Exercise is wasting our time???

Is this a peer reviewed study? How large was the group they were studying? Most likely none of this applies and the article was "cherry picking".

Exercise can boost metabolism, at least for a period right after a high intensity workout. This is known as EPOC, or "exercise post oxygen consumption".

They looked at 30 people over the course of 11 days. *yawn*

As several people have pointed out there are so many many flaws with these "studies" it is not even funny. There are too many variables in weight loss/diet/exercise to even consider, which is why each individual has to find what works for them. I agree that most people who do not lose weight when working out are eating too much - you think "Oh I can eat more because I worked out", the flaw is that they eat a 900 calorie meal but only burned 300 calories -> so much for a deficit.

I found this particularly intriguing:

As with weight loss, one of the ways your body adapts to an increase in exercise is to lower your resting metabolic rate about 7%, so you actually end up burning fewer calories - anywhere from 50 to 75 fewer per day, the review found.

I think it ranks right up there with "Starvation Mode" and "Fat Burning Zone". First 50-75 calories a day is a drop in the hat - even IF my resting metabolic rate did decrease by that much - I am burning 300-500 calories during the workout so I am still ahead of the curve by 225-550 calories/day right? So seems to me I am better off working out and burning those extra calories then I would be sitting on my butt and getting the 50-75 back.

thank you all for the interesting and valuable info. I refuse to stop anyway simply because it makes me feel great. I have energy, I look leaner and it's a habit I'm not willing to break. I can't seem to get the article to paste on here. Here is the other little "blurb" I found:

4. Exercise does not burn off pounds
TRUE: It's hard to believe, but in a study of 411 women, those who worked out for over one, two, or three hours a week for six months didn't lose significantly more weight than those who'd devoted themselves to Sudoku or other sedentary pursuits. You'd think this finding was a fluke, but a recent review of 15 studies came to the same conclusion: Moderate workouts don't lead to weight loss, possibly because they make us hungrier. But there's also a biological explanation: As with weight loss, one of the ways your body adapts to an increase in exercise is to lower your resting metabolic rate about 7%, so you actually end up burning fewer calories - anywhere from 50 to 75 fewer per day, the review found.
Make this work for you: While exercise doesn't burn off the bulge, "it does boost your PFF: Pants Fit Factor," says Diana M. Thomas, Ph.D., of Montclair State University in New Jersey. "It helps reduce your waist and gives you a firmer, leaner-looking shape overall." What's more, a dwindling waistline is a key indicator that you're losing belly fat - the dangerous fat type that's linked to health problems like heart disease and diabetes.

Again, nothing about building muscle mass...

I think the problem is that there is no discussion of calorie consumption...a lot of people assume that just because they are working out that they will lose weight...when in reality, they are often still eating at maintenance or surplus for the activity. This is why is it so much easier to build a calorie deficit into your diet and use your diet for weight loss...fuel your exercise and exercise for fitness.

In my opinion, in the context of weight loss, the primary purpose of exercise is to ensure preservation of lean body mass. 2-3 days/week of "heavy" resistance training will do this. Cardio can provide a larger caloric deficit, but it is infinitely easier and more time-effective to just do so via diet. Also, recovery capacity is limited when at a caloric deficit, particularly when engaging in activity that forces the body to burn fat rather than muscle (resistance training), and for a person already in poor shape, adding cardio is a recipe for overtraining.

The issue with losing weight via diet alone is that you will lose muscle as well, and for people who are very overweight, leptin/insulin resistance means that a good portion of that weight loss will be muscle. If you weigh 250 pounds and you lose 25 pounds of fat and 25 pounds of muscle, you will, I guarantee, end up looking and feeling even worse than you did when you started your diet. With resistance training and proper protein intake, loss of lean body mass can be kept to virtually nothing until 'healthy' levels of body fat are achieved. In the same scenario, a 250 pound person who lost 25 pounds of fat would be both aesthetically and from an overall health standpoint better off than a 250 pounds person who lost 25 pounds of fat and 25 pounds of muscle, despite still being 25 pounds heavier (that was probably a bit confusing, but whatever).

I am sure that the study was correct in that when people add exercise, but do not control caloric intake, they will naturally increase caloric intake to compensate for calories burned while exercising. This can easily be overcome by tracking your calories.

I exercise because it makes me feel good.

And it also makes you healthier. Isn't that enough?

BTW if it lowered metabolism, then people eating back exercise calories wouldn't lose any weight. I could see how excessive cardio could cause lots of stress and mess up weight loss, but that's not the same thing.

The high after a good workout is great. Also, for me, it's a great stress relief.

That's too funny. That we should be so surprised about this.

"Very simply, it appears that exercise lowers metabolism, and it does so to such a degree that it almost exactly compensates for calories burned during exercise. In other words, if you burn 400 calories doing an exercise, your metabolism slows so that you burn 400 calories less."

Exercise is Great For a Lot of Things... but Weight Loss... Not So Much
http://www.hollandclinic.com/About-the-Medical-Weight-Loss-Program-at-Holland-Clinic/exercise-weight-loss/exercise-may-not-improve-weight-loss

In the NY Times by Gretchen Reynolds, a heath and fitness writer.

"As a result, although they were burning up to 500 calories during an exercise session, their total daily caloric burn was lower than it would have been had their metabolism remained unchanged, and they lost less weight than had been expected."

Dieting vs. Exercise for Weight Loss
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/01/dieting-vs-exercise-for-weight-loss/

The same Gretchen Reynolds mentions a University of Copenhagen study.

"But there is encouraging news about physical activity and weight loss in a new study by researchers at the University of Copenhagen. It found that exercise does seem to contribute to waist-tightening, provided that the amount of exercise is neither too little nor, more strikingly, too much."

For Weight Loss, Less Exercise May Be More
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/19/is-30-minutes-of-daily-exercise-a-sweet-spot-for-weight-loss/

And here's what Robert Lustig, author of Fat Chance, says in an interview.

"There is nothing bad about exercise. It’s all good. It’s just that it doesn’t cause weight loss on its own and that’s where the science comes in. There are no studies, zero, none in the world literature proving that exercise will cause weight loss on its own. Time Magazine came out with a cover story on this a couple of years ago and so it’s not that controversial."

Anti-sugar doctor Robert Lustig talks more about what's wrong with the American diet
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-01-17/features/chi-food-policy-robert-lustig-dishes-on-low-carb-obama-toxic-sugar-juice-and-more-20130117_1_anti-sugar-food-industry-food-items

Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin
http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1914974,00.html

Some mentioned muscle vs fat. This by Christian Finn, MD in exercise science.

"If you were to lose two pounds of fat and replace it with two pounds of muscle, your resting metabolic rate will increase by less than 10 calories per day. It would take a vast amount of muscle to substantially increase your metabolic rate — far more than most people are going to build in the gym."

The Myth about Muscle and Metabolism
http://muscleevo.net/muscle-metabolism/

When all is said and done, I go for neither too little nor too much.

Biggest waste of time is thinking about whether or not one wants to try to exercise, eat right and get fitter and healthier. Just ****ing do it.

A.C.E. Certified Personal/Group FitnessTrainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition