Sooooooo, Gary Taubes...

[Tom Campitelli]

Now, I am not an apologist for Gary Taubes, but he has some vaild things to say. He makes some serious errors regarding exercise and its effects. However, work with me here, he's not completely wrong when he suggests that exercise is often ineffective with regards to weight control. Stay with me. I promise this won't piss you off as much as you think.

When many people step on their elliptical trainer, read their magazine, and get mildly sweaty for 30 minutes, they often experience increased hunger. Figuring they just kicked some serious ass in the gym, they feed themselves extra. The food of choice? Steak? Probably not. Gatorade, a muffin, or some coffee flavored sugary beverage? Probably.

Carbs are not the devil, but they are easy to consume in excess and they stimulate insulin secretion. What happens when you take in lots of calories as carbohydrate, have lots of insulin floating around your system, and are not doing anything approaching effective exercise? You store fat. Hence, Taubes's arguments regarding exercise being ineffective with regard to weight control. Taubes does not understand the magic of the barbell squat, linear progression, or anything else regarding serious training and this is unfortunate. It undermines his arguments.

Now with regard to thermodynamics, Smack is correct. The body does not violate any of the laws that govern the universe. However, the body is not a steady state calorie burning machine either. It can and does upregulate and downregulate how many calories it burns throughout the day. Our bodies prize homeostasis above all things and that is why it requires very difficult exercise done at ever increasing intensity coupled with massive caloric surpluses to drive muscular body weight gain. Your body does not want to change. This is why additional activity often makes you hungry.

Despite his failings to understand productive training, Taubes is not wrong about everything. For those of you who have put on some fat that you may want to be rid of, let me know what happens when you drop out sugar, grains, legumes, and fruit. Really. Try it. You will probably get leaner. This happens to people all the time. You just removed some dense sources of calories from the diet along with some of the most powerful stimulators of insulin. You have restricted calories that you will be unable to make up by eating more steak. It's not fiction that carbs are potent tools that can be brought to bear for the purposes of body weight management.

As for exercise being ineffective with regard to weight loss, well, Taubes is both right and wrong. It's a lot more complicated than he lets on. Anyone who has seriously trained with barbells realizes that exercise can be very effective for changing body composition.

[blowdpanis]

The problem with fat people is, like Rip once put it, they have fat people brains. If you want to lose weight, restrict calories and reduce your carb intake.

The question isn't how to lose weight, the question is how do people make permanent changes in body composition. That's a lot more involved conversation than "eat less," and the failure rate of people keeping fat off in the long term simply by willpowering restriction is absolutely miserable.

[Gary Gibson]

"Losing weight" is nonsense. It's bad thinking that leads to frustration among industrial era humanity.

"Our bodies are not normal in the absence of exercise", but we've eliminated the need for most people to have to exert themselves at all for anything. The most walking the average American is required to do is a short jaunt across a parking lot a couple times each day. Nothing heavy ever need be lifted and a sweat need never be broken. With lifestyles like that, of course people end up skinny fat. These unmuscled flabby people then think in terms of "losing weight" when what they should be thinking is "getting stronger." When getting sweaty on the elliptical fails them, they become easy targets for muddled thinking like Taubes'. All weight gain becomes bad because they understand all weight gain as fat gain. They don't think in terms of gaining 40 lbs of muscle. "40 lbs heavier?! Why would I want to do THAT?!?"

Industrial era people just don't think in terms of physical work or strength. They only understand getting bigger as getting fatter, not getting more muscular and stronger. Add to this the past half century of "exercise equals aerobics" and you have the current mess of confused, frustrated people afraid of calories as they sweat it out on their treadmills.

[Platus]

"Losing weight" is nonsense.

I agree. This is an terribly inexact goal for people in general and a lousy outcome to examine in a study testing the effects of diet/exercise.

[Mr.City]

The question isn't how to lose weight, the question is how do people make permanent changes in body composition. That's a lot more involved conversation than "eat less," and the failure rate of people keeping fat off in the long term simply by willpowering restriction is absolutely miserable.

Exactly. Fat people's brains.

[Tiburon]

Here's another poor article by Taubes on exercise:
http://nymag.com/news/sports/38001/

He really doesn't know what he's talking about. And I know I'm in the minority here, but his nutrition stuff isn't that much better, IMHO.

[BryanM]

The question isn't how to lose weight, the question is how do people make permanent changes in body composition.

You stick them into a prison and only feed them six to eight tacos a day. That'll do it.

[AdamR]

I think you guys are getting worked up over very little really. It's pretty clear that Taubes is addressing the typical American diet/exercise paradigm: fat person wants to lose weight (doesn't care about LBM vs bodyfat, just weight), and thinks 30 minutes of cardio a day is going to help.

SS, Wendler, etc and the people who follow those methods are in such a different world than the average person's techniques/strategies he's addressing, that I would not call it fair to extrapolate what he says in those articles to our situation here.

[nisora33]

There's some sensible discussion going on here. Warms this old cynical heart.

-S.

[LCN]

I think you guys are getting worked up over very little really. It's pretty clear that Taubes is addressing the typical American diet/exercise paradigm: fat person wants to lose weight (doesn't care about LBM vs bodyfat, just weight), and thinks 30 minutes of cardio a day is going to help.

I agree. I think Taubes has a pretty important point here for those concerned with losing fat.

I've seen tons of chubby people at the gym who put in pretty respectable cardio-based workouts, and yet never seem to lose weight.

Just the other day I overheard a woman who was going to the gym for the first time. She said she wanted to lose some pounds for her daughters wedding in a few months. The PT said no problem, I'll work up a routine for you etc. etc.

Well it's probably not going to work, and the reason is she will just eat more to offset her increased caloric needs.

If the PT really wanted to help her he would say "Cut your calories dramatically. Take caffeine to suppress appetite. Actually stick with this and you will lose weight."



Obviously ideally she would put on some LBM as well, but given how inept personal trainers are, that's not going to happen.