Want to lose weight? Ditch the gym.

"Obesity epidemic?  All they have to do is eat less exercise more."  Yeah,. I hear that  a lot. Up until last year I used to say it a lot as well.  But (and this is becoming a bit of a catch phrase) it's a bit more complicated than that.

You see, the problem is that exercise - especially aerobic exercise, is a pretty piss poor way of shedding lard.

I'm going to be quoting a bit of Gary Taubes here (what's new?) so if what I'm saying interests you then please consider buying your own copy of "why we get fat", which is a much simplified version of "good calories, bad calories".

Right.  First of all, let's do the disclaimer stuff.  I'm NOT saying you shouldn't exercise.  Exercise is brilliant for lowering blood pressure, toning up muscles, increasing stamina and strength, making you look great, increasing your self esteem and erm...  Well, that's a long enough list for now.

But if anyone tries to tell you that exercise will "speed up your metabolism" or "give you loads of energy", they're just talking rubbish.  To be fair though, most of them won't know that.

A pound of body fat contains about 3,500 calories.  So it would make sense that if you want to shed that amount of weight, then all you need to do is "do" that amount of exercise...  Which is all well and good, but how long will that take you?

Well, my Sunday jogging circuit is roughly 11 miles of hilly terrain, and that takes me about two and a half hours.  According to this calculator, I'll need to do that twice.  and to put it bluntly - that's never going to happen.  Most people who want to lose a bit of lard sign up for aerobics.  Well, according to this interesting list, if I wanted to shed just one pound in a week, I'd need to do five sessions of one hour each. Yeah.  Go girls!  As if.

Good news!  When we exercise, the energy fat stores we have get diverted to the muscles, and you actually do lose body fat.  But the bad news? Do you know that tired, sort of half asleep feeling you get an hour later?  That's because your muscles have been switched off. Your body has cut off their energy supply because it needs to replace the fat stores it lost earlier!

What a horrible trick!  But it's true.  believe it or not, your fat cells are very finely regulated, and if your body has to shed some fat to get you around the running track, it will divert energy from you to make sure it has an adequate supply of fatty acids for next time.

And while this is going on, you'll be craving ice cream, and sugars, and bananas, and sandwiches, and cakes, and chocolate, and anything else the body can think of to replace the lost fat in the shortest possible time.

Hang on a minute?  If I said "replace the lost fat", then wouldn't our bodies be craving lard and bacon?  Sorry, no.  Because the most simple way for the body to get excess fat in a hurry is through sugar, which it rapidly converts into fatty acids in the liver and then floods your body with insulin to cram that lovely fat into cells which are probably already full to the brim.  That's why Lucozade Sport "Aids recovery".  Because it's actively working to make you fat again in the shortest time possible.

But won't going to the gym speed your metabolism up?

Well, it kind of depends what you mean. by "speeding" it up.  Your metabolism is either efficient, or it's not.  The easiest way to tell, is:  Are you overweight?  Do you have a slightly big middle?  Is your behind a little larger than you'd like?  Then I'm sorry, but your metabolism is inefficient.

If you eat lots of sugary foods, (as you will know by now) your body NEEDS to get that shit out of your blood stream, and it stores it as fat. Half an hour later, when every last drop of your energy has been converted to body lard, you're going to be hungry again.  So you're going to start craving more sugar...  That's the vicious circle that means that an overweight person will need to eat more.  Because so few of the calories he or she eats will actually get used for energy.  They are all stored away for some later use moment that never arrives - because there's ALWAYS a fresh supply of sugar to replace it.  These people are caught in a cycle that's completely beyond their own control, and they'll always be hungry.  Not because they're greedy, but because they have no choice but to eat more as they aren't getting much benefit from the food they take in.

Oh, and by "sugar", I mean bread, coca cola, pasta, orange juice, bananas, cakes, toffee, potatoes, ice cream, flour and skimmed milk.

Now it is true that with the right type of exercise, you can increase your muscle mass, which does mean that more of the calories you eat will be used by your muscles than stored as fat. Fat stores will quite literally be diverted to fuel your muscles, so you will gain less fat because your muscles are hungry.  But this is a relatively small difference.  Even if you put on a lot of flesh, don't expect to be able to have a sneaky extra Mars a day just because you've got a bit of shape... You'll be lucky if the calorific difference amounts to more than half a slice of bread.

In his latest book, Taubes points to a survey carried out by Runners World, which charts the weight gain of several thousand American runners over a two or three year period, which came to the conclusion that:

Age-related weight gain occurs even among the most active individuals when exercise is constant. Theoretically, vigorous exercise must increase significantly with age to compensate for the expected gain in weight associated with aging.  Click here for the survey

And when you look at the significant increase they're talking about, you can expect to be running a half marathon a day by the time you're seventy if you want to keep thin through running.

In short, if you're going to work out like a cart horse, then your body is going to need to eat like a cart horse.  You simply cannot keep going if you consistently take in less energy than you need. you might lose weight in the short term, but your body will start to "eat" your own healthy muscle tissue, and then it will shut down the non essential operations, like keeping you well, repairing skin tissue and making your gums healthy.

I remember a couple of years ago in London, there was a poster campaign asking people to get off the bus a couple of stops early so that they could walk part of the way to work and lose weight. If you walk four blocks, you'll probably burn off half a banana's worth of exercise.  Isn't it just easier to ride in and skip the extra half banana? Because at some point during the day, you WILL eat that extra portion of food to make up for the calories you've lost.  Otherwise your body will just make you tired and lethargic because it will have to make up the fat deficit some other way.  So much for exercise giving you energy.

This is the great advantage of a low carbohydrate diet, and it's entirely why I'm doing this.  With a low carb lifestyle, you can eat as many calories as you need, but because very little of it is sugar based, your body allows the food you eat to be used as energy slowly, which means that far more on the plate in front of you is used rather than stored as fat. By traditional means of measure, my metabolism is now exceedingly fast, as I'm eating plenty, and not storing a single ounce of it as lard.

Finally.  A rule of thumb to remember:  I can't remember exactly who wrote this, but I read it at LowCarb Site  "Lose weight through diet. Tone up through exercise: I restrict the carbohydrates my diet to look good in my clothes.  I exercise to look good naked."

I'm not suggesting for one minute that I'll ever look good naked, but I certainly look better in my clothes these days!  All for now.  Believe it or not I'm off to the gym :)