Breaking News – Exercise Makes You Fat!

August 7, 2009 on 8:42 am | In Muscle Building Articles, Strength Training, Workout Nutrition | 7 Comments

I stumbled across an article on yahoo news yesterday entitled “Why Exercise Won’t Make You Thin.”  (Click here to read the full article, although its probably not worth your time…)

Here’s some excerpts for the article to give you an idea of the claims:

“It’s a question many of us could ask. More than 45 million Americans now belong to a health club, up from 23 million in 1993. We spend some $19 billion a year on gym memberships. Of course, some people join and never go. Still, as one major study – the Minnesota Heart Survey – found, more of us at least say we exercise regularly. The survey ran from 1980, when only 47% of respondents said they engaged in regular exercise, to 2000, when the figure had grown to 57%.

And yet obesity figures have risen dramatically in the same period: a third of Americans are obese, and another third count as overweight by the Federal Government’s definition.”

Here is the fundamental problem with this argument.  They take two factors and ASSUME they are related.  Here’s the author’s assumption:  More people workout, and now more people are obese, therefore exercise equals weight gain. 

And here’s the problem.  What about all the other factors that lead to weight gain that have increased over the last decades?  Increased restaurant and fast food patronage, longer work ours, increased depression rates, etc, etc….  Hmmm, it can’t be any of those, it must be that pesky exercise…

Let me give another example of abusing statistics in a hugely popular series of studies during the 1990’s.  FACT:  For every inch taller a person is than a companion, they earn $789 more dollars annually.  Therefore people that are taller make more money, right?  Must be that height thing.

BUSTED:  Why the height thing?  More commanding?  Professional athletes?  Nope.  Even though some of the studies claimed to be controlled, the determining factor was actually gender.  Taller people tend to be males, males tend to get paid more, not how they framed their original studies.

Same thing is going on with this article (not a true study).  Although it has this guys backing….

‘”In general, for weight loss, exercise is pretty useless,”says Eric Ravussin, chair in diabetes and metabolism at Louisiana State University and a prominent exercise researcher.’

Yikes. 

Quick, someone call Reggie before all that exercise makes him fat!!!

I will give the author some credit though.  The claim is that exercise makes people hungry, which in my experience is true.  Some people eat poorly after they work out.  But wouldn’t that mean a bad diet makes people gain weight..not the exercise?  If that’s his goal, to make people more aware of watching their diet, I would suggest he does it without knocking down exercises.  Exercise AND diet is most effective. 

Here is the final line of the article…

“From a weight-loss perspective, you would have been better off sitting on the sofa knitting.”

Somewhere Matt Scott weeps…Time to reshoot his commercial with another excuse :”Exercise makes me fat….”

- Joe Hashey, CSCS -

PS. Rant Over.