I’m always amazed at how easily nonsense gets a hold in the fitness community and spreads like wildfire. One concept that has received widespread dissemination over a decade or longer is that weight training is better for fat loss than aerobic training. Various ideas about this have been propagated, including more muscle means more resting energy expenditure, and post-exercise energy expenditure is greater with resistance training versus running or aerobics.
The trouble with this propaganda — and I have no bias, having equal fondness of weights and aerobics — is that it never did hold up, and I said so. As long as one made some attempt to compare workout sessions of somewhat equal duration and conclusion, running was always going to have considerably superior energy expenditure, perhaps at least 50% more. An hour run at >80% of max heart rate is going to burn in the region of 700-1000 kcalories (3000-4200 kjoules) depending on body mass and resting metabolic rate. A similar weights session, in my estimation would be hard pressed to exceed 600 kcalories (2500 kjoules). Okay, you can ramp it up with high-intensity, whole-body exercises like hang cleans and thrusters and power cleans and heavy sets of Romanian deadlifts with little rest between sets, and that’s what you have to do to increase energy expenditure, but for the average weight trainer, the ‘jog’ is always going to work better for energy expenditure and fat loss.
And here’s the new evidence. In this study of 196 overweight, sedentary adults by the Duke Medical Center, jogging 12 miles (20 km) a week, used about 67% more energy than doing weights three times a week with 3 sets of 8 to 12 repetitions for 8 exercises. The extra fat burned off with running was the more dangerous visceral fat around the internal organs like the liver.
I made an almost identical point in my article here on How to Burn More Fat. Movement is always going to increase the metabolic cost. What about the weight training afterburn I hear the hoards screaming! If you jog at 80% of maximum heart rate you are getting beyond the moderate and into the higher intensity training zone. Excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC or afterburn) is going to be increased and match any weight training EPOC, but it won’t make too much difference because energy expended during the exercise itself is where the main game is.
To get weights and resistance training up there matching aerobics for energy expenditure and fat burning, you need to move — and that, more or less, means circuit training where you move quickly between weights exercises and keep the heart rate up with some step or treadmill work as well.
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
The heritability of obesity is almost equal to that of height, and possibly even equalling it.
There is NO evidence that dieting and exercise affects our body weight much in the LONG TERM.
Look up Dr. Jeffrey Friedman.
Hi Larry, I see you’re another leptin bore.
Yes it is possible to regulate weight with diet and exercise and thousands of people do it every day. In any case, even if you don’t work with people who are achieving these successes, I suggest you at least investigate the published literature and resources like the National Weight Control Registry.
You’re just another UNQUALIFIED Internet twat. Look up DR. JEFFREY FRIEDMAN.
RAZWELL’s blog.
NWCR women are REGAINING DESPITE diet and exercise- LOOK UP DR. LINDA BACON
Validity of Claims Made In Weight Management
http://www.nutritionj.com/content/9/1/30
Dieting = FAILURE
Exercise=FAILURE
Diet and exercise= FAILURE
LONMG TERM ! DECADE or MORE
Obesity has NO CURE currently. It’s time to MOVE ON from that USELESS , SCIENTIFICALLY UNPROVEN nostrum about ” eat less move more”
In fact it has been DISPROVEN.
YOU have been OWNED.
Obesity is FAT CELL DISREGULATION. Fat cell behavior is GOVERENED BY HORMONES.
Transplantation of gut flora from obese mice into thin mice, makes the thin mice OBESE WITH NO CHANGE AT ALL IN DIET OR ACTIVITY.
Google “URGELT obesity video” and READ HIS comments.
” Google National Geographic Cushing’s Syndrome” also- woman gained massive wieght with NO CGANGE AT ALL in diet or activity
Larry, I’ll leave it to others to decide what they believe is more accurate — my reasoned argument or your hysterical rants. You seem to believe that the First Law of Thermodynamics should be refuted. I hope you have your paper ready for Nature, I’m sure they would be interested.
The First Law of Thermodynamics has NOTHING to do with HOW fat cells are regulated, NOR does it EXPLAIN obesity AT ALL.
Obesity , and more specifically , the chemical behavior of fat cells is VERY POORLY UNDERSTOOD.
WE do NOT control energy balance. We do NOT have control over our body weights to a large extent.
There is a BIOLOGICAL HOMEOSTATIC SYSTEM with extremely complex feedback loops which does this for us – UNconsciously. Our fat thermostat is SET TO WHAT THE BODY WANTS.
Studies from all around the world demonstrate when people are not actively trying to change their weights, they remain REMARKABLY the same year after year after year.
The FALSE idea all the obese have to do is diet and exercise to attain a healthful weight is a MYTH. There is NOT a single study in hostory whcih made an obese person lean and KEPT THEM THAT WAY ;LONG TERM- decade or more.
Dieting and exertvcise DO NOT AT ALL solve obesity – LONG TERM It is a CHRONIC condition with NO CURRENT CURE.
Hopefully DRUGS which target fat cell regulation DIRECTLY will actually BE EFFECTIVE , instead of repeating a UNPROVEN DISPROVEN NOSTRUM from 2,000 years back to ” eat less and exercise more”
NONE of that ADDRESSES FAT MASS SET POINT.
Who wants to bet that Larry’s fat?
(Sorry, had to say it!).
So, who wants to bet Fiona is STUPID?
SCIENCE has shown that body weight in both humans and animals is INVOLUNTARILY controlled through extremely complex neural circuitary, communicating with other things such as gut hormones and more.
Voluntary factors such as dieting and exercising are of extremely limited potency to affect body weight much over the very long term. There is NO EVIDENCE in the scientific literature that eating healthfully and exercising affect body weight substantially over the long term. ALL we can do is stay at the lower end of our set points long term. This is a very narrow range of about 5 to 12 pounds. That’s ALL a healthful lifestyle will do.
The BODY is in control of energy balance , NOT us. There are many things about body weight regulation that are unknown- enormous amounts of tricks your body has. VAST unknowns. The UNKNONWS about obesity are FAR greater than any knowns.
Science does not understnad fat cellr egulation that well at all.
Science does not understand the molecular mechanismns behind body weight regulation that well at all
Science does not AT ALL understand the chemical behavior of fat cell receptors.
I am on EXTREMELY FIRM scientific ground.
HELLISHLY COMPLEX NEURAL CIRCUITY CONTROLS YOUR WEIGHT. This is not at all controversial among the TOP scientists who study this problem.
The commercial dieting industry and the commercail foitness industry are UNSCIENTIFIC and COMPLETE FRAUD.
“Eat less, move more” is NOT AT ALL a scientific approach to obesity. It is a childish, unscientific, disproven , ineffective, unreliable nostrum based on a BELIEF SYSTEM not at all supported by SCIENCE.
ALL othe rmedical diseases DEMAND a scientiic approach. Obesitu should be no different. NO other disease is treated by a childish, disproven NOSTRUM from 2,000 years back……..
So Larry, do you have any other solution other than the current one? or is this just a “creationist” type of “we don’t know everything so we don’t know anything!” assertion?
should I give up trying to adopt a more active lifestyle with a leaner diet and just pile on the pounds? Would you recommend diabetics just give up too?
Is there insight behind your caps-lock ridden rant?
Hey Larry / Razwell
You’re wrong, the reason you’re fat is because you haven’t made the effort to change yourself.
Energy in < energy out = weight loss, bro
Here's a meta-study compiling the results of 15 scientific studies.
http://www.benthamscience.com/open/tosmj/articles/V004/17TOSMJ.pdf
Oh look, here's another one but this one analyses the results of 493 seperate, scientifically valid studies. 493 studies, if that doesn't convince you, nothing will.
http://www.indiana.edu/~k562/articles/obesity/review%20Miller%201997.pdf
And here's one showing "significant decreases in baseline weight and percentage overweight"
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022347685805060
What's that? You want more? Well here you go
http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/164/1/31
http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/ccp/65/2/269/
http://ukpmc.ac.uk/abstract/MED/11740312/reload=0;jsessionid=zaIStwSCK7CodvBezF8B.8
http://ukpmc.ac.uk/abstract/MED/8963358
As for your sources
1. Yes, the transplantation of gut flora without change in diet or exercise will increase mice weight by making them more efficient at processing food. That's why you diet and exercise, to balance that.
2. Dr Friedman's research into leptin simply shows that some mice have greater pleasure response to sugar. So yeah, mice with this mutation gain weight because they eat moe because they enjoy eating more. Are you a mouse? Are you entirely unable to say no? Because the research doesn't support that.
3. As for Linda Bacon and health at every size, she is an unscientific quack who is willfully blind and, in a just world, would be dragged in front of a court for putting lives at risk. All she says is that "research shows" "studies prove" and that is not enough.
I quote, "Why should you challenge
[the concept that weight loss is possible] when they appear so well-established and well-supported?
Because we’re losing the war on obesity."
Not because weight loss is impossible but because it's too hard, America's growing fatter and it's just too much effort to change it so let's not bother. That's not a scientific argument I want any part it.
Absolutely correct, Sam. Thank you.