Diet Beats Exercise? What’s More Important?

A reader recently sent us the “For Losing Weight, Diet Beats Exercise” article in the San Francisco Chronicle by Erin Allday.  Erin did a nice job reporting the news, it was just the news that was stupid.  In this post, we’d like to take the opportunity to debunk some of this junk with some good old fashioned common sense.  You will notice that in Fantasy Healthball, exercise is the ONLY mandatory challenge in the bunch.  We have a great many health and diet related challenges, but exercise is the only mandatory challenge.  You won’t win much at Fantasy Healthball if you don’t exercise, and we think you won’t win much at life either.  As our reader said, “Being healthy is a whole body job.”  We couldnt’ have said it better. 

The article starts out by saying exercise is not a key ingredient to weight loss.  An excerpt:  ”Is exercise good? Absolutely. But not because it burns calories,” said Dr. Robert Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist at UCSF Children’s Hospital. “Diet is about weight. Exercise is about health.”

Fantasy Healthball:  Huh?  Say that again Doc?  “Diet is about weight and exercise is about health.”  Yeeeah, oookaaay, but isn’t weight about health?  Doesn’t being overweight or obese lead to tons of health problems?  We think this is less about splitting hairs and more about splitting an atom.  Diet and exercise need to go together.  Split them and bad things happen. 

An excerpt:  “Folks are getting a lot of mixed messages about exercise these days. Some studies say just 20 minutes a day of moderate exercise is fine, while others say people need an hour of vigorous exercise most days of the week.”

Fantasy Healthball:  Agreed. There are a lot of mixed messages.  We go with the Surgeon General.  But we also say do what you can.  If you do 20 minutes of moderate exercise each day that is good.  An hour of vigorous is great if you can work up to it.  You need to listen to your body and talk over your planned program with your doctor.  It is all about you and your body, not some overall standards.

An excerpt:  Exercise is great for maintaining weight, but it isn’t the best way to drop pounds. A person would have to burn off about 3,500 calories to lose just one pound.  “Running a mile is about 150 calories for a guy, so to burn a pound of fat, just with exercise, is almost running a marathon,” said Dr. Wayne Smith, co-director of the Medical Weight Management Program at Kaiser Permanente in San Jose.

Fantasy Healthball:  We are big fans of Kaiser, but we think this is a tad misleading.  Like an ocean is a tad wet.  3,500 calories is a pound.  Agreed.  But Rome was not built in a day and neither is weight loss.  Let’s talk about a week.  Losing a pound a week would be burning an extra 500 calories a day (check our math:  7 days x 500 calories/day = 3,500 calories to lose a pound).  Read this to see how it works.  And yes part of that should be exercise but part can be diet too.  You don’t have to get all 500 just in exercise.  Healthiest could be exercising and burning off 250 and reducing 250 calories from your daily intake.  Viola!  You are losing a pound a week and making your heart and body happy.  Superfast weight lost is usually not sustainable, we are going for a bit each week until you meet your goal and it becomes you new habits, your new way of life. 

 

Last excerpt:  On top of that, Smith said, while many people overestimate the calories they burn when they exercise, they also underestimate the calories they eat. People often think exercise gives them the freedom to eat what they want, weight-loss experts say.

Fantasy Healthball:  Good point doc.  Some do.  But our readers know you can’t sit pedaling a stationary bike while eating a banana split and hope to lose weight and build a strong healthy body.  For that, you need both diet AND exercise.  And you need a little motivation and inspiration.  Some competition is a great motivator.  That is where we come in.  – Jim Ballard