What is the deal??

Since I became involved with the People Magazine Weight Loss Challenge and started doing research on change and weight loss… it has become very obvious to me that there is a lot of debate about weight loss, exercise, healthy living and what is the best way to do things if you want to loose weight. Today’s topic is just one shining example of this.

 

In the August 17th issue of Time Magazine there is an article by John Cloud entitled, Why Exercise Won’t Make You Thin. It is teased on the cover of this issue with the line “The Myth of Exercise”. There are several assertions in the article, but the main one that is propagated by Mr. Cloud is that, shocker, exercise is not going to help you loose weight, as a matter of fact it might make you gain weight.

 

This is based on several studies done at LSU and other institutions of higher learning that say that basicly, working out makes you hungry. So- you eat more. It says that you eat more because a) your body is requiring more for its basic metabolic needs and b) because you feel like you can— I mean jeeeeezzzz, I just ran 5 miles.

 

The very same day that I read this article, there appeared an article in the Clarion Ledger, my newspaper in Jackson Mississippi. It was by Kathy Warwick a regular “Style” writer for the paper. The title of her article is “Attitude best tool for permanent weight loss”. I really like Kathy’s articles and in this one says “Exercise helps reduce the drive to overeat and enable us to resist these hunger signals”.

 

Well, I can’t believe it!!! These two authors seem to say directly conflicting statements. So, who is right? Where dose the truth lie?

 

Well, they most likely are both right… and they both are telling the truth… at least from my experience and my thoughts (and you know, it is my web-site).

 

The deal is that my knee-jerk reaction to the Time article is/was that “I just don’t think that that is right. I have done it. I have exercised and lost weight. I could not have done it without exercise”. And I have also seen that when exercising regularly, I seem to be less likely to overeat. It is kind of like I get on a roll and know that I am doing the right things for ME.

 

At the same time, I have defiantly had that conversation with myself about … I can have that doughnut, pizza, steak, whatever, I exercised today.

 

I guess the lesson is that sometimes we may come across seemingly conflicting information and it may do us well to sit and think about it a little bit before discounting one view or the other.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 10th, 2009 at 3:00 pm and is filed under WDS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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