Time Magazine Article: Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin

I've been a full time personal fitness professional for eight years, and, throughout my career, one of the main messages I've drilled into my clients heads, over and over and over again, is that exercise, by itself, is an extremely ineffective and inefficient weight loss method. My opinion on this issue has not changed, and will not change. If you are a regular reader of my blog and website, you know I've written about this a number of times, and you know how strongly I feel about it.

Once again: YOU SHOULD EXERCISE AND TRAIN TO ENHANCE HEALTH, STRENGTH AND PERFORMANCE...NOT TO LOSE WEIGHT! The goals of a regular exercise training program should be to increase and/or maintain muscular strength, maintain (or increase if that is your goal) lean muscle tissue, and increase and/or maintain overall cardiovascular and metabolic work capacity. If you train regularly, on a sound program, you will decrease the risk for numerous adverse chronic and acute health problems (some cancers, type II diabetes, heart disease, orthopedic problems etc). Proper training will greatly enhance your functional quality of life and allow you to age well. Furthermore, I truly believe goal oriented physical training reduces stress and gives one a psychological edge which carries over into other areas of life. While everyone who trains and exercises may not be a traditional competitive athlete, we ALL play the game of life, and I feel hard training allows us to play this game at a higher level.

The problem is Americans equate an exercise program with a weight loss program. They do not equate an exercise program with a fitness and health enhancement program (or, if they do, they look at health and fitness enhancement as an "added bonus"). Exercise is marketed to us incorrectly and unethically. We really need to change the entire paradigm, change the way people view exercise, and change how it is marketed. We need a drastic re-education. More people would stick to exercise programs if they understood what they were supposed to be getting out of them and had the correct perspective and expectations. Right now, the outcomes exercise produce do not match peoples expectations. People do, in fact, get a lot of positives out of exercise, BUT, they do not value them, do not fully understand or appreciate them, and have been brainwashed into thinking exercise, by itself, should produce weight loss. When it doesn't, people say "screw it", and quit. The outcomes-even though positive-do not match expectations. This is unfortunate.

Yes, exercise burns calories and can CONTRIBUTE to weight loss, but, it can only contribute if you are eating at maintenance or below maintenance calorie levels. If you do not understand what your fat loss or maintenance calorie requirements are, do not monitor your calorie intake by weighing, measuring, and recording the food you eat, etc., you will not lose weight (at least not a substantial amount) or, if you do lose weight, will not maintain the weight loss. You have to manipulate and understand the input side of the equation. If you rely on the output side of the equation-exercise-and do not give any consideration to the input side, you are doomed to fail in regards to losing weight and keeping it off.

If you perform structured exercise, even for an hour or more 5-6 days/week, and do not give any attention to the number of calories you are consuming, the best that you can hope for, and expect, is weight maintenance. More likely, you will gain weight over time...but probably not as much as you would have if you didn't exercise. This isn't exactly a "sexy" message, but it is the truth, and it is what people need to hear. It isn't going to sell books or DVD's, but at least it won't continue perpetuating the myth that exercise is a great weight loss method.

Ok, now that I've ranted about this again, TIME Magazine published an article on their website yesterday which echos some of my thoughts on this matter (funny how I've been pointing this stuff out for 8 years and it takes the mainstream media this long to hit on this stuff). Generally speaking, I thought the article was good in that it points out exercise isn't all that is cracked up to be (due to the way it is marketed...something the author should have hit on) in regards to losing weight. However, my complaint is I felt the author generally understated the benefits of exercise independent of weight loss, and, at times, the article came off as "anti-exercise", which is unfortunate. Although exercise is not an effective weight loss method if you are not watching what you put into your mouth, it offers tremendous, well established metabolic health benefits, something the author didn't exactly present fairly. Even so, I'd recommend checking it out below:

TIME MAGAZINE ARTICLE

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