The truth about exercise & fat loss….

Today's Post: Monday, 8-10-2009

Last Thursday, TIME online news published an essay by a writer who does an enviable amount of exercise but still has more tummy fat than he’d like, titled:

“Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin.”

He said, “I still have gut fat that hangs over my belt when I sit. Why isn't all the exercise wiping it out?.”

But exercise does help some people lose fat AND abdominal fat.

So, what’s going on here?

It looks like a paradox; but it’s really not.

Here are the two seemingly opposed truths about exercise and fat loss.

1. What kind of food you eat and how much determines how fat you are and whether or not you lose weight much more effectively than exercise. Exercise is not necessary to lose fat. Starved concentration camp victims are NOT fat even if they get no exercise.

And, as TIME essayist found out, if you eat too much of the wrong kind of food, you can do quite a bit of exercise & still be fat. (That happened to me too. So he IS correct about that.)

Weight Watchers point system, based on their considerable experience, shows this quite clearly. Their system showed I WAS less fat because of my exercise. But to lose more, I had to eat less total food calories and points each week.

When I cut the amount of points I ate by eating MORE nonstarchy vegetables and drinking less beer and wine while continuing to exercise as I had been, I gradually lost 30 pounds and kept it off as long as I maintained those 3 things.

What kinds of food you eat also is critical. Lean protein foods and nonstarchy vegetables and some low glycemic fruit tend to keep off excess fat.

Conversely, high glycemic foods and drinks and artificial sweeteners tend to prevent fat loss, slow it way down, reverse it, increase belly fat, and create disease even if you exercise – although exercising too does help minimize these effects. So, one key to losing fat and keeping it off is to never drink soft drinks and never or almost never eat foods made from refined grains.

2. But whether or not you exercise, and if you exercise how much, and what kind of exercise you do, as a practical matter -- is critical in losing fat effectively, keeping it off, losing all of it, losing tummy fat, and whether or not your health and quality of life IMPROVE from your fat loss or actually get worse in some ways.

For example, if you lose fat by eating less alone, much of the weight you lose will be muscle, bone, and other lean tissue AND you will lose LESS fat than the same eating style and weight loss would have done had you also done the right kinds of exercise.

And, the track record is quite clear that your chances of keeping off the fat you lose drop like stone, if you don’t also exercise. Close to 95 % of the people who have kept off over 30 pounds of weight loss after five years not only exercise, they tend, like the TIME essayist, to do a good bit of exercise.

Similarly, the track record is also clear that people who also exercise get massive additional health benefits, including increased longevity and freedom from disease from fat loss plus exercise than people who lost the fat by eating less only.

Lastly, people who do strength training and interval cardio and do such vigorous exercise several days each week, lose more fat, lose it faster, and lose more belly fat than people who only do less strenuous exercise, even if it is a very large amount of running or walking alone.

The work of one man in particular really helps to understand the most accurate overview of this subject.

“Dr. Jean Mayer ….was a nutritionist whose work helped clarify the nature of hunger and obesity….”

What he found was so striking, everyone who wants to be less fat should know of it.

He found that if you exercise in what was a normal range for our original hunter-gatherer ancestors, between half an hour a day of exercise and a bit over 8 hours a day, your calorie intake tends to be virtually perfect, as you exercise more you eat more in very close balance while if you exercise less, you eat less, again in almost perfect balance.

And, to lose fat by exercising to the point you begin to be too tired to eat more and lose fat from just more exercise, takes over 8 hours a day.

BUT, and this is HUGE, if you are sedentary and get no exercise at all or too much below the half an hour a day level, you will be hungry for MORE calories than you burn and you WILL be fat.

That’s one of the main reasons that permanent fat loss is close to impossible if you don’t exercise at all.

And, as the dessert loving TIME essayist found out, some foods will tend to keep you fat even if you exercise.

Lastly, a lot of regular exercise CAN cause fat loss.

In his relatively new book, “The Skinny on Losing Weight Without Being Hungry,” medical obesity specialist, Louis Aronne, MD, tells of a woman patient who followed his eating advice as well as she could and lost 20 pounds. That was enough she was healthier and pleased. But it was all he thought she would lose. Then she came in a few months later for a follow up visit and SHE HAD LOST ANOTHER 30 POUNDS! She had NOT made ANY changes to her diet. Dr Aronne was really curious what she HAD done to cause this added fat loss.

He finally asked enough questions to discover the answer. It seems she had switched from driving to and from work each day to commuting by train. Each morning, she walked to the train and then from where it stopped to her work. Then she walked back each afternoon. Each day she walked 2 miles total going to work and another two miles going home. So she was walking 20 miles a week every week that she had not been doing before.

She both burned 2,000 new calories a week and guaranteed she got enough exercise to get into the healthy range that Jean Mayer found. Then, when she continued to eat health OK low glycemic food and NOT eat high glycemic junk foods, she lost the additional 30 pounds.

So, bottom line, if you want to lose any of your excess fat, you must do better at eating right and may well need to eat less, particularly in total calories.

But, if you want to have your fat loss help you be healthy, lose all your excess fat, and if you want to keep off the fat you lose, by all means exercise too!