To exercise or not to exercise? Apparently, that’s the question stirring up quite a controversy lately. According to Gary Taubes (in his book, Good Calories, Bad Calories: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight Control, and Disease), exercise does not help you lose weight. Of course, numerous people (weight-loss gurus like Jillian Michaels and medical professionals included) disagree with Taubes and subscribe to the theory that you need to burn more than you consume in order to lose weight. “Calories in, calories out, ” as they say. And that means exercise (as well as a reduced-calorie diet). If you prefer more of a summary to Taubes’ book, check out his article in New York Magazine.
I can only speak about my personal experience, of course, but here’s what I think:
1. Most of the people I know who exercise a lot look better than me.
2. Exercise does not increase my appetite. In fact, it has much the opposite effect on me.
3. The less I exercise, the more my knees hurt. When my knees hurt, I have a much harder time getting upright.
4. The more I exercise, the better my whole body feels. Just ask my husband.
5. Exercise is good therapy. It helps me decompress and completely drains me of the desire to psychoanalyze my stupid, little life.
6. Exercise makes my bowels happy. That means I can eat cheese. I like cheese.
I do believe exercise helps me lose weight, mostly because it aids in my ability to achieve balance in my life: I eat a lot less, but I also eat better foods, the foods that provide better fuel for exercise. Still, I have many other good reasons to exercise regularly. But enough of me. Read Taubes’ article in New York Magazine and tell me what you think.
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In my experience it is so much more complicated than calories in/calories out. The article touches on this only slightly. All calories are not created equal as some are converted to sugar/glucose and are then treated by our bodies differently. While I don’t eat more than I did when I was younger my body processes the food differently now. I exercise WAY more now than I did when I was younger and I’m not sure I am really healthier for it. I do feel better when I exercise but, like you Andy, it doesn’t make me hungrier – although if I was a lumberjack expending 3,500 calories a day that might be different. I think sometimes because I exercise it gives my mind license to eat food that are not healthy for me. For me, portion control and eating quality foods really make the difference but these of course are the hardest to maintain.
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