So, How Much Do You Need To Workout? The Depressing New Weight Loss Study.

The Washington Post ran an article this week called “How Much Do You Need To Workout?”  It can be summed up with this excerpt:

“A big new study says women who are middle-aged or older need to spend about 60 minutes every day doing moderate exercise just to avoid gaining weight. That’s right: an hour every day.”  (emphasis added)

So, if you are a woman, the absolute bare minimum amount of exercise you have to get done in a week is 7 hours just to avoid gaining weight.

That’s kinda depressing.

My Take On This

There are a couple of very important points in this study that have been overlooked:

#1.  This ONLY mattered for thin women. “there was no relation among women with BMIs from 25 to les than 30 or 30 or higher.”

#2.  The assumption made by the researchers was that all exercise is the same – it’s just a means of burning calories.  So, the only stuff they asked about was “walking or hiking; jogging (> 10minute miles); running (<10 minute miles); bicycling, including stationary machines; aerobic exercise, aerobic dance…”

The only thing measured was random, low intensity exercise.

Take Home Points

Random, unscientific, low intensity exercise does nothing to help or even to maintain your weight unless you are already a thin women; and, even then, it may not.

Wow.  That was totally worth however many millions of dollars were spent on this study.

Seriously, the real take home point is that exercise that improves body composition is not done for the sake of burning calories, it’s done to impact your hormones, create a metabolic shift, and/or to accelerate your metabolism and to shift you to burn more fuel from fat for the 24-36hrs after you are done.  More on that right here.

Just burning calories is an exercise in futility unless you happen to have always been a thin person.  Exercise done for the sake of burning calories (aerobics) might actually impair your ability to burn fat for at least 24 hours after you do it.

You don’t need 7 hours of smart exercise per week to massively improve your body composition – 2 to 4 hours (including mobility and flexibility and core and conditioning work) will get the job done.

Get $200 In Cash If You Help Us Find Our New Fitness Coach, Details Here

Bonus Side Note – What If Aerobics Are Actually BAD For Your Heart?

Yeah.  Weird.  I just though endurance work was worthless for fat-loss and made you a poor athlete, but I never thought that it would actually damage your cardiovascular system.  It’s probably worse for heart and blood vessels than being completely sedentary.

I’ve come across some very interesting research recently that strongly suggests that lots of aerobic exercise – like marathon running – is VERY bad for your hear and circulatory system.

I covered that in the April print newsletter that went to the printers this week.  You’ll get that if you are on my mailing list, and you won’t if you aren’t.  If you want to get on it you can email Natillie (thebodyyouwant@yahoo.com) and tell her you want to receive my monthly newsletter (name and mailing address).

It’s free if you live in DC, MD and VA; and $49/yr if you live elsewhere.

Josef Brandenburg is 2010, Washington, DC  Personal Trainer of the Year Nominee for both Personal Fitness Professional Magazine and The Washington, DC Fitness Association, The DC Fitness Advisor and the Fitness Expert for the PCOS Challenge TV Show. He shows normal people with hectic lives and average genetics how to create the bodies they want in the time they actually have. To find out more about the 7-Day Free Trial click here. You can also pick up a FREE copy of his brand new CD – “Why Eat Less and Exercise More is The Worst Advice Ever” here.

Josef’s Super Quick and Easy Dinner For Two

What do you do when you come home tired from work, and don’t have anything ready for dinner? Get the “fat guy” or “giggly butt” special for take out? Skip dinner and let your metabolism come to a screeching halt? Or make a delicious two ingredient dinner in 10min or less?

Ingredients

1 bag Whole Kitchen Eggplant and Goat Cheese Sautee (frozen, available at Whole Foods)	390 kcal
2 cups pre-cooked chicken, shredded	462 kcal

Instructions

1. Place bag contents in large non-stick skillet over medium-high heat and stir occasionally.
2. Using two forks, shred the chicken add to pan, and mix well.
3. When everything is as warm as you like its time to eat.

Nutrition Facts

2 servings at 425kcal per serving

Brown Fat & Weight Loss – What Does This Mean For You?

This will NOT just be a re-hashing of what you’ve heard on the radio, or read in the newspaper. It’ll be worth your while to read the whole 500 words (3-4min).

This week’s latest piece of weight loss news is about brown fat, or brown adipose tissue (BAT).  In lean people it burns up extra calories, and BAT activity can be stimulated by being cold (so far,  this doesn’t sound very fun).  Lots of scientists and reporters are hoping that BAT will provide a new target for a drug to ramp up its activity and increase energy expenditure in the obese.

The hope is that making BAT more active will create a calorie deficit and thereby end the obesity epidemic.

Why This Is Probably a Stupid Idea

The problem with this idea is that it assumes that there is no physiological relationship between calories in and calories out – that hunger is all in our heads.  Its just a matter of mind over hunger for the rest of your life.  (Why didn’t I think about being hungry when I was obese?  Oh right, I did, and I was!  And no matter how many motivational seminars I went to hunger always won!)

The problem is that EVERYTHING that we know about metabolism says that energy in affects energy out and vice-versa.

You know, when you are on a very low calorie diet you unconsciously stop moving, your sex drive disappears and you don’t have the energy to do much of anything.  Also, long bouts of strenuous activity make you want to eat more.

So, my point is that, if you were able to successfully stimulate BAT to burn up extra calories, it would not matter.  Burning extra calories would probably just make the person hungry, and those calories would get replaced by increased eating, or by the person moving a whole lot less.  Yes, the person could use will power to move more and restrict their intake for a while, but eventually the hunger will catch-up and the fat will come back – usually with interest.

The body is not some dumb machine where you can just change one important thing without there being consequences somewhere else.  This is why “eat less and exercise more” fails 98% of the time over the long haul.  Most people can’t be hungry forever.

What Gary Taubes Has To Say – The REAL Question For Your Body Fat

If you ever been impressed or learned something from anything I’ve said or written, it’s probably because I got it from somebody smarter than me.  Because he is WAY smarter than me, I asked Gary Taubes about BAT today.  Here’s what Gary had to say:

“I doubt it [BAT activity] means much because ultimately you’re concerned with the regulation of the white adipose tissue, which is the problem — not the total energy expended, but the regulation of the fat tissue. Why does the fat tissue take up too much fat? Not, why does the body expend too little energy?”

It seems like we’ve missed the point again.  The problem is that the overweight and obese accumulate too much white fat.  What regulates white fat?  Insulin, and pretty much nothing else does.

Josef Brandenburg is Washington, DC’s #1 personal trainer for busy people.  He shows normal people with hectic lives and average genetics how to create the bodies they want in the time they actually have.  To find out more about the 7-Day Free Trial click here.

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