irresponsible article on exercise/obesity

The article is both true and irresponsible. It's true that diet is more important than exercise for weight loss, probably because it's easier to cut a couple of Cokes a day than to run 3 miles, and both equal roughly 300 calories.

But it's irresponsible in quoting the medical/scientific literature very haphazardly. And it's as much an opinion blog as a journalistic report. And it doesn't put enough emphasis on the health-enhancing benefits of vigorous exercise.

Many health-nutrition experts now believe it makes more sense to try to get people moving more than to try to get them to eat less. The research on the benefits of exercise is very strong, and much of it extends to those who are overweight. If you are fat but fit, you can still be very healthy.

To me, the biggest fault in the article is not exploring reasons why someone might want to lose weight and be thin.

If for your health, you can just exercise (as above) and not worry too much about your weight. If to look thin for cultural reasons that emphasize this look, just smoke a lot of cigarettes. That will kill your appetite, and you'll get thin. (And eventually kill yourself.)

I had a subscription to TIME and canceled it awhile back (and get $16 back!)and this article showed me that was a good move.

Maybe as "serious runners" we're atypical, but like most people on this board, I can point to any number of instances which disprove the thesis of this article. Including my own experience.

I was a generally good and fit athlete when I started running again at 27 and I wanted my workouts to be hard ones. By no other societal norm except "skinny runner" did I need to lose weight, but I dropped 12 pounds in six months. The ONLY reason was exercise. I was actually eating more than ever.

The article is nonsense.

Some people just don't have the body shape to do exercise effectively and no amount of exercise will change that. If you have cankles, you'll probably be a very poor runner.

at the mileages that typical runners run, its very difficult to binge back on as many calories as you just burned...at 70 mpw, you're burning about 1000 calories a day on your run....now if you can come home and eat that 1000 calories back on, all the power to ya

but, for the typical gallowalker that will go out and gallowalk their way around the block and go 1.5 miles in an hour, they get back and can eat 2-300 calories....which far trumps the amount they burned exercising

so the real problem is

a) fat people are too fat to be able to exercise in a manner which prevents them from not being able to cover the calories eaten in the post exercise binge

b) people are f***ing pussies.....have some self control....after you exercise, instead of eating a f***ing danish.....how bout you drink more water WHILE you exersize and you'll not be as hungry when you finish....here's another one....exercise BEFORE a meal that you would eat anyway....that way you're not eating any extra calories

thats the answer.....and its articles like this that are the reason fat people will stay fat and get fatter

heres the thought process "hmmmm....lets see....i can't control my eating after exersizing...so i should just not exersize at all!!!!! yay....."

It's easy to come up with a conclusion you want if you throw in a fairly spurious assumption - in this case, that eating will automatically offset weight loss. It's the equivalent of saying that it's useless to make more money in order to save more money because you'll just spend more.

This also assumes that an individual is a casual and/or passive agent in their weight loss program and don't really acknowledge the link between exercise and eating in that regard.

Useless.

My mom liked that article, and I had to sit there and explain why it sucked. She also wants me to get the swine flu vaccine.

good analogy... so how in the hell does an article like this show up in time magazine. actually i haven't read time much but i assumed it was a somewhat respectable periodicali guess i'll stick with the economist

plastic rubber wrote:

It's easy to come up with a conclusion you want if you throw in a fairly spurious assumption - in this case, that eating will automatically offset weight loss. It's the equivalent of saying that it's useless to make more money in order to save more money because you'll just spend more.

This also assumes that an individual is a casual and/or passive agent in their weight loss program and don't really acknowledge the link between exercise and eating in that regard.

Useless.