Exercise Not Helpful for Losing Weight?

Nothing gets me fired up faster than mass distribution of misinformation on an important topic. There's quite an uproar right now over the recent Time magazine article that claims that exercise is not an effective tool for health, particularly in weight loss. So many people are writing and talking about it that I almost didn't include anything about it here. But I can't let it pass because I have personal experience with this and if my blog is dedicated to helping people in their journey to health and fitness through exercise and balanced nutrition I would be doing you a disservice to let this one slide.

Let's just step back and think about that for a minute. It is true that weight can be lost without exercise; I've talked about it before in this blog. I'm living proof of that, because I've done it before. Years ago I altered my eating such that the scales went down, I lost weight, and I didn't even do a leg raise in the process. It can be done. What was the result? I was ugly-skinny, still flabby and predominantly fat, I was sick several times, didn't have a lot of energy, wasn't strong, and had friends telling me to please eat something. I was down to one meal a day and hit a plateau before I reached my ultimate "number on the scale" weight. Once I started eating more food because I was hungry and deprived, I gained some weight back. Then felt like a failure. When I tried it again my body simply said NO.

Let me also clarify that I did not have an eating disorder. I simply was trying to get to a size I wanted to wear and the number on the scales to a number I thought was right for me, like so many other people I know. And to be honest for my height and bone structure the numbers were not outrageous. I'd been there before in my late teens early twenties.

I now have hypothyroidism, which I really don't dwell on, although I can tell you that I have to work harder and smarter than some folks I know to achieve similar results. I can't help but wonder if those days of slowing my metabolism down to a crawl through inadequate food intake and lack of exercise didn't jumpstart the problem.

Okay, back to the exercise component. Who actually thinks that exercise doesn't help? I'd like to hear from you. There are so many benefits that exercise provides for health and weight loss that I can't even list them all here. So I want to point out a couple of things, then I'm going to point you to an article that addresses it well.

First, you cannot out-exercise a crappy diet.

If you're ready to hang up your exercise hat because you're not seeing results, you need to evaluate your eating habits. Whether or not various types of exercise increase or decrease your appetite you have to be giving your body clean fuel in appropriate amounts. If you're working hard at the gym and canceling it out with a burger and fries on the way home, exercise is not the problem.

Second, trying to cut your calories low enough to enable you to sit around and not exercise totally backfires.

Let's say you cut back your calories from what you're currently eating now without changing your exercise level. Chances are your scale weight will drop. But once things even out again (now you're eating enough calories to maintain your new weight), you need to drop your food intake even more, if your goal is to still lose weight while sitting on the couch. Next thing you know, you're down to a tiny amount of food and you can't possibly cut the calories any more. Now you're skinny fat and you still don't feel like getting up off the couch because you have no fuel, no muscle and not enough energy.

If I continue I'll just go into a rambling rant, so I'd like for you to read a well written rebuttal to the Time Magazine article by Tom Venuto. Tom is a lifetime natural bodybuilder, nutritionist, personal trainer, and author of Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle and The Body Fat Solution. You can read his response by clicking here.

Please understand that healthy living is challenging in today's world but it doesn't have to be complicated. Deliberate exercise and daily activity goes hand in hand with healthy eating, adequate sleep, stress reduction and illness prevention. If you are overwhelmed at the thought and you don't know where to start, let me know and I'd be happy to help point you in the right direction. getfitwithkelley@gmail.com

I have one of Tom Venuto's books in my Amazon Store. Please see my disclosure statement.

Another Reason To Be Fit

I am scared of bugs. When I was three years old, my Dad would make magic water for me. If I drank it the bugs would not bother me. I used to drag my bottle of magic water behind me while I played outside. Turns out the magic water was tap water with ice cubes in it. My Dad kept the bottle and gave it to me as an adult. It's a lot smaller than I remember of course!

Last night I wish I'd had some magic water. We have an office off of our bedroom that has a door leading to the back porch. My dog wanted out, so I got out of bed and felt my way through the dark to let her out the office door. All of a sudden I can tell that something is coming in the door, making a horrible screeching noice so loud it hurt my ears! I had no idea what it was or where it was, but would have classified it as some sort of animal it was so loud. I screamed and slammed the door shut and went tearing through the bedroom yelling, something just came in the house, something just came in the house!!!!

My husband jumps out of the bed, ready to attack. I'm standing with one foot in the hallway and one foot in the family room, sort of in a dodge ball stance, peering around the corner into the bedroom, ready to bolt. Jimmy closes the office door and puts a towel up against it. He goes outside, and gingerly opens the office door from that direction. He scoops out the intruder and swats it hard. By this time I'm watching out the family room window and I scream again when he swats it. What a wienie.

It was a cicada. He must have just been sitting on the threshold when I opened the door. I now know they have a tremendously loud, buzzing distress sound that they make, which is different than their typical song and almost deafening in a closed in space.

Now I am kind of sad. Why wasn't that cicada in a tree where he belonged? Where is his family? Did he live 17 years just to die by fly swatter on someone's back porch? Now my husband is a cicada killer and I am an accomplice to the crime. By the way, one of my golden retrievers completely slept through this and the other thought it was crazy fun. Even so, it seemed like a near-death experience for me. It took me at least an hour to totally calm down. Even Jimmy was shaking. Not sure if it was the cicada, the fear of the unknown, or the sight of me screaming and running in the night.

Today it occurs to me that I am very thankful for my training and fitness level. Obviously it has more uses than I thought. My body allowed me to go from a semi-restful state to sudden, sheer terror and back down again without myocardial infarction (interval training). I was also able to slam a door hard (med ball throws), jump high into the air (jumping squats), land in the next room (jumping lunges), sprint and make sudden direction changes without injury.

We must be fit and ready. You never know when it's going to be you against a bug. Poor guy.

Fitness and Nutrition: How Does It Fit with Health Care?

I've been in various roles in health care for 23 years, starting in traditional nursing roles and quickly branching out from there. As I think about my current concentration on fitness and nutrition, I reflect on what role it has had in the last 2 decades. Obviously there have been great strides in fitness and athletics, increasing knowledge regarding nutrition and a truly healthy diet, and remarkable progress in multiple facets of health care. At the same time we've had controversy among sports, too many diet books, pills and quick fixes to count, rapid progress of processed food, and the snowballing impact of an ever increasing epidemic of obesity and sedentary lifestyles. Our country is currently in turmoil about how to fix the health care problems, the obesity rate has doubled (at least) and while we know more and more about how to eat we're still not doing it.

In the last few years since I started my own war against fat, lack of fitness and general aging, I have realized my desire is to help people (including myself) get healthy and stay healthy. One body, one life, one shot at it.

Where do fitness, nutrition and health care meet? Logically they should fit together like completing a puzzle, but they aren't. What are we going to do about it? Regardless of the outcome of the current health care debate and how it's approached, we're still not taking care of the core issue. Until we determine that we're going to fight the sedentary, unfit, unhealthy lifestyles we've created we're not going to solve the problem. The fiscal, moral and operational responsibilities will continue to shift from one group to another without ever triggering true change that solves the root problem. I don't have the answer to this current crisis and do not pretend that I do. Quite frankly, it seems frightening and overwhelmingly monumental.

We always must help the sick get well, and we must figure out the best way to do that. For those who can't get well we need to provide the best support and quality of life as possible. But we can no longer afford, on multiple levels, to not focus on helping every individual reach full potential of being well and staying well. It is in this way that I believe fitness and nutrition are a critical part of wellness, a too-often neglected part of health care.

When are we going to move from an illness model to a wellness model?

I can't let myself get so far into my own journey that I don't remember that many people don't know what a good source of protein is, or what a carb is, or how hours on the couch without activity can impact their weight and health, or how to start exercising, or what a true portion size should be, or that without exercise and activity they may be facing myriad disease processes later (or should I say way too early) in life.

I wish I had the answers. Right now I believe we must start with the youngest living generation. To do that, it means we must reach the parents and grandparents. So there it goes, feeling monumental again. Instead of feeling defeated, I do believe we can change the world, one bite at a time, one activity at a time, one choice at a time. It's going to take all of us and a lot of determination. We must educate ourselves, assist each other and make a difference. I want to be a part of helping the world get healthy and stay healthy, starting with my own circle of influence.

What do you think?