no need to diet and exercise to lose weight

[athena11]

No need to diet AND exercise to lose weight?

Thu Feb 22, 9:23 AM ET

A new study debunks the widely held belief that diet plus exercise is the most effective way to lose weight. Researchers report that dieting alone is just as effective as dieting plus exercise.

"For weight loss to occur, an individual needs to maintain a difference between the number of calories they consume everyday and the number of calories they burn through metabolism and physical activity," Dr. Leanne Redman of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, explains in a press release.

"What we found was that it did not matter whether a reduction in calories was achieved through diet or burned everyday through exercise."

Thirty-five overweight but otherwise healthy adults -- 16 men and 19 women -- completed the 6-month study. Twelve were assigned to a diet-only group; they reduced their calorie intake by 25 percent. Twelve were assigned to diet plus exercise; they reduced their calorie intake by 12.5 percent and increased their exercise by 12.5 percent. The remaining 11 subjects made no significant diet or exercise changes.

Redman and colleagues found that the diet-only group and the diet plus exercise group lost roughly the same amount of weight, albeit by different means. They lost about 10 percent of their body weight, 24 percent of their fat mass and 27 percent of their abdominal "visceral" fat -- the deep internal fat linked to heart disease risk.

Therefore, if the goal is purely shedding pounds, diet or exercise will work, according to this study. However, as the researchers point out, regular exercise can improve aerobic fitness and lower the risk of heart disease, diabetes, and certain types of cancer.

The study also found that exercise did little to tone specific areas of the body. Fat was reduced consistently across the whole body and not more in any one trouble spot.

"Our study then would indicate that weight loss cannot override the way in which any individual stores fat. Perhaps an apple will always be an apple, and a pear, a pear," Redman concludes.

This suggests that people are "genetically programmed for fat storage in a particular pattern and that this programming cannot be easily overcome by weight loss," the authors note in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.

SOURCE: Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism 2007.

_____________________
This was from Yahoo News. Sorry, I don't know how to do a link.

I thought it was interesting.

[dina1957]

There is no need to exercise to lose scale weight, diet alone does the trick. But in order to manitain LBM and good health overall, exercise is a MUST in addition to good diet.
Correct exercise will do waaay more than just "tone" certain spots (what is toning anyways).It will help build muscles, so you will look better overall. No one can "spot" reduce, but correct exercise routine can do wonders for one's physic within genetical limitations. Let's say a women is pear shaped, so no matter how hard she diets, she will never lose all the weight on her buttom, BUT she can sort of escape her shape by adding more upper body exercise to balance it out. So exercise is a good tool, diet alone will still burn some muscles, not all the weight loss is 100% fat!.
JMO

[brobin]

They also fail to point out that cutting 25 percent of your calories is painful. Dropping 12.5 percent and adding in some exercise means you can eat more and it doesn't feel like you are starving all the time.

In any case, I certainly believe exercise is mandatory for good health, and feeling good in general.

[Mutant]

What I find funny about this study, is that almost certainly the prescribed exercise was long, slow cardio, the worst kind of exercise for fat loss. Interval training is the best for fat loss and even straight weight training is much better than traditional cardio, both of which effectively burn calories well beyond the actual exercise time, unlike traditional cardio. Another reason to never let a 'researcher' recommend a fitness program. ;)

Kind regards

[athena11]

What I find funny about this study, is that almost certainly the prescribed exercise was long, slow cardio, the worst kind of exercise for fat loss. Interval training is the best for fat loss and even straight weight training is much better than traditional cardio, both of which effectively burn calories well beyond the actual exercise time, unlike traditional cardio. Another reason to never let a 'researcher' recommend a fitness program. ;)

Kind regards

It isn't using the most up-to-date information to base its results.

I am still stuck in the "long, slow cardio" mentality. Needs to break it up and add intervals and weights again.

[athena11]

They also fail to point out that cutting 25 percent of your calories is painful. Dropping 12.5 percent and adding in some exercise means you can eat more and it doesn't feel like you are starving all the time.

In any case, I certainly believe exercise is mandatory for good health, and feeling good in general.

is not fun!

[bkloots]

Anybody looking for an excuse not to exercise can find one...or several. That's too bad, isn't it?

[VALEWIS]

What I find funny about this study, is that almost certainly the prescribed exercise was long, slow cardio, the worst kind of exercise for fat loss. Interval training is the best for fat loss and even straight weight training is much better than traditional cardio, both of which effectively burn calories well beyond the actual exercise time, unlike traditional cardio. Another reason to never let a 'researcher' recommend a fitness program. ;)


So true, this. Until they compare different forms of exercise they cannot make the sweeping conclusion that they did. They also would need to compare protein sparing diets vs non protein sparing diets as well, another variable not considered.

[dianadur]

The diet mentions talks about lowering calories. I read the original Atkins book, not the more recent ones. Has something changed? It used to be that you dont have to count the calories at all, that you could eat all the protein you wanted. I'm just not sure what this "study" has to do with low carb dieting. Also, I'm sure there are many who already know you don't have to exercise initially to lose weight, especially when you are super heavy like I am, but eventually it certainly helps. I am hoping that I'll get to a weight where I"ll be able to go walking and do at some good exercise.

[VALEWIS]

Dianadur, calories are always the elephant in the low carb room. The fact is that doing a high protein and fat low carb diet is very satiating, so very overweight people will invariably eat less calories than they were before. Eventually when they get close to goal, if the high protein and fat diet they are on yields more calories than they are expending, the weight loss will stop. That is when the reported research comes into its own... one must then either exercise to burn calories, or eat less.

[bkloots]

As a kind of sidelight here, it seems to me that most weight loss research--and weight loss pills--focus on the issue of satiety or appetite control.

As a perpetually fat person, I didn't eat because I was hungry, or stop because I was full. I've never met a pill--or a diet either--that addressed the emotional aspects of eating. The closest I ever came to actual appetite-suppression was fen-phen, and we know the end of THAT story.

I guess what I'm saying is, the qualitative difference in LC/Atkins is the closest I can get to reducing calories and being happy with what I get to eat. So for me, it's sustainable. Every plan has its sacrifices, trade-offs, and disciplines.

Whether it's reality or perception, I feel like I eat more calories on LC than I can on low-fat, and still have a leaner, fitter body. But I can't create an experiment to prove it.