“In general, for weight loss, exercise is pretty useless,” says Eric Ravussin, chair in diabetes and metabolism at Louisiana State University and a prominent exercise researcher. Many recent studies have found that exercise isn’t as important in helping people lose weight as you hear so regularly in gym advertisements or on shows like The Biggest Loser — or, for that matter, from magazines like this one.
The basic problem is that while it’s true that exercise burns calories and that you must burn calories to lose weight, exercise has another effect: it can stimulate hunger. That causes us to eat more, which in turn can negate the weight-loss benefits we just accrued. Exercise, in other words, isn’t necessarily helping us lose weight. It may even be making it harder.
Is it all really this complicated? If you have the will power to exercise then why can’t you have it to control what you eat if you want to lose weight? I’m yet to be convinced that weight loss comes down to anything other than burning more calories than you consume!
..this ‘Time’ article should be renamed ‘how to fill space and sell our magazine with sensational crap’. It’s just another excuse for people not to take responsibility for their own actions. this piece angers me. Grrrrrr and Grrrrr in that order!
By: iamkjeld on September 6, 2009
at 12:32 pm