepancy, though (that by exercising to
build muscle mass one can affect their BMR and thus the lion's share of the
calories burned).

[1] [http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/loseweight/Pages/how-can-I-
speed-...](http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/loseweight/Pages/how-can-I-speed-up-my-
metabolism.aspx)

------
dang
HN threads on this topic tend to be repetitive and superficial, but this
article appears to be so much more substantive than the usual media pieces
that we've provisionally turned off user flags on the post.

------
taiboku
This article misses a key point: increased muscle mass correlates with
increased calorie burn.

Not all exercise is created equal. Exercise that doesn't build muscle is
indeed ineffective at burning fat. But exercise that DOES build muscle has a
compounding effect on burning fat. Your muscles require more energy to
maintain, so they will burn more calories just by existing.

~~~
maxerickson
This effect is pretty small. Like 10 calories a day for a pound of muscle
(which is quite a bit of muscle to add).

It still matters, a few calories a day for a year ends up being pounds of
weight, but adjusting calories out of the diet is going to be a better first
strategy.

~~~
ZoF
Where are you getting 10 calories per day per pound?

I find that surprisingly low, and that's even if we're talking 100% sedentary
here.

~~~
seanalltogether
This blog post cites 2 sources on the 6-10 calories per pound, haven't read
through it myself though.

[http://www.builtlean.com/2013/04/16/muscle-burn-
calories/](http://www.builtlean.com/2013/04/16/muscle-burn-calories/)

------
upofadown
Does anyone actually still think that the extra energy consumption caused by
exercise will cause you to lose weight and not just eat more?

A more contemporary discussion would include the idea that the different state
of being caused by exercise causes less food intake ... which incidentally is
true for me personally.

It is entirely possible that people that exercise regularly never have any
trouble with their weight and thus never show up in these studies.

~~~
DanBC
> Does anyone actually still think that the extra energy consumption caused by
> exercise will cause you to lose weight and not just eat more?

Plenty of people on HN strongly think this.

The nutrition discussion on HN is normally fucking terrible. (See this thread
where someone talks about "the science" and links to the Guardian as a
reference).

------
marrington
At the beginning of this year I was easily 100 lbs overweight. Decided it was
all coming off this year. Started counting every calorie with myfitnesspal,
later started looking at macros as well.

Weight started coming off but it really accelerated when I got serious about
exercising. Swimming a mile 3x per week. Weight training 3x per week, and I've
been on the treadmill a lot in the evenings, probably another 15 miles per
week fast walking. Down 60 lbs as of now and consistently losing around 3-4
pounds per week.

It's hard to keep calories at less than 1800 per day with all the exercise,
but it's just a hard psychological limit I've set for myself and the
myfitnesspal app (and a kitchen scale) make it doable.

It seems to me that the exercise has made me lose about 1-2 pounds per week
more than just diet, but who knows.

I miss pizza.

~~~
andreasklinger
re pizza: try making pizza with shredded cauliflower as base. depending how
much cheese you add it's should have controllable calories.

it's nothing close to real pizza but maybe it works as placebo effect ;)

~~~
marrington
Yeah we do that about once a week and it helps.It's not really pizza but
whatever it is is pretty good.

~~~
heisnotanalien
You can find 600 calorie pizzas easily enough, which fit into a 1800 calorie a
day diet just fine.

------
jkljkljkljjj
Often ignored aspects to exercising as an obese person are that it plain
sucks, is difficult, and likely to result in injury; it's _harmful_.

Whenever I see obese people out running in public, obviously attempting to
lose weight, these thoughts come to mind:

1\. Impressive; that's a lot of hard work, not to mention embarrassing. Nobody
_fit_ I know could do the same carrying the equivalent weight in a backpack
full of sand.

2\. Doomed; you're killing yourself, imagine the long-term effects of such
stress on your lower joints.

3\. Futile; you're probably just going to eat too much of the wrong stuff now
with all the appetite stimulated by the hard work, combined with the comfort
sought in the immobilized and depressed days of joint and muscle pain.

Lose the extra baggage _before_ you start exercising! Your body will thank
you.

I used to weigh ~225# in my mid 20s. That weight was dropped to ~170# in under
a year by simply removing sugars and refined/processed carbohydrates from my
diet, which is a good weight for my build and height of 5'9". My experience
was the desire to be active and exercise simply emerged once my weight was
down, because doing physical things became fun and easy again, which also
meant it was perfectly safe.

In my mid 30s now and ever since that initial drop I've stayed around ~165#,
but with more muscle now that I'm more physically active. I continue to
diligently avoid sugars and processed carbs, processed foods in general
really, and exercise every day for the fun and fitness, because it's easy and
seems to combat many of the negative effects of aging.

Exercise seems optional to me. If you eat correctly, without even exercising
you'll have a normal weight, and preserve the ability to be physically active.
If you eat poorly, you trap yourself, and the only way out of the trap is a
slow process of eating correctly, the duration being proportional to how far
you've let yourself go.

It frustrates me how we've structured the food environment such that all the
convenient/affordable options surrounding us are bad for us. It takes constant
discipline to not eat poorly as a result.

Good luck.

~~~
tdyen
You've hit the nail on the head with the exercise theories. Injuries can stop
any program dead in its tracks. Avoiding injury is the key.

------
reddytowns
The best way to lose weight is to fast. People are so accustomed to not going
without food for a few hours it becomes a phobia. Our ancestors did not live
like this.

If you practice fasting long enough, you'll eventually get used to your
stomach being empty, and it won't bother you anymore. Then it becomes trivial
to lose weight.

I eat only one meal a day, and I don't even notice it when its been over 24
hours I have gone without food. As an added benefit, I can have an absolute
feast everyday, including a large dessert, without gaining any weight.

------
CryoLogic
The title to this article is very manipulative and misleading.

Weight loss seems to be a mysterious science to the everyday man and woman,
but is well known by most top athletes and has been for many years.

It is simple chemistry. The calories you eat are stored in fat, which is
comprised of O, H and C. Roughly ~3500 calories will become one pound of
bodyfat. By this logic, yes you can eat less calories and lose weight. If you
are burning 2500 calories per day, and you opt to eat only 2000 calories per
day you should lose aprox. 1 lb of body fat per week (500 * 7 = 3500).

On the other hand, exercise is very important in weight loss. Muscle mass is
expensive to maintain, and every lb of muscle mass can take 30-50 cals per day
just to maintain. This increases your daily calories burned, allowing you to
eat more food w/o weight gain or keep the same food and lose weight.

Additionally, when you exercise and convert the fat to energy the fat is
released in various forms of O, H and C. Most of it is breathed out, and some
comes out in liquid form. This is literally weight you are losing. Each atom
has a molecular weight, be it O, H or C. And if you want to do the math you
can figure out how much weight you are losing per exercise per hour.

The reason some people believe low carb diets are the best for weight loss, is
directly tied to exercise. Quickly avail. energy known as glycogen is stored
in your muscles and used up before fat. It is created from carbohydrates.
Without glycogen in your muscles, you will burn fat first.

~~~
eloff
While I appreciate the logic behind this, and agree in principle, it's an
overly simplistic picture.

If you decrease your calorie intake your body compensates by lowering your
metabolism. Between this and the decreased metabolic burden of carrying less
fat and muscle, this is why many dieters find that their weight loss plateaus
after a while of making progress.

As far as low-carb diets in particular, there are also additional factors. If
you get the carbs down under about 20 carbs a day you can go into ketosis,
which is a wasteful metabolism. You literally piss away some 10-20% of your
calories.

But the biggest benefit of low-carb is you don't have those blasted carbs (and
especially sugar!) adding calories to your diet without triggering the
satiated response in your brain - you just eat less on a low-carb diet,
without feeling hungry.

------
thesis
One of my trainers once said... I'm helping you for 1 hour a day, you have 23
other hours to ruin it all.

Healthy eating is super super important.

------
rsp1984
> The calorie restriction groups lost more weight than the group the dieted
> and exercised.

Yes, and anything else would have surprised me. Exercise leads to muscle
build-up. Muscle is heavier than fat.

The right metric to use here would have been body fat, not body weight.
Similarly, the fitness goal should not be to "lose weight" but to get into
good shape overall and feel healthy.

------
ryanpardieck
I've lost over 130 pounds in the last two years and I deliberately avoided
high intensity exercise during that time. I find it very hard to moderate my
hunger when doing regular high-intensity exercise. I would take long, slow
walks a few times a week, and would rarely feel hungry while maintaining a
very high daily caloric deficit. (In fact, I often felt quite full. I drank
beer frequently, indulged in a pint of Ben and Jerrys a few times a month, ate
out a lot, etc.)

In my experience it's most important to find a way to eat at a caloric deficit
that feels natural, do-able, and fun. Even rapid weight loss takes a very long
time, so you need to build it into your lifestyle. If you're like me and you
like beer, ice cream, and dining out, then it's mainly a matter of portion
control. I ate what I liked, but I learned to moderate portions and listen to
my body. I ate until I was no longer hungry, and then no more.

------
slfnflctd
I've noticed in some cases that exercise can actually stave off hunger pangs -
both while doing it and afterward for a while (you want water more than food)
- and in this manner it can act as an appetite suppressant.

As long as you ignore the body's impulse to eat more than usual when you
finally do sit down for a meal, it can very much work in your favor. There's
also a phenomenon people refer to as "shrinking stomach" (that I've observed
first hand) where your body adapts to feeling more full on less food. I don't
know if your stomach actually shrinks, but it feels like it.

If you don't sufficiently often resist the urge to eat more than you need,
your body will adapt to that intake level and there will most likely be a
rough patch when you try to change the trend. I believe most people can push
past this uncomfortable period and stop feeling deprived after a while.

~~~
loxs
I have seen exactly the opposite effect on myself. After exercise I can (and
really want) to eat the world.

~~~
slfnflctd
Certainly both responses happen. I've noticed I tend to have a delayed
reaction and get hungrier later, then eat a whole day's calories in a sitting
without even trying. Regardless, there are all kinds of ways to help suppress
appetite, and if exercise is having this affect for you, alternating with
other methods can allow you to delay and/or reduce eating.

------
Axsuul
I'm surprised the ketogenic diet is not mentioned at all. It's becoming
clearer and clearer that obese people are likely much more insulin resistant
than the rest of the population and as a result much more carbohydrate
intolerant than the rest of the population. The insulin response these people
are experiencing is causing them to store much more of the energy that they
consume, especially if it contains fat. However, if you get rid of the carbs
but still consume the fat, your body instead becomes adapted to burning
ketones for fuel instead of glucose. So as a result, any fat that you may
ingest while in ketosis gets burned for fuel instead of becoming plasma. Just
saunder over to reddit.com/r/keto and you can already see the amazing
transformations taking place.

------
alexc05
Based on all the other comments in the thread, I wonder if we updated to
language we used if our goals would be clearer.

Why not replace the phrase "lose weight" with "become slimmer"?

We're not actually concerned with losing weight, but in fact with losing a
specific TYPE of weight.

It makes it a lot easier to come to terms with instructions like: "keep your
insulin down and your fat cells will empty"

The scale is an imperfect measure for slimness and lose weight is the wrong
phrase to describe what we're generally trying for.

Obviously these are sweeping generalizations, if you feel the need to poke
holes, you're probably right. I'm going for brevity as opposed to a "think
piece" \- please feel free to take the comment with a grain of salt.

------
minikites
>Surely I had earned an extra margarita.

You can stop reading right there, that's the problem. You have to both eat
well and exercise to lose weight. You don't get to eat extra things just
because you exercised.

Focus on two things: First, portion control. I know it's wasteful for the
environment but I get the single serving versions of (healthy) things (e.g.
pre-sliced cheese, single cups of greek yogurt instead of the big tub, etc) so
you know exactly how much you're eating. Get a kitchen scale and some
measuring cups for everything else, the odds are excellent that you're a
crappy estimator. And bring your lunch to work.

Second, blocking out time in your day for exercise, even if you don't work
that hard. It's important to put on your workout clothes and at least go
through the motions until it's an ingrained habit (1-3 months in my case but
ymmv). Once it's an ingrained habit it's much easier to keep going. I start to
feel gross and unclean if I go more than three or four days without some kind
of strenuous exercise.

It's a lot of work and it's very difficult, but it's not complicated. With
these two things I have lost 70 pounds and kept it off for seven years.

------
kazinator
Exercise didn't work for me until I stuck with it consistently, and
progressively.

The problem is that what doesn't work is "strawman exercise": for instance,
the kind of exercise that a sedentary volunteer test subject is able to handle
in some study.

Before exercise works for fat loss, you have to train up to the intensity and
volume that is required. That takes months. Consistent months during which you
not only don't give up, but pile on the challenges. If you quit, you lose your
progress and slide back to the start.

You can't measure exercise just by the time put in and the theoretical
calories, by the way. There is a quality component to it.

Another thing is that once you have a decently low body fat, the remaining
areas where fat accumulates on your body will show to be "exercise resistant".
It's very hard to get rid of that centimeter of fat from the back of your
thigh, calves, upper back and arms, or central abs. Or that pesky "love
handle" area. That, I can attest, either can't be done with exercise, or
requires exercise to be a full time job. But that's not what this article is
about; the claim is that exercise isn't effective against _obesity_.

~~~
spinlock
The other thing that the article doesn't address is how much weight you gain
in muscle when you exercise. When I go from out-of-shape to back-in-shape, I
know that I've increased my muscle mass as well as loosing fat. That doesn't
show on the scale but it definitely is what I'm going for.

Also, increasing your muscle is going to increase your resting metabolic rate.
So, as you exercise and get stronger, you'll burn more calories while resting.
(this probably only holds for men who build muscle when they work out. if
you're a marathon runner who's rail thin, I don't think you'll burn much fat
at all while resting.)

------
eeeeeeeeeeeee
I started working out heavily to lose weight, but also to "feel better." I
succeeded at both points, but it took an extremely long time to hit my goal
weight. Looking back, it's clear I was eating too much to compensate for the
additional work I was doing.

I gained half of that weight that I lost back pretty quick because I couldn't
keep up the strenuous exercise routine. So, the next time I instead focused on
my eating habits and skipped formal exercise entirely (mostly just went for
walks instead). I had much more consistent and predictable weight loss week-
over-week and now I'm about to surpass the goal I had the first time I tried
in 1/3 of the time. It really came down to small portions -- I didn't have to
give up many types of food, I just didn't eat nearly as much of it as I would
have in the past.

This echoes experiences from people I know. They start out with a strenuous
exercise routine and it's fun in the beginning to push yourself, but most
people can't sustain it. Or they get injured and that sets them down a path of
being lazy and gaining the weight back.

------
krisdol
You should exercise to prevent diabetes and a swath of other health problems,
though.

------
pascalxus
Our body's software is so hopelessly out of date. It's programmed to preserve
fat at all cost: something quite useful, say 2 million years ago when famines
were happening almost every day.

Medical and nutritional science needs to advance more quickly in this regard.
Currently, it's going at a snail's pace. I mean, we understand the entire
creation of the universe, but the most advanced nutritionists in the world are
barely aware of the basic mechanisms which govern our fat production, not even
understanding how it works. So far, all we have is theories, hypothesis,
correlations and some compelling experimentations.

Personally, I'm waiting for the iBody app to come out. iBody, will allow us to
control our metabolism at a cellular level, dialing it up or down at will.
We'll be able to control our appetites and hungers at the push of a button
too. But, at this rate, who knows how long it will take to get this off the
ground: 100s of years, thousands? Come on investors, this is a multi-trillion
dollar market.

~~~
dota_fanatic
It's utterly easier to just make and advertise addictive food, completely
throwing nutritional quality out the window. What if you could even claim your
addictive, mostly empty junk is healthy? Therefore funding and studies with
the intention of obfuscation and the control of the progress of understanding.

The world would have to look very, very different than today's for something
like an iBody app to come into being. Where's the money to be made in people
having that much control over themselves? The goal is to sell more (eg)
donuts, not less. To defect is the norm.

~~~
pascalxus
Yes. Consumers are mainly to blame for this. As long as consumers keep buying
the garbage (solutions that don't work/never had any chance of working)
they're pumping out, businesses don't have much incentive to create anything
that works. It's appalling to me, how people can continue to spend so much
money on gimmicks and appetite suppressants that clearly don't work.

------
gaberpt
This a harmful, eye-catching, title.

Whereas exercise is not required to lose weight, you still can use exercise to
optimize the process.

~~~
takno
About half of the article deals with why attempting to use exercise to
optimize the process probably won't help much with it and for some people will
completely derail it. The title is exactly aligned with the article

~~~
WalterSear
None of the article looks at weight training.

------
tommynicholas
Of course this article focuses on cardio. It's almost become conventional
fitness wisdom that cardio will not help you lose weight.

Weight lifting will also not help you lose "weight" but it will help you lose
fat. Diet #1, lifestyle #2, weight lifting #3 (optional), cardio #infinity

------
boulos
Anytime this comes up in conversation, I enjoy pointing people to John
Walker's _Hacker 's Diet_
([https://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/](https://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/)). I
enjoy the bits of Autodesk trivia he tossed in as well (he was a co-founder
and wrote much of AutoCAD, as he then thinks "So if I can do that, why can't I
learn to lose weight?").

The most accurate critique of any of these "calories in minus calories out"
arguments is that those vary from person to person and from food to food. So
if you do have a particularly hard time losing (or gaining!) weight, it might
be a bit of genetic variation.

------
EpicEng
>The spinning instructor was echoing a message we've been getting for years:
As long as you get on that bike or treadmill, you can keep indulging — and
still lose weight

Who is saying this? Anyone who has spent an hour educating themselves on the
subject knows that it's all about calories in v calories out. That can be
accomplished via the gym and the kitchen, or the kitchen alone.

Exercise provides additional benefits; higher caloric deficit assuming the
same diet, muscle tone (appearance and burns more calories when you're doing
nothing), and general cardiovascular health.

------
fortyseven
As a fatass who walks 2 to 3 miles a day for exercise, and is seeing little in
the way of progress, I know this to be true. I know what must be done, but
man, it's hard to break bad food habits.

------
thenadamgoes
You diet to lose weight. You exercise to get in shape.

------
blakesterz
So that's an interesting long read, I guess all the details end up making
sense. Some physical activity in addition to calorie counting and other
behavioral changes is the best way to go. The most important thing a person
can do is to limit calories in a way they like and can sustain, and focus on
eating more healthfully.

Don't expect to be able to exercise enough to lose much weight.

------
dragonwriter
You shouldn't exercise to lose weight, because for most people you shouldn't
be aiming primarily to lose weight; weight loss should be a component of the
broader goal of improving overall health. For which you probably should
exercise, regardless of whether it's optimal for the narrower goal of weight
loss.

------
vanderZwan
I'd like to see that last graph split out into "fat loss/gain" and "muscle
loss/gain" \- because reducing food intake can also make your body break down
_muscles_ , which is equally bad. Doing exercise to stimulate the body to make
more muscles can counter that effect.

------
cphoover
I guess people go to the gym for different reasons. Me personally I don't care
about losing weight. I want to convert my body fat into muscle. If I don't eat
a lot I can lose tons of weight, but I also look and feel weaker. So for me,
exercise is very important.

~~~
orky56
You can't convert body fat into muscle. You can choose to cut (lose fat), bulk
(gain muscle), or lean gain (gain muscle without gaining any/little fat).
Unfortunately, it is frustrating and futile to do any of the above 3 at once.

------
sokoloff
You can't out-run the fork.

~~~
Terr_
And--anecdotally--avoiding 300 calories of snack is much _much_ easier than
finding time, opportunity, and inspiration for 300 calories of exercise.

~~~
sosborn
Of course, eating that 300 calories of snack is easier than either of those
options :)

------
amorphid
When I started exercising, it made me hungrier. But my crappy eating habits
made me sanna stuff my face with more crap. Developing better eating habits,
then adding exercising, works better for me.

------
BioMeditate
"Despite going from being mostly sedentary to spending a couple of hours
exercising almost every day, the participants only lost about 11 pounds on
average"

I would love to lose 11 lbs

------
ape4
I like the iterative method. Everyday look at a scale. If your weight has gone
up, you did something bad the day before... don't do that again.

~~~
amckenna
As someone who has tracked their weight on a daily basis for the better part
of 8 months, I wouldn't suggest doing that alone. Your weight will fluctuate
by a few pounds day to day and sometimes will trend up for a few days, then
down for a few. What time of day you weight yourself and factors like your
hydration level will play a part.

What I did was weigh myself every morning and record my weight and body fat %.
Then calculate a rolling 10 day average. That was nice because if my weight
went up for a day or two but overall was trending downwards it was visible.
Graphing it and watching the graph go downwards was very motivating.

------
webnrrd2k
The best way to put this idea that I've heard is this: "you can't out run your
fork"

------
formula_ninguna
People get fat not because they eat too much. But because they eat junk food.
That's it. The amount of calories is irrelavant here.

If you want to be a good shape, eat fruit. Without GMO and hemicals. That's
simple. Yet most people go to McDonalds, drink Coca-Cola, eat different kinds
of shit and wonder "What should I do to lose weight? Hmmmm, maybe I should
work out more?"

------
jsonmez
Biggest flaw in article: assuming all "weight" is fat.

~~~
lkiernan
Actually you'll lose muscle weight by cutting calories just fine

------
mixmastamyk
tl;dr: Why you shouldn't use exercise as an excuse to overeat, it doesn't burn
enough calories.

------
ryao
I feel that those who think that exercise is a solution for weightloss either
have an absurdly good metabolic rate or have an unrealistic view of how much
time people can devote to exercise.

I had tried to lose some weight a few years ago and everything O tried had
failed, including exercise. At one point, I purchased a digital scale and
performed multiple measurements a day of my weight. They confirmed that
additional exercise (e.g. walking a few miles) had negligible impact on my
weight.

Afterward, I decided to redesign my diet for weight loss. I was able to lose
50 lbs in roughly 3 months by that alone. The idea was that my body had an
abundance of energy such that all I needed were nutrients to keep my body
going and a certain volume in my stomach to trick it into signaling my brain
that I was eating sufficiently. I ended up consuming a multivitamin pill, egg
whites, tofu, brocolli and fruits each day for the better part of those 3
months. I calculated that doing that lowered my daily caloric intake 800
calories a day.

Sadly, I ended up regaining about 30 of them after pressure from certain
relatives to eat more got to the point where being fatter was preferable to
having to deal with it. The entire time, I had been considered overweight to
obese by my BMI so the pressure to eat was in no way because I had gone
overboard, although I had come within 5 lbs of attaining a "healthy" BMI
before I regained some of the weight. My mistake was switching to Soylent
after deciding that I did not want to lose weight so quickly. The idea that I
was not eating food triggered my relatives' "lets try to feed him" reaction.

Lately, I have started to try doing this again by consuming a daily
multivitamin pill, water, spinach, "beyond meat" fruits and a daily bag or two
of popcorn (to clear the pantry). The popcorn will be eliminated as soon as I
have finished the remaining supply, but even eating the popcorn, I am losing
weight by doing this, although it is definitely not as fast as it would be had
I not decided to finish off that popcorn.

The first time that I lost weight, I had a relative who attended weight
watchers. The people at weight watchers were horrified when told how quickly I
managed to do it and talked about studies about the dangers of rapid weight
loss. My feeling was that they did not want to lose a source of revenue and
that being as fat was worse for me. In hindsight, I think that they would have
been right had I been anywhere close to a healthy weight at the time as what
should matter is the percentage of weight lost rather than the raw numbers.
The closer that I approached a "healthy" weight, the slower my weight loss
became and when I was within 5 pounds of it, I had started to feel somewhat
light headed, which is when I decided to try lose by weight more slowly rather
than force it through a large deficit in my daily caloric intake.

------
garyrob
From the article: "If a hypothetical 200-pound man added 60 minutes of medium
intensity running four days per week while keeping his calorie intake the
same, and he did this for 30 days, he'd lose five pounds. 'If this person
decided to increase food intake or relax more to recover from the added
exercise, then even less weight would be lost,' Hall added. (More on these
'compensatory mechanisms' later.)

So if one is overweight or obese, and presumably trying to lose dozens of
pounds, it would take an incredible amount of time, will, and effort to make a
real impact through exercise.”

OK. I exercise more than that every month and have for years. It's painless to
do because it's the only time I spend watching TV shows like Game Of Thrones--
I look forward to my exercise sessions.

So, this article is telling me that (unless I exhibit compensatory mechanisms'
such as eating more than I do), and if I started at 200 lbs, I'd lose 5 lbs a
month, just doing what I actually want to do (because I enjoy watching
entertaining TV shows like GoT). I'd go from 200 lbs to not being overweight
in less than a year. The article's take on this is "it would take an
incredible amount of time , will, and effort to make a real impact through
exercise". That seems like an incredible amount of negative spin the authors
are trying to put on it. To me, it sounds like a fantastic deal. And one I've
taken advantage of.

My own weight loss path is pretty complicated, but I was at 225 and now my
weight stays between 173 and 183, generally up and down depending on life
events and whether I have temporarily keep more sodas in the fridge than I
normally do.

EDIT: I just want to emphasize that the key for me is that I enjoy my exercise
sessions, because I look forward to watching the most entertaining TV produced
in the English language. So it takes almost no will power or effort. It's a
matter of choosing not to watch that TV when not exercising, which gets to be
a habit--similar to not picking up an apple pie every time I go to the grocery
store so there's no such pie sitting around the house. If if DID take
willpower and effort to do that exercise, I probably wouldn't do it! It helps
enormously that I have an elliptical trainer in the house. But that's a small
investment compared to the health benefits--not just weight loss and
maintenance, but the fact that exercising is great for the brain, and many
other benefits as well, including a reduction in cancer risk.

EDIT 2: I don't even know if I'd find that TV all that enjoyable if I wasn't
exercising. I can imagining thinking "why am I wasting this time watching this
crap when I could be doing something useful??" But when exercising, there are
so many benefits that I give myself total permission to watch it, and I do
enjoy it!

------
vannevar
This article, including the title, is a bit of a mess. Nothing in it refutes
the commonly accepted principle that if you burn as many daily calories in
exercise as you consume in food, you will not get fatter. The point of the
article seems to be simply that the modern Western diet is so high in calories
that it's difficult to do enough exercise to make up the difference. The
survey study they cite talks about exercise in the range of only a couple of
hundred calories a day, and even then, contrary to what the article implies,
the study's conclusion clearly states that weight loss was proportional to the
amount of exercise. So, sure, if you're eating 1000 calories/day more than
you're burning, throwing in an extra 30-minute walk on the treadmill isn't
going to do much. But try a real exercise regimen like P90X where you _are_
burning an extra 800 calories or so a day, and you absolutely will see results
even if your diet remains unchanged.

~~~
pjlegato
The point of the article is that the relationship between "amount of exercise
you do" and "calories you burn" is probably not linear, as has traditionally
been believed.

According to the scientist's theory, you get diminishing returns, where you
have to do ever more and more exercise to burn the same number of calories.

~~~
vannevar
But the study they cite to support that view talks about very low levels of
exercise (1100 calories a week) in the long term studies. If the diet calorie
surplus was comparable in both long and short term, it's not surprising that
the results were disproportionately low in the long term compared to the
short-term studies: with such a low level of exercise, it wouldn't be
surprising if the measurement error was significant. In a longer term study,
it's tough to control for what people do the rest of the time.

And in their discussion of the Hadza tribe, they admit that the Hadza could be
resting enough at other times of the day to offset the increased calories they
expend for food gathering. All that does is tell us that given two populations
that exercise about the same amount, the one that eats less will be leaner.
That says nothing about whether the Hadza could remain lean on a Western diet
if they also exercised more, which is the real question. Nowhere in the
article is that question actually directly addressed. The study of marathoners
they cite points out that the subjects increased their intake while they
trained, which unsurprisingly limited their weight loss.

If you eat the same amount but exercise significantly more, you will lose
weight. If you eat significantly less with no increase in exercise, you will
lose weight. Nothing in this article supports with data the conclusion that
the latter approach is better than the former.

------
blktiger
TLDR; Exercise alone won't help you lose weight, you need to combine exercise
and diet changes.

~~~
rarec
True enough. You can't outrun a poor diet.

------
yarou
In certain Vedic traditions, physical exertion is seen as a form of
meditation. The concept there is if you can discipline your body, you can
discipline your mind.

That being said, I think the author of this article tries way too hard to be
counterfactual. If you put an obese male or female on the treadmill with
modest caloric restriction, over time they will lose weight on a log scale.

------
throwaway_xx9
Nice to see an article that explains common-sense ideas with some effort to
collect data.

My theory about how the Biggest Loser contestants lose weight - get this -
they're not allowed to snack during their all-day workouts.

------
xyzzy4
Exercise makes your face and overall aesthetics look better even if you don't
lose weight.

------
gaberpt
a

~~~
adrianN
Cycling an hour each day is also hard for most people.

~~~
titzer
400 calories is about half an hour at vigorous effort for most people, or
maybe 40 mins at moderate effort.

------
greenwalls
I guess it's just a coincidence that most athletes aren't overweight. It
doesn't have anything to do with them exercising?

~~~
tzs
Amusingly, if you go by BMI, quite a few pro athletes _are_ overweight, or
even obese. (This is a good illustration of how idiotic BMI can be...).

For instance, Michael Jordan was slightlu overweight according to BMI.
Shaquille O'Neal was past overweight and into obese. Wilt Chamberlin was
overweight.

Leaving basketball for boxing, Muhammad Ali was well into overweight. Mike
Tyson was obese.

How about American Football? I'm going to exclude line positions since a large
part of their job is to be a wall and so we'd expect them to go for mass.
Quarterbacks Dan Marino and Joe Montana: overweight. In fact, five of the last
six Heisman Trophy winners (who were all quarterbacks) are overweight, and one
is obese. The last four non-quarterback Heisman winners were running backs,
and two were overweight and two were obese.

~~~
vskarine
so true, I've never been in better shape in my life, I recently ran ultra-
marathon and can easily bench press my own weight 10 times but my physician
told me I am overweight and should loose 15 pounds because my BMI is over 25.
I wanted to take his head off.

------
revelation
The title says "you shouldn't exercise to lose weight", which seems to suggest
that exercise will negatively affect your ability to lose weight.

There isn't a single study here that proves this rather lofty hypothesis.

~~~
tzs
You are taking the title as meaning

    
    
      lose weight => ! exercise
    

or equivalently

    
    
      exercise => ! lose weight
    

That's not what the title is saying. What it is saying is

    
    
      ! (exercise => lose weight)

~~~
revelation
Well, the title was changed, which makes this somewhat silly.

