How to Exercise Less To Burn Fat & Boost Health (Part 2)

The Top 10 Big IdeasTable of Contents 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 […]

2015-09-12/0 Comments/by SANE

How To Exercise Less & Burn More Part 1

Get Eccentric

Top 10 Big IdeasTable of Contents Be on Purpose, Don’t Wander “My grandmother, she started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She’s ninety-seven today and we don’t know where the hell she is.” – Ellen DeGeneres Exercise vs. Food Intake In the same way that people drink more fluids when they exercise […]

2015-09-11/0 Comments/by SANE

The Top 10 Big Ideas

Table of Contents

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
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.”
Outdated Aerobics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.”
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?
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?
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.”
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.”
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.
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.”
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.”

2015-09-12/0 Comments/by SANE

How To Exercise Less & Burn More Part 1

Get Eccentric

Top 10 Big Ideas

Table of Contents

Be on Purpose, Don’t Wander

“My grandmother, she started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She’s ninety-seven today and we don’t know where the hell she is.” – Ellen DeGeneres
Exercise vs. Food Intake

In the same way that people drink more fluids when they exercise more, they also eat more when they exercise more. Researcher Hugo R. Rony found: “Consistently high or low energy expenditures result in consistently high or low levels of appetite. Thus men doing heavy physical work spontaneously eat more than men engaged in sedentary occupations.”
Obesity vs. Exercise

J.M. Friedman at Rockefeller University makes a similar point: “Exercise by itself has not been shown to be highly effective in treating obesity because the increased energy use from exercise is generally offset by increased caloric intake.”
Low Quality Food

Compounding the problem, many people who exercise more do not eat high-quality food. The majority of people get most of their calories from low-quality starches and sweeteners. Therefore, exercising more triggers the consumption of more low-quality food. More low-quality food means less need to burn body fat, more clogging, and a higher set-point. Far from burning body fat, we burn time and build-up clogs.
The Exercise Trap

Here is one scenario for exercising more: Michelle goes for a 30-minute jog and burns 170 more calories than she would have burned by sitting at home and reading this book. She is trying hard to cut calories, so she does not drink any sugary sports drinks and fights through the hunger pangs after her jog. At dinner Michelle unconsciously drinks an extra glass of reduced-fat milk thanks to her increased thirst and hunger. The net result of her jog is thirteen more calories than if she had not exercised.

30 min. jog….…….-170 calories
12 oz. milk………..+183 calories
_______________________________
Net………….….…….+13 calories
Sweetened Power Juice

Much more commonly, people will have sweetened “power juice” while pounding it out on the treadmill. Afterward, they overeat low-quality food. The net result is more low-quality food and more clogging.

30 min. jog………………………………………………………….….-170 calories
24 oz. sports drink………………………………………..……….+189 calories
Extra half serving of Fettuccine Alfredo………….……..+390 calories
__________________________________________________________________
Net…………………………………………………………………..……+409 calories
Food Industry Trickery
The food industry is very well aware that exercising more encourages eating more low-quality food. That’s why the following corporations serve on the executive board of the American Council on Fitness and Nutrition:
- Coca-Cola Company
- PepsiCo
- Hershey Foods Corporation
- Sara Lee Corporation
- Kellogg Company
- Kraft Foods
- General Mills
- Campbell Soup Company
- ConAgra Foods
- Del Monte Foods
- Grocery Manufacturers Association
- H.J. Heinz Company
- Masterfoods USA
- National Restaurant Association
- Unilever United States
- American Association of Advertising Agencies
- American Beverage Association
- Association of National Advertisers
It’s Just Good Business

Are we told to exercise more because it is good for fat loss or because it is good for business? The National Soft Drink Association advises us to “consume at least eight glasses of fluids daily, even more when you exercise. A variety of beverages, including soft drinks, can contribute to proper hydration.”
The Big Fat Idea

But wait. If you exercise less, won’t you gain body fat? As you’ll see in future posts that depends on the type of exercise you do. In the next two posts we’ll cover how exercising less does not cause long-term fat gain and eating more does not cause long-term fat gain.
Be Active

Note: Being active is good for your health. We definitely should not sit around all day. Studies consistently show that physical activity boosts life expectancy. However, they do not show that traditional cardiovascular exercise effectively burns body fat long term.

2015-09-11/0 Comments/by SANE

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