Being a certified ACSM (American College of Sports Medicine) Health Fitness specialist, I got an email from ACSM 2 weeks ago about a very controversial article published in TIME publication. I’m sure you know it’s a very well-known magazine. The title is “Why Exercise Won’t Make You Thin“. And the cover of the magazine says ” The Myth of Exercise: Of course it’s good for you. But it won’t make you lose weight. It’s what you eat that counts.”
Hmmm… the titles certainly stand out as weight loss is an big issue now with obesity on the rise. The author of the article will have you believed that exercise is useless for weight loss and then say it’s what you eat that counts. He is very good at doing that by quoting some names and selectively using research findings.
For example, he mentioned about a survey that reported more people are exercising more regularly than ever before and despite that more people are overweight. MY rebunk: You can’t just believe the survey because there are surveyees who wants to look good in survey and as a whole cannot paint a true picture.
He also selectively pick a study that got 3 groups of women to train with personal trainers for 72 min, 136 min and 194 min per week respectively, for 6 months. Then there’s a fourth group called the “control group” that does not change their usual physical activity routines. All the women were told not to change their dietary habits. The results were that there were no differences between all the groups with some women losing and gaining weight. He mentioned that the women with personal trainers did not lose anymore weight than the controlled group. Then he added “The control-group women may have lost weight because they were filling out some forms that have prompted them to eat fewer doughnuts.” And the author’s point is “What is the point of exercising?” My Rebunk: Any properly trained health and fitness professional would not tell their clients to eat whatever they want and expect them to lose weight just from exercising. In regards to impact of exercise, the study is poorly designed. One thing for sure is that you can never win poor nutrition with exercise.
The article tells about how exercise makes you hungrier uncontrollably and actually makes you eat more and as a result gained more weight. Again, he selectively picked study to back him up but there is also very recent study from University of Pittsburgh that found people who exercise eat less.
As you read on, you actually realise that the writer is finding all the possible reasons why exercise would not help lose weight. I guess he must be very upset with his gut hanging out in the first place as mentioned in the article and blame it on exercise that he lost his self-control in eating. He certainly believed that doing exercise gives you the right to indulge in junk food and certainly thinks that exercise is the culprit that got him to eat more and made his 4 hours a week workout useless in banishing his gut. Come on! You can’t expect to lose weight when you have bad food even with the best workout program.
Seriously, the writer of the article is not a credible person to take advice from regarding weight loss. Why? He actually thinks that fat can convert to muscle and his mentality with exercise is that he can eat whatever he wants if he exercise. Sorry it does not work that way. Also he mentioned that overweight people has “higher metabolism” than lighter people and interpret that as overweight people actually “exercise” more than the lighter people. In general, heavier people is going to have higher metabolism than lighter people based on the fact that the body will use more energy to move extra weight around and maintain the bodyweight. There’s no comparison. It’s comparing apple to orange. You need to compare the people of the same weight to get an accurate picture. Weight loss should be focused on fat loss and health. You can’t get as much fat loss and health benefits from eating alone. Exercise and healthy eating help reduce body fat, gives you the tone and provide the countless health benefits that it’s just too much to list.
Honestly, is it really exercise or the food that he puts in his mouth to blame?
Being healthy, fit and toned is a lifestyle and being in control of your life. To achieve such a lifestyle, it is about commiting to yourself and not looking for short cuts and do the finger pointing at who’s to blame. There is always going to be fast food restaurants, unhealthy packaged food in the supermarkets and friends that tell ya to eat the ice cream or chocolate. It’s how you balance it and what you choose.
As a Perth personal trainer, I am definitely biased towards doing exercise for weight loss. This is due to the fact that I seen it in my eyes first hand that appropriate exercise program combined with sensible eating lead to weight loss and not just weight loss it is fat loss. See it for yourself here: **Personal Training Perth**
To read the article on TIMES publication, access **HERE**
The writer is clearly very negative and has been irresponsible with the way he writes his article. Please feel free to leave a short comment if you have one.
Train Hard Eat Well Look Good
TC
For your info,
Every 1cm3 of fat weighs 0.7g and every 1cm3 of muscle weighs 1.1g. This means muscle weighs more and take up less space in the body. You might not be losing any weight initially when on a exercise program but you will lose fat.
ACSM (American College Sports Medicine) is the largest sports medicine and exercise science organization in the world establishes the exercise guidelines that all other certifications use for testing and sets the standards in the health fitness industry.
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