To Gym Or Not
Posted on October 10, 2007
Got this interesting piece on exercise to stay trim and/or reduce weight from Samuel Selvan’s blog.
The paper is titled “Why most of us believe that exercise makes us thinner—and why we’re wrong”
As per the study we are all looking at exercising the wrong way. In fact, the study says that you may put on more weight if you exercise more (ok, I am slightly exaggerating, but the point remains true). The reason being, your brain sends hunger signals to you so you eat more than your normal intake of food. So, theoretically, and many times for all practical purposes, you put on weight slow and steady.
Does that mean its a waste to exercise? Absolutely not. Exercise probably will help you lead a healthier life in the sense that it helps combat heart disease and diabetes, etc. However, if you want to run or go to the gym to reduce your weight, think again. It may not give you the results you expect.
“This is not to say that there aren’t excellent reasons to be physically active, as these reports invariably point out. We might just enjoy exercise. We may increase our overall fitness; we may live longer, perhaps by reducing our risk of heart disease or diabetes; we’ll probably feel better about ourselves. (Of course, this may be purely a cultural phenomenon. It’s hard to imagine that the French, for instance, would improve their self-esteem by spending more time at the gym.) But there’s no reason to think that we will lose any significant amount of weight, and little reason to think we will prevent ourselves from gaining it.”
But there is still hope, I think, for all us people who look forward to do a bit of exercise to regulate our weights.
“To be sure, this is the same logic that leads to other unconventional ideas. As it turns out, it’s carbohydrates—particularly easily digestible carbohydrates and sugars—that primarily stimulate insulin secretion. “Carbohydrates is driving insulin is driving fat,” as George Cahill Jr., a retired Harvard professor of medicine and expert on insulin, recently phrased it for me. So maybe if we eat fewer carbohydrates—in particular the easily digestible simple carbohydrates and sugars—we might lose considerable fat or at least not gain any more, whether we exercise or not. This would explain the slew of recent clinical trials demonstrating that dieters who restrict carbohydrates but not calories invariably lose more weight than dieters who restrict calories but not necessarily carbohydrates. Put simply, it’s quite possible that the foods—potatoes, pasta, rice, bread, pastries, sweets, soda, and beer—that our parents always thought were fattening (back when the medical specialists treating obesity believed that exercise made us hungry) really are fattening. And so if we avoid these foods specifically, we may find our weights more in line with our desires.”
So, let me see. I need to reduce the intake of carbohydrates. Let me try that for some time. Its not that I am overweight or at the most the correct weight. As per regular standards I should be labeled underweight. But I need to get rid of those love handles and the small paunch.
It reminds me of a time when Anand said something at his beach house party a couple of years back. He said meat is not the culprit, but meat with carbohydrates or something like that. Hmmm…worth a try.
Read more at this printable page link. And here very interesting.
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