The Top 10 Big Ideas

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1. What Does the Data Say?

   “It is reasonable to assume that persons with relatively high daily energy expenditures would be less likely to gain weight over time compared with those who have low energy expenditures. So far, data to support this hypothesis are not particularly compelling.” – American Heart Association

2. BIG FAT MYTH

   The idea that we have an obesity epidemic because people are not exercising enough is a myth. Saffron A. Whitehead at St. George’s University of London reported: “Most studies show that the obese do about the same physical activity as [the] lean.”

3. Outdated Aerobics

   Common sense tells us that if exercising less is the cause of our collective weight issues, we must be collectively exercising less. Are we?

   Not even close.

   The idea of aerobic exercise did not even exist in the mainstream until the 1968 publication of the book Aerobics by Dr. Kenneth H. Cooper. Dr. Entin, with the department of Biological Sciences at Northern Arizona University, explains the common view before then: “In the 1930’s and 40’s…high volume endurance training was thought to be bad for the heart. Through the ‘50’s and even ‘60’s, exercise was not thought to be useful…and endurance exercise was thought to be harmful to women.”

4. The Numbers Rise

   During that same period the percent of obese Americans was dramatically lower than today. Nowadays, Americans exercise more than anyone else in the world and are the sixth heaviest population in the world. How could doing too little of something that we did even less of before the problem existed cause the problem?

5. We’re Not Just Lazy

   Some people claim that we are getting heavier because we are using labor-saving devices. Yet that doesn’t make sense. The vast majority of labor-saving devices became common in households decades before obesity shot up. Use of dishwashers, washing machines, vacuum cleaners, and all the major labor-saving devices increased most between 1945 and 1965. However, obesity increased little during that time period.

   Use of these devices increased very little between 1978 and 1998 while obesity rates shot up. So how could labor-saving devices be the cause of weight problems?

6. Dig Deeper

   Reread the quote from the American Heart Association from Big Idea 1. Digging into the data and abandoning assumptions about our activity levels, researchers like New York University’s Marion Nestle tell us, “…the activity levels of Americans appear to have changed little, if at all, from the 1970s to the 1990s.”

7. TV Doesn’t Make You Fat

   What about all the TV watching? That’s got to be the cause, right? That too does not correspond with the facts. Tsinghua University professor Seth Roberts determined: “Time spent watching TV increased by 45% from 1965 to 1975, yet obesity increased little over that time; from 1975 to 1995, when obesity shot up, TV watching increased only a little.”

8. Clogging Up the System

   Eating lower-quality food creates the clog that causes chronic weight gain. People can be plenty active, and exercise for hours, but if they eat low-quality food, they will get clogged and gain body fat. Long-term weight gain is determined by food and exercise quality, not quantity.

9. But isn’t Jogging Good for Our Heart?

   Not when compared with the smarter types of exercise we will cover later. The American Heart Association found that jogging injures more than half of the people who do it. This high injury rate is due in part to the fact that every mile we run, our feet hit the ground about 900 times. Let’s say you weigh 150 pounds. That means for every mile you run, you are smashing 135,000 pounds of force against your joints, ligaments, and every other part of your body. You could say that’s like dropping thirty-seven Toyota Camrys on yourself every time you go for a jog. Jogging is “healthy exercise” in the same way that boxing is “healthy exercise.”

10. Focus on the Facts!

    The theory that we have an obesity epidemic because people are not exercising enough is disproved by the data. In a July 2013 report, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation found, “As physical activity increased between 2001 and 2009, so did the percentage of the population considered obese.” Other studies go on to show that obese people do about the same amount of physical activity as lean people do.

    The only “weight versus activity” relationship that has been proved is that obesity may lead to inactivity. Consider the conclusion of a 2004 University of Copenhagen study: “This study did not support that physical inactivity . . . is associated with the development of obesity, but . . . that obesity may lead to physical inactivity.” More body fat may lead to less exercise, not the other way around. As Dr. Brad Metcalf, a researcher in the Department of Endocrinology and Metabolism at the Peninsula Medical School, concluded in his 2011 study: “Physical inactivity appears to be the result of fatness rather than its cause. This reverse causality may explain why attempts to tackle childhood obesity by promoting physical activity have been largely unsuccessful.”

Learn the exact foods you must eat if you want to finally lose weight permanently. Click here to download your free Weight Loss Food List, the “Eat More, Lose More” Weight Loss Plan, and the “Slim in 6” Cheat Sheet…CLICK HERE FOR FREE “HOW TO” WEIGHT LOSS GUIDES