new study on diet vs exercise

[astroglide]

yahoo article, full pdf

some key claims, many of which conflict with both popular opinion and their original hypothesis:

- weight loss is general and cannot be isolated to specific areas
- calories not eaten are the same as calories burned in terms of weight loss
- exercise does not increase base metabolism rate, and might actually reduce it
- dieting alone does not result in muscle loss compared with diet and exercise

it is still concluded that diet and exercise is superior to just diet when it comes to overall health.

[Alobar]

cool, thanks astro

[imitation]

3rd point is the most interesting and goes agains the general grain, the rest are common knowledge by now i'd hope.

[cbloom]

1,2, & 4 are common knowledge and #3 sounds just wrong in practical terms. Obviously more muscle = higher metabolism. Perhaps if all you do is endurance cardio, that would actually reduce your resting metabolism, which makes sense.

[astroglide]

imitation,
i would hope that point 1 would be obvious by now but people still post in oot about doing crunches to reduce their gut. point 2 and point 3 are correlated, and many people believe that skipping isn't the same as burning because of BMR increase. most of those same people also make regular claims that dieting will result in muscle loss.

smileyeh,
the male exercise is a treadmill, bike, or stairmaster session for an average length of 53m +/- 11m and 569c +/- 118c burned. i would argue that is signifigant exercise for an overweight, presumably non-exercising individual. my running sessions are lighter than that and i have noticed lots of physical, muscular improvements. mostly legs, but also weird stuff like the crease between my arm and chest. my body looks better at 155 than it did at 135, and my only exercise is running and/or dance dance revolution.

cbloom,
why is it necessarily obvious that muscle = higher BMR? apparently this ravussin guy has addressed that subject in other articles, if you search that metabolism journal a bunch of his metabolic articles pop up. i don't know which specific ones deal with it, but it's generally mentioned in the yahoo article. i would be interested in seeing some conflicting, recent studies.

[SmileyEH]

astro all the exercise is doing is increasing aerobic fitness and burning calories with perhaps minor muscular development. What you are personally seeing with greater definition is simply reduced body fat. If your only exercise is low intensity running then you are certainly not increasing overall muscle mass or training your anarobic pathways.

[cbloom]

[ QUOTE ]

cbloom,
why is it necessarily obvious that muscle = higher BMR?

[/ QUOTE ]

By far the strongest correlation to BMR is your total weight. If you increase your muscle & decrease your fat you can be "fit" at a higher or equal weight, thus higher BMR. You will find this in any decent summary of BMR, search google. Basically it's much easier to be fit as a slightly heavier but muscled person than as a rail-thin person. Some people think BMR is more correlated to FFM (fat free mass) than total weight.

There's also a very significant secondary factor in that if you are stronger you will do things to burn more calories. For example, you might crunch to get from lying down to sitting, whereas if you're not strong you would get up in a way that burns less calories. Thus strong/fit people tend to be much more physically active just in every day activities.

Anyway, I never trust one study and try to draw conclusions from common sense + general scientific consensus.

[CallMeIshmael]

[ QUOTE ]
my body looks better at 155 than it did at 135, and my only exercise is running and/or dance dance revolution.

[/ QUOTE ]

Video?

[SmileyEH]

the study is [censored] because the "exercise" they cite is low intensity cardio conditioning.

[dknightx]

[ QUOTE ]
the study is [censored] because the "exercise" they cite is low intensity cardio conditioning.

[/ QUOTE ]

was just about to post this ... its an interesting article, but first of all sample size seems awfully small, and secondly, low intensity cardio doesnt really show much.