If you were in the gym with me and I put you through a tabata routine everyday and gave you 300 calories less than your maintenance, you would lose weight! FACT

Therefore exercise combined with a sensible diet equals weight loss!

What was your point?

My point is that you should read the article then come back to me. After you've read it, I have another one that tells us everything we need to know about the "caloric deficit and the sensible diet" way of fat loss.

300 calorie deficit? And how will we know that the fat loss is not due to the calorie deficit? And if I eat a 300 calorie surplus, will I gain fat too? I have something about this as well.

Just last month, the American Heart Association and the American College of Sports Medicine published joint guidelines for physical activity and health. They suggested that 30 minutes of moderate physical activity five days a week is necessary to “promote and maintain health.” What they didn’t say, though, was that more physical activity will lead us to lose weight. Indeed, the best they could say about the relationship between fat and exercise was this: “It is reasonable to assume that persons with relatively high daily energy expenditures would be less likely to gain weight over time, compared with those who have low energy expenditures. So far, data to support this hypothesis are not particularly compelling.” In other words, despite half a century of efforts to prove otherwise, scientists still can’t say that exercise will help keep off the pounds.

This is not convincing at all, I like to use real world example's over study's any day of the week and this study is no different to all the others, It doesn't give us enough information as to what went on! The above paragraph I've highlighted tells us that if you exercise you will sustain your body weight if eating a sensible diet more so than if you don't exercise. I used to be a removal man many years ago and I can tell you with no uncertainty that I have never been as lean as I was during that time and I didn't follow the best diet, there was a lot of junk in it!

The report that these experts cite most often as grounds for their assessments was published in 2000 by two Finnish researchers who surveyed all the relevant research on exercise and weight of the previous twenty years. Yet the Finnish report, the most scientifically rigorous review of the evidence to date, can hardly be said to have cleared up the matter. When the Finnish investigators looked at the results of the dozen best-constructed experimental trials that addressed weight maintenance—that is, successful dieters who were trying to keep off the pounds they had shed—they found that everyone regains weight. And depending on the type of trial, exercise would either decrease the rate of that gain (by 3.2 ounces per month) or increase its rate (by 1.8 ounces). As the Finns themselves concluded, with characteristic understatement, the relationship between exercise and weight is “more complex” than they might otherwise have imagined.

This study is not a good example either, the participants have dieted down and are now trying to maintain weight at the lower BF level. There is no explanation of how they went about this so how can we make an informed opinion as to whether this study is even credible? If they did low intensity exercise such as walking then they wouldn't have expended enough energy to counterbalance the effects of introducing carbohydrates back in to the diet. Water makes up 60% of body weight, its normal to experience glycogen and water shifts of up to 2 pounds per day, without more intricate detail I'll take this one with a pinch of salt.

It seems to me like you are finding excuses to not exercise? whats the matter don't you like the treadmill

And please no more articles, they are not the best form of communication, simply reading something and agreeing with it does it not make it fact! you have to find things out for yourself. I can honestly say exercise helps me lose weight, it will help you too if you get off your backside and give it a go!

Real world examples. OK. That was exactly my next arguments against the entire Positive Caloric Balance hypothesis.

Jeff's real world experiment:
http://magicbus.myfreeforum.org/ftopic846-0-asc-100.php



He overate a huge amount of fat over a month. He stayed inactive "no exercise" during this period. This tells us that the lack of exercise is not what causes fat accumulation. It also tells us that excess dietary fat is not what causes fat accumulation either.

Steve Jones' real world experiment:
http://www.hypertrophy-specific.inf...ST;f=19;t=14917

In the second real world experiment, he states that his maintenance level is 3200 calories per day. He lost weight when he would normally maintain weight. He changed nothing in his usual exercise regimen. This tells us that exercise is not what causes fat loss.

These real world experiments are unambiguous. They clearly show that exercise has little to no effect on fat accumulation or fat loss.

I would agree except for the entire quote. And allow me to highlight the pertinent parts:

M levac
I know Jeff pretty well and up to that point he was an avid excerciser..avid. So he was in very good shape.

Look I am one of those who really doesn't have to excercise to lose weight. I tighten up on the carbs and the weight just melts off of me.

But I want to have muscle and to do that I have to excercise..lift weights etc. I am not a proponent of long, steady state cardio..jogging, treadmill, aerobics classes etc, but I do embrace HIIT, Tabatas, circuit bodyweight excercises.

Why? because they burn a ton of calories in a very short amount of time and you continue to burn calories hours after your workout. Your oxygen consumption is huge so there is a very good cardiovascular effect.

HIIT is a great adjunct to a very low carb diet..it can quicken your weight loss and you get results faster.

This all boils down to the type of diet eaten and type of exercise undertaken.

If you are eating a low carb diet then you can lose weight without the need for exercise but doing some form of hiit or tabata will speed up your weight loss.

If you eat a high carbohydrate diet then you will most likely put weight on if no exercise is done and once again best result will come from hiit or tabata mixed in with some steady state cardio to prevent weight gain.

This is fact! End of story.

Jeff ate an excessive amount of cals and did not add weight so this tells us he is an exceptional fat burner whilst in ketosis, if he exercised aswell he could have lost weight but since he didn't how will we know?

Steve did a keto diet also and it didn't work to good for him seing as he only lost a small amount of weight! If he did some hiit or tabata the results could have been better IMO.

Which brings us to my next argument, the Minnesota Semi-Starvation Experiment by Ancel Keys.

http://gunpowder.quaker.org/StarvationStudysummary.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnes...tion_Experiment
http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com...lieve-that.html
http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q...le+Search&meta=
I provided a few links to show that the entire world knows about this so there's no excuse to ignore it. Indeed, any paper published today that talks about high carb, low fat, calorie restricted diets yet ignores this historical study ignores the most significant study on weight reduction and could hardly be taken seriously.

Unambiguously, the results of the semi-starvation study is emaciation and neurosis. We could hypothesize that we could prevent emaciation by eating more protein but I don't know of any paper that tests this specific hypothesis and comes out with a positive result. I prefer to hypothesize that even with protein supplementation, we would still suffer emaciation but only marginally less so. This is because diet by all accounts is the dominating factor in body composition. But more specifically, the carbohydrate content of diet. And the diet in this study was high carb, low fat, calorie restricted.

On the exercise aspect, the subjects of this study did some but not that much. They had to walk a specific distance every week but otherwise did little to no exercise especially not strenuous exercise like weight training. This tells us that the most significant factor in their weight loss was their diet.

We could hypothesize that exercise would have stimulated muscle growth and thus promoted muscle retention. However the same hypothesis tells us that more exercise would only have increased the already significant caloric deficit which would merely have accelerated their weight loss. Because ultimately, that's the idea: Move more to accelerate weight loss.

In other words, since the results of this study was emaciation, doing more exercise would only have produced more emaciation. How could exercise increase the caloric deficit if we do X amount but when we do more than that suddenly it would do a complete 180 and magically make this caloric deficit disappear and promote muscle retention? That just makes no sense. Logically, muscle retention or at least slowing down the rate of emaciation would only be achieved by doing less exercise i.e. creating a smaller caloric deficit.



We assume that Jeff was in ketosis, we don't know, he didn't say. He said that his BMR was 2200 calories even when he was training.

Steve lost some weight which is all we need to show. He stated that his maintenance diet was 3200 calories so that's how much he ate to test the hypothesis. Had the hypothesis been correct, he would have maintained his weight.


All this talk about exercise and fat loss is entertaining and educational but how do we fix the emaciation problem? We will always be faced with emaciation if we eat high carb, low fat, calorie restricted. If we increase protein, we will be faced with rabbit starvation. If we increase calories back to normal, we will be faced with fat accumulation because of the carbs.

Those are just obvious questions that come to mind. I doubt that you could convince me, or anybody else for that matter, to go to the gym with you and test the hypothesis that exercise helps fat loss. That's what you said "come with me to the gym and I'll show you how it works." Well OK we could do that but why would I when I already know what's going to happen?

You know, I've read some things from you that were right on the mark. Unfortunately, I heard a lot more that missed it.

You keep changing the variables!

The question is, is exercising beneficial for weight loss?

As I have already pointed out eating a sensible diet combined with exercise will result in weight loss.

Now you're talking about emaciation! WTF!!

The best part yet!

No, the question is this:



I just mentioned in passing that exercise was useless for fat loss:



And you got stuck on this because you disagreed. I felt that it was my obligation to explain what I meant. Yet you continue to disagree. Even now you have nothing else but your own belief to support your point of view. No studies, you said. You prefer personal accounts. I brought that but you found something wrong with those too. Now you say I'm responsible for my arguments being wrong: I'm changing the variables. By the way, I'm not changing the variables, you just refuse to see them as they are. So obviously, if I say something that causes you to finally see them as they are, they'll look quite different as a result. It's called changing your mind. I do this all the time. I'm not changing the variables, I'm simply changing your perception.

It doesn't matter what I say, what matters is what you believe. There's nothing I can do about that. You will always find something wrong about the opposite view so you can keep your own view. Unless you accept to change your mind. You can do this much more easily if you first decide to consider everything you know as doubtful i.e. don't take everything for granted. Not everything you know is the truth. Some of it might be but you'll never know if you never test it.

Have you ever tested the hypothesis that exercise was useless for fat loss? I bet you never did. I did.

I can't please everybody. If you disagree, I have to respect that.

I've read everything you've thrown at me but am still not convinced exercise is useless for fat loss. I agree its more about manipulating the diet, but exercise can still help, otherwise people would not do it.

You will never convince me so we shall have to agree to disagree.

I agree with that. It worked for me and I hope it will again (I always doubt everything!).