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Exercise Will Not Make You Thin?

Posted by Caley on August 10th, 2009 at 11:26am

Yesterday, TIME published a controversial article called Why Exercise Won’t Make You Thin. Whoa! Right? The claim is fairly shocking for those dedicated to exercise and fitness. Membership gyms are probably not too happy. The article backs up its inflammatory claim with obesity research over the past few years which claims that the role of exercise in weight loss has been overstated. According to this article, exercise may stimulate our appetites more, causing us to consume more calories than we would normally and possibly more calories than we burn. General wisdom says that if you consume more calories than you burn in a day, even with exercise, you will gain weight.

The article discusses the problem of “overcompensation,” with those who exercise. Whether because people want to reward themselves after a workout or are just hungrier, people often eat more and higher calories foods after a workout. In other words, “I deserve this cheeseburger and french fries because I worked out today.” Some studies have shown that people overcompensate by moving around less in their daily lives after exercising. Perhaps they drive to the corner store instead of walking or take the elevator instead of the stairs to work.

Overall, this article is NOT claiming that exercise is useless. As the article points out, numerous studies have shown how exercise helps prevent heart and other disease and the importance of exercise for mental health too. But, the article is asking us to reexamine the way we think about exercise. Perhaps 30 minutes of back-breaking exercise after a whole day of sitting at your desk is not the right course of action for weight loss, especially if you end up wolfing down a pizza right after the gym. Instead, perhaps we should incorporate more exercise into our daily lives in more harmonious ways, ways that we don’t think of as exercise, such as cooking, working in the garden and playing with the kids. We obviously need to reexamine our relationships with food and stop viewing nutrient-less items as deserved treats for the body.

What do you think?