The Weight Loss Myth: Why You’re Most Certainly Doing It All Wrong
Dear Natural Health Solutions Reader,
First, tiny bit of housekeeping. We’ve dropped “Weekly Update” from the subject lines of these weekly emails. That’s it, nothing else has changed… Now on to this week’s update!
The conventional wisdom (now there’s an oxymoron) is that the best way to lose weight is to “eat less and exercise more.”
Note the symmetry. Both tactics in this common phrase (and it is common — this precise string of words brings up 93,000 Google hits) get equal billing.
Except… it’s not true.
As it turns out, plenty of top-notch research has established that these two strategies are by no means equally effective.
The fact is when it comes to weight loss, eating less — and specifically eating a smaller quantity of carbohydrate-rich foods — is vastly more likely to drop the pounds than exercising more.
A landmark survey by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in Seattle has made this abundantly clear.
The survey reveals that, as it turns out, Americans are exercising quite a bit these days. Looking at studies encompassing nearly 4 million adults, researchers found that Americans got more exercise with each passing year right through the 2000s1:
“Our results showed an increase in the prevalence of sufficient physical activity from 2001-09. Levels were generally higher in men than in women, but increases were greater in women than men. Counties in Kentucky, Florida, Georgia, and California reported the largest gains.”
Fabulous! So we’ve finally turned the corner on obesity, right?
Not so much:
This increase in level of activity was matched by an increase in obesity in almost all counties during the same time period. There was a low correlation between level of physical activity and obesity in U.S. counties.
In other words, we ramped up the workouts and got fatter.
In fact, it’s not that surprising that exercising more can often backfire and lead to weight gain. As British cardiologist Aseem Malhotra explained in a recent article:
“When people exercise, they stimulate their appetites, spurring them to eat more than they would have without working out. People also assume that expending more energy necessitates higher calorie intake, but they often overestimate how much. In reality, if you exercise for the purpose of burning calories, you get a very low return on investment: You would have to walk for more than 45 minutes to burn off the 300 calories from eating just three cookies.”
However, this report does not conclude that physical exercise is useless — quite the contrary. The authors point out that exercise has myriad health benefits, including a lower risk of cardiovascular disease and Type 2 diabetes. Their conclusion puts it succinctly:
“Our results call for focusing on a message of the health benefits of physical activity instead of a means for weight reduction.”
So…
Make no mistake — exercise is a wonderful thing. I am an especially ardent fan of weight-bearing exercise as we get older. It’s the only effective way to counteract sarcopenia — the technical term for the loss of muscle mass that accompanies aging.
But the key to weight loss isn’t more repetitions with the weights — it’s fewer reps with the fork.
And now, I’d love to know your experience. If you’ve succeeded at weight loss, do you believe that exercise or diet change was the biggest factor? Please let me know at [email protected].
Sincerely,
Brad Lemley
Editor, Natural Health Solutions
Citations
Dwyer-Lindgren et al. Prevalence of physical activity and obesity in US counties, 2001 — 2011: a road map for action. Population Health Metrics. Nov. 7, 2013.
