Calorie Restriction or Exercise for Sustained Weight Loss ?

[Strawberry Roan]

From Yahoo home page

Diet Myth :

Diet alone is enough for sustained weight loss

You'll lose weight in the short term by slashing calories, but experts say exercise is what keeps pounds off for good. Exercise burns calories, of course. It also builds muscle, which takes up less space than fat. Muscle tissue also requires more calories to sustain it than fat tissue does. In other words, the more muscle tissue you have, the more calories you'll burn at rest. In fact, some studies suggest that over the long term, if you had a choice of eating consistently less or exercising consistently more, exercise would be the better weight-loss choice.

[wosnes]

I've read just the opposite, too. I suppose it's whatever works for you.

I think most people eat enough (as in too much) that just restricting calories and changing the way you eat would be enough to cause sustained weight loss. I personally find it difficult to move enough to create weight loss -- let alone lasting weight loss. But I have health issues that make sustained exercise difficult.

[reinhard]

Here's the way I look at it: weight loss (even sustained weight loss) isn't the real goal -- or at least, it shouldn't be.

The real goal should be eating and moving in moderation.

Odds are your excess weight a symptom of an excessive behavior in one or the other of these departments or (most likely) both. Since there are a thousand other reasons to be moderate in eating and moving (pleasure, health, etc.), I'm not sure it matters all that much which makes more of a difference in terms of weight loss and by how much.

My strong suspicion is that both diet and exercise/exertion are critical to maintaining a healthy weight. Yes, I've seen the studies wosnes mentions, and I guess it's possible there might be something to them. Still, why not hedge your bets and do both? And if you're not already awake to all the OTHER reasons why eating and moving moderately are good ideas, I think you'll be in for a pleasant surprise.

(If, like wosnes, you have health issues like that make exercise difficult, that's another story of course).

Reinhard

[ShannahR]

I always looked at it like this: most people can cut calories and lose some weight on the short term. However, the people who actually commit to a healthy lifestyle and taking care of themselves also exercise. Those are the people who keep the weight off for the long haul.

[DaveMc]

I think it's certainly true that one definitely should both do some moving and eat moderately, in order to be healthy. For weight loss, though, one of them does have a clear numerical advantage: it's far easier to remove calories from your diet by not eating them, than it is to burn them through exercise.

Take a look at the figures at something like www.caloriesperhour.com: even very vigorous exercise doesn't add up to all that many calories per hour. (High impact aerobics: 450 cal/hr; running 6mph or cycling 15 mph: 900 cal/hr) So for half an hour of pretty vigorous exercise, you're looking at a couple hundred to a few hundred calories. It doesn't take very long to *not* eat a piece of cake, for about the same caloric savings.

It's important to exercise, to be healthy and strong and all that, and the calories burned certainly don't hurt, but if you had to pick one thing to do in order to lose weight, modifying what you eat would have to come first, I'd say.

[crackityjonesjr]

In fact, some studies suggest that over the long term, if you had a choice of eating consistently less or exercising consistently more, exercise would be the better weight-loss choice.

I'd like to see those studies, because nearly everything I have read says just the opposite. They say that, while exercise is good for overall health and maintaining weight loss, it does very little to help burn fat.

...the power in weight loss comes from mastery of the diet, not adding more exercise, which many scientists now regard as a relatively weak weapon in the never-ending offensive against weight gain.

[BrightAngel]

I'd like to see those studies, because nearly everything I have read says just the opposite. They say that, while exercise is good for overall health and maintaining weight loss, it does very little to help burn fat.

...the power in weight loss comes from mastery of the diet, not adding more exercise, which many scientists now regard as a relatively weak weapon in the never-ending offensive against weight gain.

Crackitjonesjr,
Both Science and I agree with you
Nowadays, the "Experts" who say Exercise is the key are Trainers,
or others who earn their living in connection with the Exercise Industry.

[Ray E.]

I agree. As a college athlete and long time exerciser, excessive exercise just increases the appetite and also gives one the feeling that they can eat more since they just worked out. I read something that 60 min. of high level aerobic exercise burns ~450 cals. That's the equivalent of a few cookies.

I agree with Reinhard that a combination of moderate eating and exercise is key. 14 minutes a day is plenty for heart & lung health imo. I read somewhere that Dr. Cooper, the Father of Aerobics recently wrote that any more than 20 minutes of exercise 3x/week is less for physical health than for mental reasons.
Ray

[Cassie]

Common sense tells me it's a combination of both as exercise is crucial for good health etc, BUT bottom line, if calories eaten are more than calories burnt then no amount of exercise will help... Maybe I'm simplifying the issue too much though? Just judging from my own experience & from my common sense: Personally, when I exercise I feel healthier & happier & tend to eat healthier meals too. But I imagine other people may react differently eg may feel that because they've exercised they're allowed to eat more if that makes sense. The main thing is to achieve moderation in both areas...and I would imagine that in the end a different balance between exercise/eating would work for different people.

[wosnes]

I think we also have to look at how much we move in daily life. I'm not a huge fan of The China Study, but I remember reading that when they did the study, the people they had to call sedentary because they were less active than most of the population, generally the elderly or infirm, walked or biked 2-10 miles daily in the course of daily life. It wasn't considered "exercise" -- it was just getting from point A to point B, the activity of daily life.

I think we have too much of a divide between normal, daily movement and exercise. Most of us don't move enough during the course of daily life and rely on "exercise." Life used to be a lot more active -- and I think the calories we burned during the course of daily life added up.

[Cassie]

Wosnes, you're absolutely right, it's obvious that the obesity 'epidemic' is not just due to poor eating choices but also to normal activities in everyday life not involving movement. Everyday life, after all, has changed hugely hugely hugely in the last century and it's bound to have made a huge impact.

[reinhard]

Look, I'm not going to knock diet; it's a subject I'm obviously very interested in and believe it can make a huge difference. But it makes no sense to me to say in an "input-output" system that one side of the equation doesn't matter. As to which is harder to control, I think that's highly subjective, but my guess is that most people will find doing a LITTLE on both ends is much easier than doing a lot on just one. That's certainly been my experience.

Both Science and I agree with you

From my poking around, it looks like the science is rather divided on the issue. If anything, I see a preponderance of studies confirming what seems to me the obvious fact that both diet and exercise/exertion are important.

I'd like to see those studies, because nearly everything I have read says just the opposite.

Below are a couple.

I didn't have to dig too far; these are the top 2 hits from google scholar search on the terms "diet exercise weight loss" that weren't about some specific medical condition (for which exercise also, surprise surprise, turns out to be highly beneficial):

From:

Obesity Reviews
Volume 10, Issue 3, pages 313–323, May 2009

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... x/abstract

Even in studies lasting 2 years or longer, diet-plus-exercise interventions provided significantly greater weight loss than diet-only interventions. In summary, a combined diet-plus-exercise programme provided greater long-term weight loss than a diet-only programme

.

From:

International Journal of Obesity (2005) 29, 1168–1174. doi:10.1038/sj.ijo.0803015; published online 31 May 2005

http://www.nature.com/ijo/journal/v29/n ... 3015a.html

CONCLUSION: Diet associated with exercise results in significant and clinically meaningful initial weight loss. This is partially sustained after 1 y.

Reinhard

[DaveMc]

Well, OK, Reinhard, but I was arguing specifically with the Yahoo home page (come to think of it -- I'm arguing with the Yahoo home page? Probably foolish, in the long run), where it apparently said: "In fact, some studies suggest that over the long term, if you had a choice of eating consistently less or exercising consistently more, exercise would be the better weight-loss choice."

No question, both is better! But I'm surprised to hear anyone (even Yahoo) say that if you *had* to pick one, that one should be exercise rather than diet. The studies you cite are both saying diet-plus-exercise is better than just diet, aren't they? That's uncontroversial. The point I was objecting to was the far more extreme claim that you'd actually be better off doing *just exercise*, which seems hard to accept. You're absolutely right that there are two sides to this, and ignoring either of them is silly.

[EDIT: Of course, now that I think about it, it's not entirely clear what "just diet" or "just exercise" would actually look like, in practice. Do you not move at all in the "just diet" case, or eat absolutely whatever you want in the "just exercise" case? I think we're all agreeing that either of those is a path to disaster! If, on the other hand, the "just exercise" case means "get to a point where you're stable (from eating), then add some exercise" -- well, sure, that seems like it would work. But again, some of both does seem like the most sensible way to go.]

[kccc]

I agree that "some of both" is optimum. So the answer to the subject line of this thread is "Yes!"

Some personal anecdotes...
- In my youth, I lost about 30 pounds TWICE with diet alone... and gained it back both times. I wasn't able to keep it off until I added in some exercise, after which I maintained for decades (until baby-in-mid-life). I had previously been very sedentary, but there was a point where I realized that exercise actually felt good, and I felt better when I did it - like an internal switch clicking over.
- I had a college roommate who believed in "just exercising." She did a LOT of exercise (and still does), but remained... welll, very full-figured. She is now definitely overweight, though very solid and relatively healthy.
- I had another roommate who believed in "just dieting"... She lost weight, but didn't keep it off. She is now morbidly obese, and I genuinely fear for her health.

Now, these anecdotes don't constitute "data"... but, for me, I need both a healthy diet and regular exercise. Though much of that need isn't necessarily weight-related, but general-health related.

[Strawberry Roan]

Thanks for all the thought provoking replies.

My theory is that if a person gets to their deisred weight (or somewhat close) exercise might be the key in maintenance.

However, I do not think that exercise alone will allow a person to lose a lot of weight.

I think exercise is what makes a person look fit, not skinny, when they do achieve the weight loss they were striving for.

The combination is what I go for, I love to exercise so that's the easiest part.

[jgrh]

I believe that it all starts with food, but exercise is crucial to physical health and mental health. I finally started exercising again after being a depressed sloth for way too long and I feel so much better. What I have to watch is compensating with calories, "oh, I just worked out for an hour, I can eat that." Well, no I can't. When I decided to climb off the couch and out of my stupor a very good friend gave me a gift of a personal trainer for a few months. She is great, but has no sense of irony. She told me that some people she was reluctant to try certain things with, but that I was an athlete "wearing a fat suit." I was startled speechless, then I realized she's completely correct. I'm determined to dig that athlete back out.