Exercise = Weight Loss = Myth?

Hello boys, Here's a link to an interesting article from New York Mag online that raises intriguing questions about the scientific basis for the belief that exercise can lead to significant weight loss. There's good news for us regarding the benefits of consuming fewer carbos. One point I find very intriguing has to with the possibility that some people are BIOLOGICALLY PROGRAMMED NOT TO STORE FAT and that makes those people activity junkies. In other words, they're not thin because they're always active, they're compelled to be active because their bods try not to store fat! And then there're guys like pre-op me: Born placid, chubby and programmed to store fat and, hence, programmed to tire easily and resist exercise! Just food for thought. Here is the URL for the article (need to cut and paste it, I think): www.nymag.com/news/sports/38001

I read a similar article in yesterday's Wall Street Journal which said exercise makes you eat more therefore people get fat because of the exercise. It also mentioned the "body programming" aspect of weight gain and exercise.  Here's my take --- WHAT A COPOUT! Sure, we're all programmed differently biologically and some are naturally thin (ectomorphs), some are naturally muscular (mesomorphs) and some (like me) are naturally "big boned" (like my mama then my wife always told me as I ballooned up to 500 lbs). Bottom line: Exercise and eating the right foods makes us healthy whether we're thin or fat. Not exercising and not eating the right foods will make us unhealthy and, for the vast majority of us, make us fat.   Very thought provoking message, Doug. Thanks  Boner

Hi Terry, 

Hence the name, "Boner" 500 lbs, is a lot of bone! lol

Exercise can definitely help people maintain and be more healthy and generally make people feel better (although, when I used to start gaining weight, I could feel like pure crap right as exercise was beginning.)

There is definitely a hormonal aspect to it, though. Lately I don't eat for three hours before sleeping at night (even prevent myself from nodding off before bedtime), which gives me a total of a 10+ hour no- food stretch. The next morning, I generally have to force myself to eat. I'm just not hungry. High fat/ no carb intake in the morning, prevents a big insulin surge which seems to keep apetite down during the day. Low fat/ carb and high protein and fiber at night help keep calories from being stored during night time low activity (not hormonal, just common sense).

Am I rambling again? Good to see you anyway,

Dave

 

 

Hi Doug,

Really interesting article. I think what he was saying (toward the end anyway) was a person's baseline levels of insulin could be what make/ keep a person fat or thin. Reducing starchy foods and sugars to almost nothing could potentially reduce blood glucose, which decreases muscle and increase fat-storing insulin. This is the basis for many low-carb and ketosis diets. 

However, the author also seems to be saying that our baseline insulin levels could be genetic.

(based on my own reading) There is no mention of the hormone T3, which is said to keep our metabolism high and setpoint low. This hormone decreases when we go on a diet, be that diet low carb or low calorie.

I would say that at some stage early in life (for me it was about three years old, for some earlier), we are dealt a baseline level of these and similar hormones and develop our body type and metabolism.

WLS seems to be the only thing that can circumvent this. Some diabetics are automatically able to dramatically cut their insulin supplementation after surgery. This could be because calorie intake is dramatically cut by absorption OR it could be some hormonal response having less active stomach or intestinal tissue to act with our food.

What really drives all of this home for me is, I am thin and fit and can exercise two hours a day on a low carb diet and my weight will only vary about 2 lbs. I can imagine the trouble this would give someone who had yet to reach their goal weight.

One important question is "Can you lose weight by exercising?" My own experience has been yes, but only with an impractically high duration of exercise. For example, I once had three months where work was at a lull and exercised 3-4 hours a (yes, 3-4 hours) with a calorie intake of 800 per day. My average weight loss was 6 lbs. per week. It can be done, but can it be done practically without giving up other important things in life (say "energy"?).

Right now I am on the Natural Hormonal Enhancment diet, which tries to eliminate excess levels of blood sugar and insulin, while keeping T3 levels high and promoting higher natural levels of growth hormone (testo too), body fat seems to be decreasing ,but not weight. So maybe Faigin is the diet author most in tune with these new discoveries.

Great article!

Thanks for Posting That,

Dave   

Here are some quotes I got out of there, in just for a quick look at some of the points: 

“some individuals are born very quiet, inactive, and placid and with moderate intake get fat, and some individuals from the very beginning are very active and do not get particularly fat even with high intakes.”

"That conclusion that the fatter we are, the more sedentary we’re likely to be is actually a correlation; it tells us nothing about what is cause and what is effect. “It is a common observation,” noted Rony in 1941, “that many obese persons are lazy, i.e., show decreased impulse to muscle activity. This may be, in part, an effect that excess weight would have on the activity impulse of any normal person.” Equally possible is that obesity and physical inactivity are both symptoms of the same underlying cause. "

" Is Lance Armstrong excessively lean because he burns off a few thousand calories a day cycling, or is he driven to expend that energy because his body is constitutionally set against storing calories as fat? If his fat tissue is resistant to accumulating calories, his body has little choice but to burn them as quickly as possible: what Rony and his contemporaries called the “activity impulse”—a physiological drive, not a conscious one. His body is telling him to get on his bike and ride, not his mind. "

"The job of determining how fuels (glucose and fatty acids) will be used, whether we will store them as fat or burn them for energy, is carried out primarily by the hormone insulin in concert with an enzyme known technically as lipoprotein lipase—LPL, for short. (Sex hormones also interact with LPL, which is why men and women fatten differently.)This research has never been controversial. It’s simply been considered irrelevant by authorities, all too often lean, who have been dead set on blaming fatness on some combination of gluttony, sloth, and perhaps a little genetic predisposition thrown in on the side. But contemplating the means by which we might lose weight without considering the hormonal regulation of fat tissue is like wondering why children grow taller without considering the role of growth hormones. Or, for that matter, like trying to explain the record-breaking triumphs of modern athletes—Barry Bonds, say—and never considering the possibility that steroid hormones (or human growth hormone or insulin) might be involved."

"So maybe if we eat fewer carbohydrates—in particular the easily digestible simple carbohydrates and sugars—we might lose considerable fat or at least not gain any more, whether we exercise or not. This would explain the slew of recent clinical trials demonstrating that dieters *****strict carbohydrates but not calories invariably lose more weight than dieters *****strict calories but not necessarily carbohydrates. Put simply, it’s quite possible that the foods—potatoes, pasta, rice, bread, pastries, sweets, soda, and beer—that our parents always thought were fattening (back when the medical specialists treating obesity believed that exercise made us hungry) really are fattening. And so if we avoid these foods specifically, we may find our weights more in line with our desires."

 

"As for those people who insist that exercise has been the key to their weight-loss programs, the one thing we’d have to wonder is whether they changed their diets as well. Rare is the person who decides the time has come to lose weight and doesn’t also decide perhaps it’s time to eat fewer sweets, drink less beer, switch to diet soda, and maybe curtail the kind of carb-rich snacks—the potato chips and the candy bars—that might be singularly responsible for driving up their insulin and so their fat." (This is the final subtopic in the article). 

 

Hey Dave, Thanks for pasting in the quotes. The one that got me is "some individuals are born very quiet, inactive, and placid and with moderate intake get fat, and some individuals from the very beginning are very active and do not get particularly fat even with high intakes." That's me (placid) and my baby brother (very active). No way to know what was genetic and what was "learned," but I've seen lots of clearly different "bred-in'the-bone" differences among siblings. Hard to explain, but clearly--it seems to me--very basic almost visceral differences. Hard to fight. Not impossible, but hard. Like you suggested, the only way I could use exercise to lose a significant amount of weight and keep it off prior to surgery was to have no other life but dieting and exercising. I guess if I were "motivated enough" I could have done it. But how to motivate ourselves to be more motivated? Me? I am just so very grateful to live in the era of WLS. Something is changed (hormones as well as plumbing) and now I actually want and need to exercise--and it works (along with new eating habits). Better living through science, serendipity, and the Locker Room!

I didn't read the link, but I do remember that, when my brother did his first long charity bicycle ride, he actually gained weight.  He was on an Aids Ride from Boston to NYC and was loading on carbs thinking that he'd be burning off all of those calories.  At the end of the ride, he had gained 3 lbs.

It's true, Bob!

The calories of 3-4 hours of exercise can be easily replaced and then some. The way I was able to lose pre-op was 800 calories a day + 3-4 hours of exercise. This was comparable to an RNY for about three months.

Dave