Get Fit Slowly

31 responses so far ↓

• 1 Metroknow // Jul 30, 2008 at 6:46 am

  I definitely agree that 30 mins a day is not enough. After I started running for significantly longer than 30 minutes a day (actually about double that), I not only started to see the benefit, but I started (more importantly) to enjoy it.

  At 30 minutes a day I hated it.

  I’m also not a huge believer in the set-point theory…In my opinion it becomes a really great selling point for weight loss products, but that is about it. I think our weight has much, much more to do with behavior.

• 2 Joshua // Jul 30, 2008 at 7:31 am

  Well, the 30 minutes a day is probably sufficient maintenance for those blessed enough to be thin, but for those of us cursed with too much lard, we definitly need more. 30 minutes is a good starting point if you have been sedentary, but definitly have to work up from there.

• 3 Sheamus // Jul 30, 2008 at 8:05 am

  Mac, you need to close the italics tag in your post above. The whole site has been affected by it - check out the sidebar to the right –>

  

• 4 Sheamus // Jul 30, 2008 at 8:07 am

  It’s worth observing that many ‘experts’ suggest 3 x 30 minutes per week is enough to be healthy. It may well be for the heart, but when most genitically-blessed celebrities and sport stars have to hire personal trainers for 2-3 hours per day six days a week to stay in shape - especially after giving birth - you imagine the rules would be much the same for the rest of us.

• 5 Jennifer // Jul 30, 2008 at 8:58 am

  Articles like this are frustrating to me (no reflection on you mac) because I am a firm believer that willpower alone is enough to lose weight. True, some of us may have genetic issues that make us work harder, even once we have reached the maintenance stage, but the calories in/calories out equation still applies. I for one have managed to lose over 30 lb in the last 4 months despite a lifetime of being obese. I have done this through a restricted diet and 30-45 min of exercise 5 times a week.

  There seem to be some flaws in this study, that I unfortunately can’t explore further since I also don’t subscribe to the journal. The Times article says that not all participants did the workouts that they were assigned. What it doesn’t say is whether or not the participants stuck to the 1200-1500 calorie plans they were told to follow. My guess is that a lot of them didn’t.

  If they did stick to the diets and exercise then it’s possible they weren’t getting enough calories. The 1200-1500 calorie range is fairly low and for most non-sedentary women with some weight to lose to lead to weight loss on its own. It is generally recommended that no one go below 1200 calories per day, regardless of diet goals (www.sparkpeople.com recommendation). If you add to that the fact that these women are being asked to workout for as much as an hour or more and it’s possible that they aren’t getting enough food to support their activity level, which can also stall weightloss.

• 6 MITBeta @ Don't Feed the Alligators // Jul 30, 2008 at 10:41 am

  My own experience with this is that exercise for me did very little to contribute to weight loss. Only by paying close attention to my diet was I able to lose ~20% of my original weight.

  I believe in a “set-point” theory of sorts, but believe that we have many, even dozens, of points at which the body will happily operate. These set points have to be discovered by careful trial and error. I have been at my present weight (+/- 2%) for over 18 months now, and still struggle every day to maintain. I’m trying to lose another 5 lbs. or so still to see if there’s a natural set-point down there somewhere…

  Many people lose lots of weight through whatever the diet of the day is, but the reason that they don’t maintain it is that they forget about their weight after they hit their goal and then the weight slowly creeps back up over time. I’m not obsessive, but I do step on the scale first thing every morning, so I know that I’m gaining/losing/staying the same.

• 7 greenman2001 // Jul 30, 2008 at 10:58 am

  Lots of confusing and misleading information in this post. I’ll bet if you read the actual study and not Time Magazine’s “summary” you’d find it’s conclusions qualified to the point of uselessness. I suspect that the real message of this study, like most weight loss studies, is this: “it’s almost impossible to get test subjects to stick to their diets.”

  If you’re on a “calorie restricted” diet and you’re not losing weight, it follows that you’re not restricting your calories. The human body can’t burn more calories than it consumes and not lose weight. Most weight loss and diet studies rely on the test subjects’ recollections of what they eat, and studies of studies have found that test subjects don’t remember accurately and understate what they actually eat. Michael Pollan writes about the fact that researchers usually add to test subjects’ consumption quantities to compensate for these undercounts. The recent study that proved the efficacy of the Atkins diet over a Mediteranean and low-fat diet was done on a population of people who lived 24 hrs a day in a remote research station and ate all of their meals in a cafeteria, so their food intake was completely controllable.

  It’s my opinion that it’s much harder to lose weight through a combination of diet and exercise than it is through diet alone, because exercise requires that you eat more, not less. By burning more calories than you would otherwise, you generate an even more powerful appetite, which makes it much harder to restrict calories when you eat. Both Mac and JD have had this experience many times and written about it here, and it’s the reason their weight loss has gone in spurts. JD exercises several hours a day, and his weight loss has been quite modest overall and periodically grinds to a halt completely.

  Were the subjects of this study attempting to lose weight just through exercise?Were they going from 0 to 30 minutes of exercise.? How was the calorie deficit controlled? Is the conclusion that if you hold calorie intake fixed and increase your exercise by 30 minutes you won’t lose weight? Won’t lose more than 10% of your weight? Won’t be able to keep weight off for more than 2 years? What about selection bias: it strikes me that an obese person working out more than 30 minutes may be more conscientious about other behaviors that are influencing the outcome here but may not be controlled for in the study.

  I appreciate your mentioning how effective a mere 10% drop in body weight can be for reducing the symptoms of high blood pressure and diabetes. These are huge problems in this country, growing worse by the day, and are directly related to diet and weight.

• 8 brad // Jul 30, 2008 at 11:06 am

  I agree with MITBeta. In the balancing act between “exercise more” and “eat less,” the bulk of the weight-loss results for most of us will probably come from eating less. I can eliminate the caloric benefits from 1 hour of vigorous exercise simply by eating an extra candy bar or two over the course of the day.

• 9 Andrew is getting fit // Jul 30, 2008 at 11:10 am

  You seem to have stirred a bit of controversy with this post!

  My personal belief is that we can all lose weight. For some people it is harder than others but still doable if (and this is a big if) you eat right and exercise lots.

• 10 DR // Jul 30, 2008 at 11:19 am

  Boo hoo

  The study is flawed…people can’t stick to diets…too many calories…not enough calories…blah,blah,blah

  The big point from this study was that the people who lost the weight and kept it off were the ones who ate the least and exercised the most.

  The ones who went back to their old eating patterns gained back weight.

  The ones that stopped exercising gained weight.

  So, as Mac says - the verdict is in–again. If you want to lose some weight. You have to move. Alot.

  Some real world results for ya -

  55% of Finns engage in some form of moderate intensity exercise 3 days a week.

  They have also seen a 60 % decline in heart disease mortality since 1970.

  http://healthhabits.wordpress.com/2008/07/30/im-fat-and-im-not-going-to-take-it-anymore/

• 11 greenman2001 // Jul 30, 2008 at 11:34 am

  Boo hoo?

  The verdict is the same as it always was: If you want to lose weight you don’t have to move AT ALL. Mac and JD both move A LOT and while doing so have gone through periods where they haven’t lost any weight AT ALL because they haven’t reduced their calorie consumption.

• 12 Cara // Jul 30, 2008 at 11:59 am

  You also have to push yourself to get your heart rate up. I see so many people at the gym who are loping along on a treadmill, while reading a magazine. It’s better than nothing but it’s not going to give you significant results.
  Of course, pushing yourself becomes harder as you become more fit! An effective exercise plan takes regular monitoring.

• 13 MizFit // Jul 30, 2008 at 12:05 pm

  woo hoo Pgh—my hometown.

  I agree and disagree.

  when you reach a certain level IMO you can get away with less *if* the rest of it is in place (waves at the kitchen).

  although now that I type that I retract.

  Im thinking less but it’s still more

  30 min of cardio a day 7 days a week is my thing.
  so not a lot of but often is what currently works in my schedule.

  and I lift often as well (five times a week) but not long (15 min?)

  eh

  ignore me

• 14 Him // Jul 30, 2008 at 12:10 pm

  You can’t out run a bad diet.

  Really.

  Also, 30 minutes is plenty of time to exercise, depending on what the activity is. Like Cara said - meandering on a treadmill won’t do much for you. Doing high-intensity interval training for about 20-30 minutes a day has repeatedly been shown in the medical literature to be more effective at fat loss.

  But it will be all for nothing if you eat like crap.

• 15 Deb // Jul 30, 2008 at 2:31 pm

  Interesting. My personal experience was that I finally lost 40# (25% of my body weight) primarily through exercise. A mix of 45 minutes of cardio 5x/week and 60 minutes of weight training 3-4 times a week.

  I firmly believe that the weight training did more for the weight loss than any other componant of the diet/exercise plan.

  Since hitting my goal weight, I do hard cardio 3x a week, and 40-60 minutes of weight training 3-4 times a week. I’ve continued to lose some body fat, maintain my weight, and increase my general health.

  But, yeah, i tried that 30 minutes/3x a week is the minimum to keep you healthy. NOT nearly enough to lose weight.

• 16 shelley // Jul 30, 2008 at 4:34 pm

  30 minutes a day is definitely enough to lose weight if you don’t do 30 now, and your eating habits remain exactly the same. In other words, if nothing changes EXCEPT that you add 30 minutes a day of exercise then how is it possible to not lose weight?
  eat the same + move the same = maintenance
  eat the same + move more = Lose weight

  There’s a ton of great info here that deserves to be seen! Would you consider adding your site to the Be Naturally Well community where our readers can find you?

  Here’s the link!
  http://www.benaturallywell.com/blog/add-your-blog/

  Many blessings,
  Shelley

• 17 Kym // Jul 30, 2008 at 5:21 pm

  Let’s not forget that it’s possible that JD/Mac and others are losing *body fat* while not seeing an overall weight loss, because of their activity level. Sure the scale isn’t moving, but you’re still losing fat, which is the whole goal.

• 18 J.D. // Jul 30, 2008 at 5:30 pm

  Greenman has a point. As we will soon see, my exercise has been reduced to almost zero. My weight loss has resumed, however. Curious, eh? When I exercise, I’m hungry.

  However, Kym has a point, too. Although my weight loss while exercising is slower, my body fat decreases more rapidly. In other words, I’m losing fat and building muscle…

• 19 Anne Keckler, Personal Trainer // Jul 30, 2008 at 5:47 pm

  Hm. I didn’t realize this was new information. The American College of Sports Medicine has been saying this for at least the last few years. I posted about it in my blog, even.

  Thirty minutes a day for general health and maintenance. Sixty minutes a day for weight loss.

  While Greenman is right that the human body can’t burn more calories than it consumes and not lose weight, what is lost there is that dieting without exercising will cause the metabolism to drop, and you will burn fewer calories!

• 20 Nottheangel // Jul 30, 2008 at 6:01 pm

  I find that exercise helps keep the weight off, but isn’t really the deciding factor in getting the weight off.

  I went from 220lbs to 128lbs because of my diet, not because of my erratic exercise program. I actually gained (muscle mostly I think) when I started rock climbing.

  As for “set point” someone told me that when I was 200+ lbs. They said it was likely I’d always just be a ‘big girl’ because that was how I was built. It lit a fire under my ass to do something about my weight, because I certainly didn’t see myself as always being a big girl.

  I think that 30 mins a day is a good start…

• 21 Sheamus // Jul 30, 2008 at 6:05 pm

  Diet alone is not an effective method to keep weight off. ANYBODY can drop X pounds by making a few changes. Keeping it off is the key, and to do that you need to make lifestyle changes, not just cut back on a few choice foods.

  Additionally, while it’s relatively easy to drop from, say, 300 pounds to 250, dropping from 200-160 is almost impossible for most people without a combination of sound nutrition and regular intensive exercise, simply because you can’t give up enough calories without literally starving yourself. Which is not the way forward at all.

  I went from 218-176 by hitting the gym six times a week and limiting my calories to 2200 per day. Since then, I’ve started running 30+ miles per week, every single day, and switched to a low-GI diet. My weight right now is about 172. Four pounds for a load of work. I don’t see myself hitting my goal weight (160) until my mileage reaches 50+ per week. That’s the kind of effort you need to make to get in truly excellent shape.

  If your goal is to just be ‘healthy’ or to look better, then you can, IMO, manage that with just a few changes to your diet (eliminate or seriously cut back all the white foods - bread, pasta, rice and potatoes, and choose low-fat dairy) and 3-4 60-minute sessions per week of a combination of weight-lifting and cardio. You won’t get a six-pack or look like you’re carved out of marble, but most people don’t care about or want that. And even if they do, once there, the effort to maintain it is collosal, and never-ending. I guess it’s a case of deciding what you want and aiming for it.

• 22 Nat // Jul 30, 2008 at 7:55 pm

  Wow look at all this. I read rarely comment.

  I work in a hospital and one of the expert we often get calls for our obesity expert. (I’m Canadian it’s a public hospital and I work in PR — don’t hate me). Our endochrinologist is a firm believer in a more than just eating too much. Sure our inactive (or former in our case) inactive lifestyle plays a role in our weight gain but genetics also play a big role. (i.e. in a famine, us pudgy ones would survive.) (As an aside he run one of the few weight management clinics approved by Health Canada.)

  He has patients who are put on 600 calories a day/diets and they don’t lose weight. (Usually morbidly obese.) Now for a lot of us, he figures it’s part genetic (i.e. I’ll never be a size 4) but also our diet and lack of activity. His thing is really making sure people are aware how much is in what they ‘re consuming.

  For the very obese he suggest diet first, then exercise for fitness. Diet helps more he says. His two cents for what it’s worth.

• 23 Cecily T // Jul 30, 2008 at 8:26 pm

  Wow. Didn’t realize this post was so hot. I just wanted to post about the ‘myth of moderate exercise’. I agree with Anne, and thought it was pretty common knowledge, at least among people interested in fitness, that the 30 minutes / day was for general ‘keeping your body in okay cardio condition’ status, and 60 minutes / day minimum for weight loss.

  Some math:

  Assuming you are maintaining and then you add 30 minutes of moderate exercise, it’s very difficult to determine exact base caloric expenditure. E.g., if you think you are maintaining, you could really have a +50 calorie/day excess that wouldn’t probably show up on the scale for 70 days (i.e., 1 lb weight gain). A 140-lb woman might burn, very roughly, 190 calories doing low-impact aerobics. At 3x a week, that’s just 570 calories burned. Yes, you’d have a *small* deficit, but one that would take months to show up as weight loss. And the deficit (per week) is so small that it’s easy to blow it on a few extra bites of food.

  Added: I just spent some time checking out things about the 1200 calorie diets, and came across the MET values, which I’d never really understood. You should check it out in detail, but here’s an example in a nutshell: it’s remembering that there is no point where you are burning 0 calories. E.g., if you are biking instead of vegging in front of the TV, your ‘bonus calories burned’ for exercising are actually ‘biking calories burned MINUS TV-watching calories burned’.

• 24 Nicky // Jul 30, 2008 at 8:28 pm

  @Greenman2001
  “If you’re on a “calorie restricted” diet and you’re not losing weight, it follows that you’re not restricting your calories. ”

  …Is a ridiculously oversimplified statement that assumes the human body is equivalent to a spreadsheet and not a carefully balanced system which regulates itself with hormones and chemicals.

  The body’s main goal is to keep itself healthy. If you restrict the energy going in it’s going to adjust to maintain by slowing down metabolism, not just go, “duh okay, I’d better burn off all my fat now rather than worry about the future.” Anyone who’d ever plateaued knows this.

  I’m not saying you don’t have to restrict calories to lose weight, but _this_particular_ generalisation really bugs me.

• 25 Jalden // Jul 30, 2008 at 8:39 pm

  The study doesn’t necessarily show that you have to move a lot. The study shows that you have to do a lot of moving at a moderate intensity if you want to lose weight and keep it off. Moderate intensity exercise includes things like brisk walking and gardening.

  The effects of running at a faster pace, high intensity training or weight lifting were not studied. Doing something really hard like a crossfit workout for 30min is likely to get you as fit if not fitter than an hour of brisk walking. There have been studies showing that even as little as 4 minutes of extremely hard work–the tabata protocol–can result in significant improvements to aerobic and anaerobic endurance (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8897392), and I imagine, may also burn a significant amount of calories. There is more about the tabata protocol here: http://www.t-nation.com/readArticle.do?id=490160

• 26 greenman2001 // Jul 30, 2008 at 8:57 pm

  Anne, studies have been very consistent in finding a drop in basal metabolic rate only in response to extreme calorie restriction — 1000 calories a day or less. Even someone like Mac, shooting for a 1000 calorie a day deficit (and rarely achieving it) is still going to be consuming 1700 calories a day, far from the point where he would trigger a decrease in BMR. It’s true that as you lose weight you require fewer calories, but that’s because BMR is a function of weight and age — as you get older and as you weigh less your body requires fewer calories to maintain its basic functions. That’s why, as Sheamus points out, it’s harder (or, more accurately, slower) to go from 200 to 160 than it is to go from 300 to 260 if you don’t adjust your calorie consumption downward as you lose weight. The slowdown in Sheamus’s weight loss isn’t proof that he needs to exercise more, it’s proof that he needs to reduce his caloric intake. But, of course, his goal isn’t just to lose weight, it’s to “get into shape,” which is a different matter entirely.

  Also, the reduced BMR from extreme dieting is a short-term effect. Once you resume meeting your body’s caloric needs, your BMR returns to normal.

  By the way, some studies have looked at the question of whether exercise during extreme caloric restriction can reverse the drop in BMR, as Anne suggests it does here. What they found is that it does temper the drop, but doesn’t eliminate it. Your body just doesn’t like to be starved.

  I think it’s very hard for people to eat less after successfully losing weight. Extreme dieting (and I consider a 1000 calorie a day deficit extreme) is so unpleasant that people can’t wait to resume their old eating habits as compensation for their suffering. A nice benefit of slow weight loss (via a 500 calorie a day deficit), in addition to not feeling hungry, is that you cultivate new eating habits over a long period of time, giving new habits a chance to feel comfortable and natural, allowing you to adjust the rest of your life around them, all of which makes it less likely that you’ll spring back to old, automatic overeating as soon as you reach a particular weight. No guarantee, of course, but a white-knuckled approach to this is just a lot less likely to work.

• 27 greenman2001 // Jul 30, 2008 at 9:12 pm

  Nicky: the body is a spreadsheet. The Harris-Benedict equation is used to establish one’s basal metabolic rate: 67 + (6.24 x weight) + (12.7 x height) - (6.9 x age). There are genetic components which are used to adjust this formula, having to do with one’s genetic predisposition to store energy as fat, but the basic rule of calories in = calories out applies to everyone. Studies show that metabolic rate will change in the short term as a consequence of exercise (usually increasing for a few hours then dropping back), or in response to extreme caloric restriction (below 1000 calories a day), but that’s about it. This may aggravate you, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

• 28 Roundup: First Sunday of August | Health, Fitness, Exercise, and Weight Loss (66 pounds in 15 weeks) // Aug 3, 2008 at 6:07 am

  [...] The Myth of Moderate Exercise by Get Fit Slowly exposes fact from fiction. [...]

• 29 Bill Szczytko // Aug 3, 2008 at 6:56 pm

  Back in January of this year (2008) I weighed 230 pounds. My top cholesterol number was 265. I lived off of McDonalds and Burger King. I decided at the end of January to stop the madness. For the next month and a half I cut back on WHAT I was eating. I didn’t change my habits at first (I would order the quarter pounder and small fry instead of the large versions) but instead would analyze a meal … determine WHAT I would’ve put on my plate (more importantly HOW MUCH) and would cut it in half. The pounds flew off. Keep in mind up to this point (end of March) I did no exercise. By the beginning of April I fell below 195 and then started looking at my flabby arms.

  MY point here isn’t to brag on about how I lost 40 pounds since January (I am 183 now) but instead of worrying about calorie counts (INITIALLY!) worry about your portion sizes. At a restaurant a serving size is 4 - 5. Order a meal and place half in a to-go box. Want cookies? Used to eat 6? Now eat 3. If you do this at first the pounds will fall off which will ultimately motivate you to a) eat better and b) start exercising regularly.

  I now exercise 4 - 5 times a week and am in the best shape of my life. Instead of worrying about the exercise program .. calorie crunching… less fat meals … in the beginning… start slow … HALF your portions and wait. I truly think you’d be surprised at the results…AND at how suddenly you have the motivation to do 55 minutes of cardio.

• 30 Exercise for weight loss « Treading Softly // Aug 4, 2008 at 3:14 pm

  [...] moderate-intensity exercise daily.  Now, as it turns out, that may not be nearly enough.  Through this post at Get Fit Slowly, I was pointed to this article in Time magazine.  It talks about a study, [...]

• 31 LG // Aug 7, 2008 at 9:43 am

  This is a great post and an even better discussion. It can be hard to do both! I am doing Weight Watchers and working out it took me 5 months to lose 29 pounds (my 10%) and it was with moderate exercise like they talked about then I went into overdrive and began working out hard doing Les Mills workout sometimes 2 and 3 -60 minute classes a day! For example a Sunday looked like this - Body Step, Body Pump then Body Flow a Saturday would be a Spin class then a step class or Body combat it was too much then I added a boot camp in the morning I lost a total of 45.6 by that Spring then began gaining and losing for maybe 6 months unti went on a cruise over Christmas and by the time I went back to Ww in Feb I regained over 25 pounds of the 45.6 I lost!! It amazes me that it took so long to take it off and took a few months to put most of it back on! I am getting back on track now but I agree with the people who said it isn’t just a numbers game there is some biology working behind the scene driving those numbrs and that desire maintain or regain weight by the body can overcome the strongest person’s will power. I have been researching this idea to have a better understanding of the process and not go overboard so I can reach my goal. For the past month I have been working out 4 days a week, 2 days of weight training and 4 days of cardio a mixture of spinning, step, combat, and the elliptical machine. I know St is important so I will add another day sometime this Fall…So we’ll see!

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