Interesting article on Yahoo

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  • mibrewer413
    mibrewer413 Posts: 78 Member
    I saw that article too. It makes sense to me. I have mostly lost my weight by diet alone. Not really able to exercise as much as I want to.
  • mrk34
    mrk34 Posts: 227 Member
    I believe that the role of exercise in weight loss has been wildly overstated. Exercise isn't necessarily helping us lose weight and weight loss can be achieved without exercise. Understanding this fact will help many people who try to lose excess weight so they can concentrate their efforts on what really works (changing what and how we eat). I am a walking example – lost 91 pounds.
  • ZugTheMegasaurus
    ZugTheMegasaurus Posts: 801 Member
    I've seen that study thrown around a lot lately, but I don't think it's even necessary to understand why thinking exercise will take care of weight loss is usually wrong. Fact of the matter is, it is really difficult to create a large enough caloric deficit to cause weight loss through exercise alone. And if you're eating substantially more than you need to maintain weight (as many obese people are), there's no chance that working out will fix it.

    People often rely on fitness equipment (treadmills, elliptical machines, etc.) to give them their caloric expenditure. These are notorious for drastically overestimating calorie burn. Even if they weren't, even if you were burning 500 calories in a half hour of walking, that's still not enough to compensate for a dietary intake that is well over what's needed for weight maintenance. People tend to think, "I worked out, so now I can pretty much do whatever for the rest of the day." That's simply not correct. Those couple hundred calories just aren't enough.

    Of course, exercise is beneficial for lots of other reasons and should be a part of a healthy lifestyle. But it should not be the center of weight loss efforts.
  • Nutrition1st
    Nutrition1st Posts: 216 Member
    People are too focused on the scale and just losing weight instead of being healthy. Exercise is needed to be healthy. What we see in the mirror has nothing to do with what is going on with our organs. The value of proper exercise has been widely overlooked and a major contribution to type II diabetes. Along our muscles are little garage doors called insulin receptors. In the presence of insulin, these receptors are supposed to open and uptake glucose. When the blood sugar reaches increasing levels, insulin is released and attaches to the excess glucose for delivery to body tissues. The muscle tissue is then the first stop for “insulin-carried” glucose, especially after exercise when muscle energy stores are low. Insulin actually opens up receptor sites on muscles, allowing for the uptake of glucose to replenish depleted muscle energy stores. When receptor sites do not take up glucose readily they are said to be “insulin resistant.” This condition is generally due to sedentary behavior and possibly during the onset of Type II Diabetes.
  • mrk34
    mrk34 Posts: 227 Member
    Two years ago, just after I started my weight loss efforts, I injured my knee, and had to have a surgery. After the surgery I could not exercise for a year. But the numbers on the scale kept going down and I managed to lose 46 pounds in the first six months.

    This 2009 TIME Magazine article kind of confirmed what my experience was suggesting to me.

    http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1914974,00.html

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