Logic Does Not Apply IV: Exercise for Weight Loss
The beginning of the year causes an accumulation of annoyance for those of us serious about our training. Thousands flock to the gym with no motivation or goal other than a resolution that only resolves how to spend another 20 to 40 dollars a month on a gym membership they’ll use for three weeks.
The newbies form a human sludge as they meander, grabbing random dumbbells, picking one machine or another, or worse, throwing their lot in with a certified trainer whose love-handles double as a new type of anatomy, hip breasts. These people have no idea why they’re in this faux magazine reality called a gym other than knowing that weight-loss success exists on the other side of a set of crunches or eight weeks of bootcamp.
Experts support the claim with rock-solid ratiocination: exercising takes extra work, and extra work requires energy, and all this extra energy—in the form of food—is why you’re fat in the first place, therefore exercise makes you skinny.
As compelling as this logic may seem, it ignores a simple fact of the human body: it can run at different efficiencies. From a physicist’s point of view, the human body is only a heat engine, a complex version of the engine in your car. Sometimes you get better gas mileage, more distance from less fuel. The human body obeys these same laws. I detail the phenomenon in the last installment of this series: Logic Does Not Apply III: A Calorie Is A Calorie (the article proves that a calorie is definitely not a calorie).
The Idea
Exercise without dietary changes is sufficient to achieve weight loss goals.
The Logic
Exercise requires more energy than normal day-to-day tasks like sitting or playing video games, therefore exercise should burn excess calories, put the body into caloric deficit and melt the pounds away.
The Reality
When starting a weight loss plan, for almost nine months exercise causes nearly zero weight loss unless accompanied by a dietary intervention. Succinctly: Exercise alone does not cause significant weight loss.
I’m not going to go over the science of human efficiency. I covered all of that in the last installment, and, to be honest, we can refute the idea that exercise is a route to fat loss with far simpler evidence than the thermodynamic regulation of the human body.
If exercise does affect fat loss, we could create very simple experiments to determine the amount. Take one group of subjects and tell them to do nothing—these would be our controls. Now take a second group, and have them keep everything identical in their day except for an added an hour of exercise, or maybe two. The two groups should keep their calories identical to pre-experiment levels.
This one’s a no-brainer. The control group obviously wouldn’t and didn’t lose weight over the test period. The exercising group, of course, must have washboard abs, chiseled pecs or maybe firm sexy thighs and shapely arms.
That’s the promise of every exercise-only program out there but, interestingly, the exercising group suffered a bit of a snag. At the end of the trial, their body weight and body fat levels were identical to when they started. And this isn’t the result of just one study, but 6 different studies [7,11,14,18-20].
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Okay, what if we do throw in dietary changes too, that’ll make a difference, won’t it? No, it won’t. In many of those same studies as well as additional ones, researchers tested another set of variables. Two groups made identical dietary changes, but one group exercised in addition. The exercise group should have been in a much larger energy deficit than the non-exercising group and, again, should have experienced massive fat loss in comparison. But those same studies showed the same thing: exercise didn’t do jack. Diet caused 100% of the weight loss and at the end, the two groups lost identical amounts of fat and weight [1-18].
Every fitness expert and CrossFit-adherent is probably imagining a pseudo-sciencey, logical-sounding excuse for these results, even if the best they can come up with is, “I don’t believe it, and I’ll yell until you believe me, so believe me.” Sorry kids, these are well done studies and facts don’t lie—but people who can’t escape archaic ideas like, “it’s all calories in, calories out,” will. That fact is that at least 23 different, well-controlled studies show that exercise alone does little for fat loss [1-20, 50-52].
The correct explanation for the lack of results is a simple matter of efficiency. The body immediately sees the extra work and takes measures to adjust to the extraneous outlets of energy—like reducing body-heat production [21-27]—to spare energy for these crazy new activities that desk-jockey’s thrust themselves into without thought or consideration. If they won’t think, the body will do it for them.
The body can down-regulate metabolism—start sparing calories and becoming more efficient—within three days of any type of negative energy balance [28-37].
I don’t really know what’s so hard about this concept of efficiency when it’s applied to the human body. Everybody understands when someone’s more efficient at a job now than they were two weeks ago, that untrained muscles become more efficient at lifting weight within a week of training [38-49] or that a car is more efficient when driven on the highway rather than in the city. Nobody rebuffs.
But once you say the human body adjusts its efficiency to get more mileage from food, all of sudden, the industry gurus spew vitriol in all directions, as if the concept of efficiency triggered a crocodilian, medulla-oblongata-mediated anger response brought on from the immediate knowledge of their own ignorance.
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A large study conducted in the Midwest followed the weight loss efforts of 131 people. After 16 months, the research team came to a stunning conclusion: no one should expect any weight loss from exercise—sans diet—for at least nine months [53]. That’s right, no one. So maybe you or someone you know lost some weight with exercise, but if you lost more than one pound per month, you unknowingly changed your diet as well [54-56]. There is no other explanation, no matter how much you want to believe in Disney Fairytales or that you or your friend is a special little flower. You’re bound by the same constraints as the rest of us.
Start your weight-loss resolution now and see results for next year’s resolution, 2013, and paltry one’s at that. After those nine months end, expect about six pounds of fat loss total. A full 365 days of effort for six pounds: Happy New Year!
Before the questions begin flooding in, I am not suggesting an exercise-free weight loss protocol. Exercise is a critical part of the process because it helps prevent muscle loss during weight loss [3-5, 16, 17, 57-65]. Exercise is important and indispensable when losing weight, but it will not, despite the rancid logic used to defend it, cause much, if any, weight loss without concurrent dietary changes.
Make serious effort toward your goals, change the way you eat and add the right type of exercise (this is a good excuse to try Carb Nite, Carb Back-Loading or a Shockwave Protocol). If you do both—change your diet and exercise—you can transform your body in what the experts will tell you are impossible ways and join the ranks of the Super Heroes In Training.
Super Heroes do the impossible and the impossible happens every day for members of Dangerously Hardcore.
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36. Cameron JL, Weltzin TE, McConaha C, Helmreich DL, Kaye WH. Slowing of pulsatile luteinizing hormone secretion in men after forty-eight hours of fasting. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 1991 Jul;73(1):35-41.
37. Keim NL, Stern JS, Havel PJ. Relation between circulating leptin concentrations and appetite during a prolonged, moderate energy deficit in women. Am J Clin Nutr. 1998 Oct;68(4):794-801.
38. Higbie EJ, Cureton KJ, Warren GL 3rd, Prior BM. Effects of concentric and eccentric training on muscle strength, cross-sectional area, and neural activation. J Appl Physiol. 1996 Nov;81(5):2173-81.
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40. Hickson RC, Hidaka K, Foster C, Falduto MT, Chatterton RT Jr. Successive time courses of strength development and steroid hormone responses to heavy-resistance training. J Appl Physiol. 1994 Feb;76(2):663-70.
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42. Taaffe DR, Marcus R. Dynamic muscle strength alterations to detraining and retraining in elderly men. Clin Physiol. 1997 May;17(3):311-24.
43. Ploutz LL, Tesch PA, Biro RL, Dudley GA. Effect of resistance training on muscle use during exercise. J Appl Physiol. 1994 Apr;76(4):1675-81.
44. McCartney N, Moroz D, Garner SH, McComas AJ. The effects of strength training in patients with selected neuromuscular disorders. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 1988 Aug;20(4):362-8.
45. Phillips SM. Short-term training: when do repeated bouts of resistance exercise become training? Can J Appl Physiol. 2000 Jun;25(3):185-93. Review.
46. Chilibeck PD, Calder AW, Sale DG, Webber CE. A comparison of strength and muscle mass increases during resistance training in young women. Eur J Appl Physiol Occup Physiol. 1998;77(1-2):170-5.
47. Ozmun JC, Mikesky AE, Surburg PR. Neuromuscular adaptations following prepubescent strength training. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 1994 Apr;26(4):510-4.
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50. Dengel DR, Hagberg JM, Coon PJ, Drinkwater DT, Goldberg AP. Effects of weight loss by diet alone or combined with aerobic exercise on body composition in older obese men. Metabolism. 1994 Jul;43(7):867-71.
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52. Lamarche B, Despres JP, Moorjani S, Nadeau A, Lupien PJ, Tremblay A, Theriault G, Bouchard C. Evidence for a role of insulin in the regulation of abdominal adipose tissue lipoprotein lipase response to exercise training in obese women. Int J Obes Relat Metab Disord. 1993 May;17(5):255-61.
53. Kirk EP, Jacobsen DJ, Gibson C, Hill JO, Donnelly JE. Time course for changes in aerobic capacity and body composition in overweight men and women in response to long-term exercise: the Midwest Exercise Trial (MET). Int J Obes Relat Metab Disord. 2003 Aug;27(8):912-9.
54. Garrow JS, Summerbell CD. Meta-analysis: effect of exercise, with or without dieting, on the body composition of overweight subjects. Eur J Clin Nutr. 1995 Jan;49(1):1-10.
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John Kiefer is a nutritional consultant, physique and performance coach, and author of the fat loss guide, The Carb Nite® Solution (
So how do you lose weight? I guess that comes in part three.
Interesting article! I have two questions for Kiefer:
1.) How much can the body down-regulate metabolism? Seems to me like there would be some percentage limit (10-20% maybe) so that increasing activity beyond that level should in theory contribute to weight loss.
2.) Is it simply possible that people that do cardio (burning say 300 calories in a 30-40 min workout) find reasons to move around less during the day, almost making up for the difference?
Nick
@Sweet – I believe you are over thinking this. He’s not saying exercise is irrelevant. It’s just the fact of the matter is, you can out train bad eating when it comes to fat loss.
Eat properly hit the wieghts with intensity and results will happen
@Nick – Can’t speak for John. But every study on cardio shows that it has no real benefit for fat loss.
John actually wrote an article talking about that as well:
http://articles.elitefts.com/articles/training-articles/women-running-into-trouble/
Super
Heroes
In
Training?
Not really a group I’d like to be a part of. But I’ll bite on the dietary changes and exercise being necessary for positive changes in body composition.
The simple pragmatic answer is don’t eat and exercise. The exercise will actually help you retain muscle. Your metabolism can only down regulate so much.
Using Nazi POW camps as an example. Those prisoners were starved, but still required to perform labor. It’s amazing how the body can survive such an ordeal.
@sweetinlow: Way to not read the article and then make an ignorant post, may I direct you to more of your kind: http://www.t-nation.com
Oh, and the answer is diet. The article mentions that fact about half a page in.
Great post, very similar to Why We Get Fat by Gary Taubes.
What is your viewpoint on protein synthesis brought on my resistance training? This requires a larger amount of energy and is a by product of exercise, so shouldn’t that be considered before exercise is thrown out the window?
Exercise increases appetite causing someone to eat more, yes… and yes someone’s basil metabolic rate is very similar to to the metabolic rate of running at 65% of VO2max.. But through a high intensity resistance training, a person would be able to cause enough stress to require a great deal of protein synthesis while keeping appetite controlled, right?
Step 1: Stop looking for ways to “lose weight”. Start looking for ways to lose FAT. (I realize this article alternates between “losing weight” with “losing fat”, but the real problem is losing fat.)
Step 2: Realize that 90% of fat loss is nutritional.
Step 3: Look into Carb Nite.
still calories in,calories out,but you are writing about the “out” (excercise in this case, +metabolic routes) and saying that you need to eat less,the “in”,nothing revolutionary here,besides that,a lot of studies without diet changes had been done with weight loss results,incluiding visceral fat also.as i said before,it´s still calories in,calories out
“ratiocination” = well, I got to use wiktionary again today. That sounded so forced =/
“the exercising group suffered a bit of a snag. At the end of the trial, their body weight and body fat levels were identical to when they started. And this isn’t the result of just one study, but 6 different studies [7,11,14,18-20].”
Then they probably weren’t trying very hard or improving much beyond motor learning. The more intense people train, the more they improve, the more calories get burned. Efficiency and slowed metabolism when not training can only go so far. There’s a reason the pros have to eat so much.
“Every fitness expert and CrossFit-adherent is probably imagining a pseudo-sciencey, logical-sounding excuse for these results,”
Why is one needed? Why should we trust these studies? There are all kinds of places for flaws in studies to creep up. Like for example: were the people monitored to make sure they were doing the same things while not training?
For example, someone tired from training may just go lie down. Someone who is restless from not training may walk around, swing their arms, and get sort of an instinctive exercise session in.
We don’t need to come up with metabolic explanations to question studies. For all their knowledge, basic controls in studies can be ignored by optmistic corner-cutting scientists who design them.
Even strapping people down to a table while not exercising wouldn’t be an ultimate control, because the restless guys would struggle against the straps harder than the fatigued guys.
The benefit to training in the long-term is that you get numericall progressive intensity compared to instinctive motion-going-throughing. I doubt these studies lasted long enough or were conducted properly to do these things if people experienced such results. This is more reasonable explanation than assuming the body just somehow can do increased amounts of work without expending more energy for infinite periods of time as I get this article to imply.
So you’re saying (or interpreting the studies to say) if I double my daily calorie output (say from 700 to 1400) the processes in my body would become 50% less efficient?
Terrible article. BS bs bs bs BS…. Almost all those studies used the very obese. Wouldn’t trust those numbers… At my club there are lots of marathoners that eat more during race season but end up with less bodyfat and lighter. Same with football players / basketball and anyone else that can work past 60% of max hr.
I ran 6 miles a day and ate like a COW while training for the NYC marathon. I ate much worse than I ever had, because I was very hungry. I lost 15 pounds and ran a great marathon. So much for your theory
Kiefer, the endurance athlete population is proof that your article is completely wrong. With enough exercise of any kind you can lose weight with exercise alone. Going to the extent, in terms of a commitment of time and effort, as they do though is outside the interests of most of the general population but that doesn’t change the fact of the matter:
Exercise alone *can* result in significant weight loss *even* at lower levels of intensity… just be prepared to jog/cycle/swim for hours at a time for drastic results.
Having said that, if you eat an unhealthy diet you will feel like garbage engaging in so much endurance exercise and you will probably either stop the exercise or correct your diet. It’s amazing how clear and obvious evidence seems to be non-existent to the dogmatic few that push a particular agenda.
By the author’s science Michael Phelps should be about 300 pounds. Google his training diet and you will see he eats enough calories for 3-4 people. Since his additional exercise doesn’t matter he should look like Ben Stiller at the end of Dodgeball.
I think the thing missing here is we SHOULD be talking about fat loss, or bodyfat percentage, not weight loss. I guarantee you that someone working out with weights and watching their diet will lower their bodyfat percentage but it may not show up much at all on the scale. If you gain 5 pounds of muscle and lose 6 pounds of fat, it will show only a 1-pound loss on the scale but your body will be a leaner machine, better fat-burning machine. So, exercise IS a valuable component for fat (not necessarily weight) loss.
I set out to prove calories can come from anywhere over a 2 week period
I exercised the same as normal and led my life as it was prior to change of diet – my DIET (if you want to call it that) was just these 2 items 3 times per day:
CHOCOLATE ICING COVERED CHOCOLATE SPONGE CAKE AND CUSTARD
Yep – I ate sugar with sugar coated in sugar 3 meals per day and over 2 weeks I LOST 3Kgs lol!!!!
Same exercises as before – yet the 2 weeks prior with 55% protein dietary intake i stayed same weight if not gained 300gms lol
Explain away!!
Anybody who has ever watched the Biggest Loser, where contestants work out 4 hours a day, 6 days a week, will know that there is something off about this article. There is no way they could otherwise generate a deficit large enough to explain the weekly weight loss (it’s not all water weight).
There are indeed situations when low intensity cardio is unnecessary, but to say that it’s categorically useless is disingenuous.
So we use extreme cases of athletes who use more atps daily which require additional refueling (eating or fat usage) to discount case studies of everyday people in everyday life doing the ‘recommended’ 1 hour per day of exercise? 1 hour seems easy to explain away the relaxation or restlessness hence the diet effecting it.
This article is quite ridiculous. I always advocate making dietary corrections when fat loss is the goal (or just in general really – people eat like shit). However, to suggest that exercise has ‘no’ benefits when it comes to losing body fat is completely absurd, and practically idiotic.
Exercise can undoubtedly lead to fat loss, but the issue is the moment you stop, take a day off or get injured, your fat loss solution is done; and that often ends up with the person regaining any weight that they lost. If you are controlling your caloric intake and you get injured, you simply make an adjustment to continue fat loss.
Not to mention, its considerably easier to simply not drink a soda everyday than it is to get out there and run 2 miles everyday to create your deficit.
@Alex:
You are absolutely and patently wrong. If you had bothered to look over the references and read the studies, then you would see that the body is a complex and adaptive machine capable of adjusting it’s efficiency to compensate for even significant differences in energy output. What is absurd is think something *must* work a certain way, then ignoring the research to confirm that your intuition is wrong.
I guess you’d probably argue that it just doesn’t make sense that a car gets better mileage on the high way than in the city. I mean, that just doesn’t make sense–it’s ridiculous.
@Nick White:
You’re using bad logic. All of those contestants have massive drops in calories and no one there tests the idea that one group may do as well as another without exercising. You can’t make valid assumptions without comparative data, which is provided in the scientific papers I used as references. Please read them…you’ll be just as surprised as I was the first time I read through them.
Note: In no way am I implying that exercise doesn’t provide benefits, but for the poor hapless gym goer who hired a personal trainer hoping to lose pounds of fat by doing CrossFit-esque workouts, they should know that their efforts will not achieve their goals.
@JC:
Is Michael Phelps fat? Do you have pictures of Michael Phelps at 300 lbs? If so, that is the only way you could use Michael Phelps to counter my argument, if, in fact, you also had proof that he lost all of his body fat without dietary intervention.
My logic does not apply to Michael Phelps, nor do these studies. Your point about his diet is moot here since, in fact, Michael Phelps, to my knowledge, has never used exercise for fat loss. So, in fact, my logic (and the facts) are not in error; your argument is misplaced.
@Bill:
Read my comment to JC. The endurance athlete population of the world proves nothing in reference to his article nor the studies involved. You’re making a logical fallacy: runners are skinny is an observation; Now, you’ve jumped to the conclusion: running makes you skinny. You cannot assert this without proof. The onus is on you at this point to prove this statement is true. I’ve provided ample evidence that it is false. The only true statement here is: endurance athletes tend to be skinny.
What’s interesting is that people keep saying I’m “wrong” as if I’m making this stuff up. Read the research, then argue with me please. Maybe you will find flaws in their methodology or ways in which they performed measurements or flaws in their statistical analysis that I missed. That is entirely possible, although improbable.
@Tyciol:
Why should we trust these studies? Because they’re conducted to answer questions in an unbiased fashion to prevent us from fooling ourselves into false conclusions.
But not everybody desires prevention.
@Nick White
1) Good question. I would say it’s reasonable to believe the human body can tolerate an efficiency swing of 10% in either direction.
2) Yes, this is entirely possible; but so is the possibility that mitochondrial activity is down regulated (which does happen), and thermic losses are attentuated (which also happens, as in one example we lose less heat after we eat with traditional exercise and diet).
Both excellent questions.
@Jordan:
A) I think you make a good point, but some of the studies above tested resistance training as well with the same result as endurance training. So, although my gut says you should be right, my sciency-side says that we now have a new and interesting questions: Can the body become more energetically efficient at building muscle tissue than at baseline? I have a feeling that the answer to that is yes.
B) See (a) above. I think you’re making good points, I just can’t reconcile the research with a concrete explanation. I can only hypothesize.