How Important Is Exercise For Weight Loss?

[Gunnar da Wolf]

Low carb diets have been around since about WWII, commercially popularized by Robert Atkins in the late 60's. The most current iteration of the fad is the ketogenic diet. Those fad diets are effective as a means of short-term weight loss. They are not effective as a means of sustainable, or long-term weight loss, at least...no more effective than dietary counseling aimed toward so-called "healthy eating". In other words, low carbohydrate diets don't do anything to address the actual problem driving obesity....unhealthy lifestyle...eating too much and exercising too little. Without permanent lifestyle change, permanent weight loss won't happen.

Many people want to believe that it's about the food. "McDonalds is bad". It's not. the obesity epidemic in America is about the volume. The problem with fast food isn't the nutritional value of the food, it's that the high-fat/high carbohydrate food that they sell tastes good, so you eat more of it.

I'm not saying that short-term weight loss is bad...it's not. I'm saying that in terms of overall health, the lack of sustainability of fad diets means that their overall effect on a person's health is limited.

I’ve not been quite as strict with myself as the Adkins or Keto diet. I have just mentally assigned some carbs as worthless and some as allowable. I have cut back on portions and I’m now down by 31 pounds. I find it much easier to work around my property or go hiking in the National Forest with my wife. This will be a long term effort to make me better.

[Hmac]

I’ve not been quite as strict with myself as the Adkins or Keto diet. I have just mentally assigned some carbs as worthless and some as allowable. I have cut back on portions and I’m now down by 31 pounds. I find it much easier to work around my property or go hiking in the National Forest with my wife. This will be a long term effort to make me better.

Yep. Diets don’t work. Lifestyle change does. Bravo!

[jmoore]

I haven’t read the thread, but will pass along what works for me.
Swimming 2-3x a week for 30-40 minutes per session put ON about 10 pounds of muscle in year one. Over the next three years - with no dietary or other changes - the increased metabolism of the increased skeletal muscle mass burned off 35 pounds (5 belt notches). That has stayed off as I maintain the swim regime and associated muscle. I still eat my biscuit & gravy and late night snack (I know:) - but maintaining a normal weight seems to be no problem if I keep some muscle on to burn calories. FWIW - 10lbs of extra skeletal muscle burns the equivalent of a pound of fat per week! YMMV


geezer john

[Hmac]

In general, one can't exercise their way out of obesity.

[WillBrink]

In general, one can't exercise their way out of obesity.

That's pretty much the conclusion of article via the data, but even less so than many, myself included thought. Related to the set point hypothesiis, the Constrained Total Energy Expenditure hypothesis is quite interesting:

Constrained Total Energy Expenditure and Metabolic Adaptation to Physical Activity in Adult Humans

https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...60982215015778

[Hmac]

That's pretty much the conclusion of article via the data, but even less so than many, myself included thought. Related to the set point hypothesiis, the Constrained Total Energy Expenditure hypothesis is quite interesting:

Constrained Total Energy Expenditure and Metabolic Adaptation to Physical Activity in Adult Humans

https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...60982215015778

Those articles nicely illustrate the current major thrust of the medical bariatric community as well as bariatric/metabolic surgery for about the last 8 or 9 years. Prior to that, we just thought that weight loss surgery worked solely by restricting intake and, in the case of gastric bypass, creating some component of malabsorption. As diabetes become such a huge component of the obese population, we began to notice that that population's blood sugars normalized immediately after surgery and it was independent of the weight loss. It turns out that the mechanism was a lot more complicated than we thought, with vastly more metabolic implications.

It also helps to illuminate why weight loss is not just a simple matter of calorie intake vs calorie expenditure.

[WillBrink]

That article nicely illustrates the current major thrust of the medical bariatric community as well as bariatric/metabolic surgery for about the last 8 or 9 years. Prior to that, we just thought that weight loss surgery worked solely by restricting intake and, in the case of gastric bypass, creating some component of malabsorption. As diabetes become such a huge component of the obese population, we began to notice that that population's blood sugars normalized immediately after surgery and was independent of the weight loss. It turns out that the mechanism was a lot more to it than we thought.

It also helps to illuminate why weight loss is not just a simple matter of calorie intake vs calorie expenditure.

That article i posted (The Death Of the Calorie) really illustrates that well I thought.

[AKDoug]

I’ve not been quite as strict with myself as the Adkins or Keto diet. I have just mentally assigned some carbs as worthless and some as allowable. I have cut back on portions and I’m now down by 31 pounds. I find it much easier to work around my property or go hiking in the National Forest with my wife. This will be a long term effort to make me better.

Basically the same thing I am doing. I'm in the middle of a huge re-model roofing project on a house we bought. Three months ago I couldn't have dreamed of being up there, but 35lbs lighter today made it possible. I'm on day 7 without a break and I'm still going up and down the ladder with no issues. Still have 65lbs to go.

[AKDoug]

Will, as a believer in the "set-point theory", I think this article provides a nice review for those who can grasp the physiology.

http://spectrum.diabetesjournals.org/content/20/3/166

IMHO, the "efficiency" that the authors talk about is the reason why fad diets are ineffective in the long term...there are just too many feedback mechanisms.

That was a depressing article for a guy like me, but it was also above my pay grade with my limited biological knowledge, so I may have missed something. Do you have any ideas on how someone could defeat the "set point"?

[Hmac]

That was a depressing article for a guy like me, but it was also above my pay grade with my limited biological knowledge, so I may have missed something. Do you have any ideas on how someone could defeat the "set point"?

The metabolic effect of weight loss surgery resets the set point. There aren't any non-surgical treatments available yet.