The Good and the Bad of Good Calories, Bad Calories

I like it!

I'm the opposite. A good weight training session will make me feel almost sick afterwards. I have to force a protein shake in instead of dinner. But cardio, I'm out of there and ready to sit down with a full meal.

Exercise does that to me too, except for me it's lifting heavy stuff that has the big appetite-suppressant effect. Cardio can make me a little hungry, but if I follow it up with weights, it goes away. I moved last month, and I was eating 600-900 calories a day for a while because moving stuff upstairs all day killed my appetite to the point where I completely forgot to eat.

Heather, I'm the same way. I'm not hungry for about a good 2 hours after doing cardio. And when I do eat, it's not like my stomach's any bigger and I eat MORE than I would if I didn't work out. So I find it very hard to believe Taubes' theory that working out counteracts weight loss by making you eat more. To me, that's just kind of a copout. Maybe there are people out there that exercise a lot and feel like they can eat whatever they want, but many of us exercise AND watch our diets to maintain our weight.

Oddly, both suppress my appetite. I eat less on days when I work out, whether I'm sweating away on a machine or lifting weights. It's not a conscious choice based on healthy choices already made, i.e., the decision to work out. Rather, I'm simply not as hungry.

I think Gary Taubes in his lectures does emphasize that people have different hormonal responses to carbohydrates and exercise. Basically if you're predisposed to easily story fat, exercise will not be much help. Maybe very fit people who exercise and keep a good diet lost the weight due to insulin response more then weight lifting. Maybe Gary should do another book on exercise and fat loss.

The thing you also have to remember about insulin sensitivity is that exercise increases the number of insulin receptors on your cells, so you become more sensitive to the effects of insulin. I'd be interested to read the "Biochemical Individuality" book...it sounds very interesting. I guess I must not be "sensitive" to carbs, since working out and a fairly sensible diet prevents me from packing on the pounds. I still think that even if you happen to be a carb-sensitive person, exercise can definitely help in maintaining weight loss; you just have to really watch your diet to be sure you aren't overcompensating by eating too much later on.

You and I have very similar thoughts on this, Keith. I take nothing away from the overall accomplishment of such a book, but it isn't without its faults.

Did you read the book? Otherwise you're just speculating.

Also Gary Taubes pretty conclusively proves that obesity is not caused by bad behavior, but by improper satiety signals. It's a hormonal disorder, maybe science has a solution. But don't blame the victim.

I don't think Gary Taubes deals with other health aspects of exercise, just the fat loss part. I don't think he even claims to make any other conclusions.

But sprinting is an anabolic exercise, not aerobic. Sprinting is the only way to increase VO2 max.

I think this is what fitness fanatic was talking about, that sprinting intervals increase VO2max better than slow and steady.
www.citeulike.org/group/3643/article/1260560

I agree that a "fit" person will live longer, but the definition of fit is up for debate. If you tell me someone jogs everyday and nothing else, I will tell you that they are destroying their body quickly with excess oxidative stress and free radicals while providing no stimulus for type II fast twitch muscle fibers which have more impact on ageing.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7493202

That and diet is also a huge factor as shown here that people with a fat based metabolism (vs carb fueled) will incease their longevity (sorry Gatorade...guess you don't put that in your commercials).
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071121162443.htm

Then there's the joint impact of consistently performing 30-40 minute daily jogs. One doesn't have to face that issue with 10-15 minute HIIT sessions on an elliptical trainer. Also the VO2 max gets a better boost from the HIIT then LISS/MISS jogging.

I'm trying to read the book but have gotten bogged down. Taubes seems to repeat himself. Or, maybe, it's just dry enough that I'm rereading sections of the book without realizing it. Don't get me wrong, I like the book and agree with most of what I've read. It's just hard to get through.

It may be too early, alright. More likely, mainstream health organizations and scientists are ignoring Taubes this time around. I too have been watching for some sort of response from prominent individuals and important organizations.

Let's just hope your motive in searching for such a rebuttal is your relentless pursuit of the truth rather than to satisfy a self-affirmation bias.

Great points Regina! I was (admitedly a little nervously) awaiting a response from you and I just knew you would post something very thoughtful and detailed! I think you hit on a great point in your second-to-last paragraph regarding the support that exercise has healthy benefits in the absence of weight loss. To be clear - Taubes is not anti-exercise.

That said, whether his contention is that there is no difference in diet vs. exercise groups or whether it is that exercise in and of itself is not useful for weight loss - I think there is in fact evidence to support the opposite in both cases. It just may not be due to the calorie balance equation - which is how it tends to be promoted. Although this is part of it, there are hormonal benefits to exercise that would favorably alter body composition. Further there are factors such as EPOC, NEAT that need to be addressed before coming to such a conclusion. Further, a discernment of the type of exercise needs to be understood to qualify any claims therof.

Although I think Taubes scrutinizes the calorie balance equation very convincingly, he does't tackle metabolic ward studies in this regard - or at least not from what I rememeber from reading the book and listening to interviews with him. Please correct me if I'm wrong on this Regina.

In summation, I think you bring up a formidable counter argument. I appreciate the opportunity to discuss this with you!

The above are my comments! Sorry - I didn't realize someone else had changed the handle.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Taubes' contention is that, contrary to the popular message, diet with exercise will not result in greater weight loss than diet alone.

To support this contention he cites studies which found no greater loss of weight between groups dieting versus those dieting and exercising. He also goes to great pains to explain the "good" use of evidence and data and the well-intentioned, yet poor use of evidence and data.

So, if we're going to look at data, and attempt to refute the claims Taubes makes, we need to present studies that were well controlled, with controls for comparison, where diet with exercise significantly out-performed diet alone.

Did any of the studies you cite do that?

Let's take a look.

And also, while we're doing this, let's keep in mind you stated "And insofar as data pointing to there not being additional weight loss advanctage - I disagree. The studies I provided were the result of a 10 minute pubmed search - I'm sure there are many more like them."

The studies you cited include:

Exercise on Body Composition and Fat Distribution.

However, no significant relationship was found among changes in RMR, SPA (percent of time active and the energy costs of activity), and PAL. Similarly, change in these variables was not significantly associated with change in body weight. The lack of significant findings is not surprising because this study was only 6 months in duration, and longer periods of time are likely needed to detect an association between metabolic adaptation and change in body weight.

The last sentence is important, it's an opinion not based on empirical evidence, thus irrelevant without data to support it. To say longer periods of time are needed to see results says one thing - get back to the lab, do the study, then show what you're saying is true.

So this study does not show that Taubes is wrong.

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Exercise effect on weight and body fat in men and women.

Controls with no exercise versus intervention groups with varying intensity of exercise. There was no dietary group to compare difference in weight loss. Exercisers with greater increases in pedometer-measured steps per day had greater decreases in weight, BMI, body fat, and intra-abdominal fat - but the diffences were not statistically significant.

Trending toward significance does not matter, so this study does not show Taubes is wrong.

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Effects of a 10,000 steps per day goal in overweight adults

36 week trial investigating adherance to a walking program on weight.

This was not a dietary intervention, nor did it have controls.

The obsevation that those who adhered to the program versus those who did not losing 1.9% more body fat isn't really all that relevant to the discussion for two main reasons: 1) there was no control over confounding variables, such as changes made to diet while participating in the study - there was no tracking of dietary habits or calories consumed during the trial; 2) there was no control group to compare findings with.

This study does not refute Taubes' claim.

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Effects of the amount of exercise on body weight, body composition, and measures of central obesity: STRRIDE--a randomized controlled study.

A study with three groups to investigate difference in weight and other measures central obesity compared to a control group doing nothing different. There was again no dietary modification component.

Compared with controls, all exercise groups significantly decreased abdominal, minimal waist, and hip circumference measurements. There were no significant changes in dietary intake for any group. What I'm going to say here is critically important - with no significant dietary changes in any group, the finding that those who had the highest amount/vigorous level of exercise (expended more energy) lost more weight than those doing less tells us one thing - that they lost more weight is expected given this information.

While the effect of exercise amount was very clear, the effect of exercise intensity was less clear. There appeared to be an effect of exercise intensity on several variables, especially on lean body mass. However, there were no variables for which the low-amount/vigorous-intensity group was significantly better than the low-amount/moderate-intensity group (non-significant all P values >.20). The low-amount/vigorous group had a nearly 2-fold greater increase in lean body mass than the controls (P

And here is a very, very curious sentence too - "Interestingly, 27 (73%) of the 37 controls gained weight, while in the low-amount/moderate, low-amount/vigorous, and high-amount/vigorous exercise groups, 21 (75%) of 28, 20 (71%) of 28, and 23 (85%) of 27, respectively, lost weight."

Which means that 7 of 28 in the low/moderate, 8 of 28 in the low/vigorous, and 4 of 27 in the high/vigorous gained weight despite increasing activity.

"In the present study, we found that the effect of exercise intensity on fat mass loss was small and nonsignificant, whereas exercise amount had a much clearer effect."

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Reduction in obesity and related comorbid conditions after diet-induced weight loss or exercise-induced weight loss in men. A randomized, controlled trial.

RESULTS: Body weight decreased by 7.5 kg (8%) in both weight loss groups and did not change in the exercise without weight loss and control groups.

By the numbers:

Diet versus execise for weight loss

Weight loss = no significant difference found between groups (p = 0.2)
Loss of body fat = statistically significant, favoring exercise (p = 0.03)

Where a statistically significant difference was noted was in fat loss, not a difference in weight loss. Key here is this actually supports Taubes' contention that exercise does not lead to greater loss of weight; and cannot refute the contention that diet + exercise does not lead to greater weight loss.

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Does the intensity of an exercise programme modulate body composition changes?

The decrease in fat mass was significant in both groups (3.1 +/- 1.2 vs. 2.4 +/- 1.5 kg, respectively) but not significantly different between them. Fat-free mass did not change significantly in either group, although the difference between groups tended to be significant (decrease by 0.2 +/- 0.7 kg in the low-intensity group vs. increase by 0.5 +/- 0.6 kg in the high-intensity group, p = 0.058). [note: 0.58 is not significant, trending doesn't count statistically or clinically in significance]

This study was not looking at the effect of diet and exercise, thus cannot counter Taubes' contention. Noteworthy though is the findings were non-significant for what was investigated though.

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Exercise without weight loss is an effective strategy for obesity reduction in obese individuals with and without Type 2 diabetes.

The reduction in total and abdominal subcutaneous fat was not different (P > 0.1) between groups; however, the reduction in visceral fat was greater (P 0.1).

This was exclusively a study investigating effect of exercise, not diet and exercise, and not weight loss. It's not applicable to Taubes' contentions.
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Effect of an acute period of resistance exercise on excess post-exercise oxygen consumption: implications for body mass management.

Not applicable since it was measuring post-exercise oxygen consumption, not effects of diet and exercise on weight.

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Exercise alone is an effective strategy for reducing obesity and related comorbidities.

No access to full text; can't offer comments on it.

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All that said, again Taubes does not say exercise or increased activity is useless, nor does he say not to exercise. He does point to the dearth of evidence to support the notion that dieting with exercise leads to greater weight loss.

Regarding the contention "With the right type of training, people absolutely WILL lose more weight than with dieting alone. Again, there is oodles of data to show this. (see above references). It is true that results will vary, but to tell someone that exercise won't help them is irresponsible."

As I've pointed out above, the studies you cited do not support your contention that diet with exercise results in greater weight loss. I read each and every study you cited (with the exception of the one I could not get a full-text copy of) and NONE of them show statistically different weight loss when diet + exercise were actually part of the study design. In others, as I noted, they were not comparing diet + exercise to diet alone, thus not doing much to counter Taubes' assertions.

I'll continue in another post on a couple of other things...

Like I said, if Taubes is saying there ARE CLEAR body composition benefits to exercise in addition to diet than my points are moot, however I don't recall him ever making this distinction either in his book or on the talk show circuits/podcasts. This may be an oversight on my part, however and please do set me straight if I am wrong.

The public health messages, that the vast majority of Americans are hammered with say "eat less and exercise more" to lose weight. In fact, they often imply that without both, one cannot successfully lose weight and/or that exercise increases the amount of weight one can lose while dieting.

Taubes' contends that there such blanket recommendations are not supported by the data published; data which suggests that there is little to no difference in weight loss with or without exercise when two groups are compared, one dieting and one dieting with exercise.

It's not just Taubes saying this. In vaguer language, you'll find “It is reasonable to assume that persons with relatively high daily energy expenditures would be less likely to gain weight over time, compared with those who have low energy expenditures. So far, data to support this hypothesis are not particularly compelling;” that was part of the position statement released by the American Heart Association and the American College of Sports Medicine recently.

If the data is as solid as we're led to believe - that diet + exercise leads to greater weight loss than diet alone - why would the AHA-ACSM say that data to support the hypothesis are not particularly compelling?

Taubes writes in his New Yorker article "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...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."

One of the things that Taubes also contends is that increasing activity (adding exercise to the weight loss equation of calorie restricted dieting) makes you hungry. Guess what? The study you cited, Reduction in obesity and related comorbid conditions after diet-induced weight loss or exercise-induced weight loss in men. A randomized, controlled trial, finds that to be true.

If you look at the data tables presented, you can see that those in the diet for weight loss group ate 2019-calories per day, those exercising to lose weight ate 2612-calories per day, and those exercising without trying to lose weight ate 3335-calories per day. Exercise here is associated with a higher caloric intake ("correlated", may or may not have caused the observation).

Now, what I didn't note above in the comments I made on this study is that those exercising, even though they consumed more calories, they were reported to be in a greater calorie deficit to their energy expenditure [EE], yet there was no statistically significant difference in weight loss.

Those exercising to lose weight had a 376 greater calorie deficit than those dieting only. Why didn't they lose more weight being in a greater calorie deficit?

Here is where critically looking at the data and how it is analyzed and interpreted is really important.

We have two groups - one exercising as the means to lose weight, the other simply restricting calories.

Both groups lose similar weight over the six months, despite the exercisers being in a greater calorie deficit.

When we do the math, the statistically significant finding that those exercising lost more fat is much less impressive - in fact, the significance is lost - when we account for the energy deficit; something the researchers didn't do in their analysis.

The exercise group should have, based on the calorie theory, had an 18-pound weight loss advantage over those dieting alone.

They didn't. They lost 0.4-pounds more than the dieting only group, despite having burned an estimated 63,168 more calories (63168/3500 = 18-pounds); lost just 2.8-pounds more fat; and retained 0.9-pounds more LBM.

While the group-to-group comparison was found statistically significant, it did not account for the energy deficit in finding significance. The researchers should have done more than note the energy difference, they should have analyzed it as part of their findings. The statistical significance of the fat loss is lost when energy expenditure is accounted for, something the researchers failed to do in their analysis.

Like I said, if Taubes is saying there ARE CLEAR body composition benefits to exercise in addition to diet than my points are moot, however I don't recall him ever making this distinction either in his book or on the talk show circuits/podcasts. This may be an oversight on my part, however and please do set me straight if I am wrong.

I don't think Taubes has the onus on him to clarify body composition benefit (or lack thereof) - the book was to "challenge the conventional wisdom on diet, weight control and health" - not a book about exercise physiology, nor attempting to sort out the nuances of fat loss versus lean body mass versus total body weight loss.

Because the conventional wisdom holds if you diet and exercise you lose more than if you diet alone, that was his target - the message presented to the American public as solid, evidence-based and without question. He shows it is a message without solid, convincing data and presents why he came to that conclusion.

Maybe he'll write his next book on differences in body composition - I dunno!

Appreciate your comments, Drew (sarcastic as they were). A few things;

First, nowhere did I encourage people to take my word for anything instead of reading GCBC. I have mentioned many times that I think it is an incredible book on many levels. I don't agree with all of Taubes' conclusions, however and voiced my disagreement of them. Should we all just blindly believe everything Taubes writes? Sorry, Drew but I don't work that way and I hope you don't either.

On the exercise front - exercise will not be very effective if not combined with dietary intervention, however the reverse is also true. The major issues I have with Taubes' conclusions are as follows;

His conclusions on exercise are incomplete, obfuscated and sloppy, but they are presented with a certainty equal to that of his conclusions on the lipid hypothesis. And as for the lipid hypothesis - it's been done, although with not nearly the same conviction.

Taubes makes blindingly generalized statements about exercise and weight loss and doesn't discern between the vast variation of exercise types, intensities and durations.

His claims about exercise are slightly different depending on the source, so it would be nice to get a position statement from him. In some venues he claims that dieting with exercise does not make a difference whereas other forums he just flat out states that exercise does nothing to produce weight loss. Making blanket statements like this to me sounds like a ploy to stir up controversy in an attempt to sell more books.

He also contends that exercise doesn't work because it makes you hungry. Well it seems he cherry picked research here and decided to ignore studies that demonstrate otherwise such as the following (from Tom Venuto's site)

Blundell JE, cross talk between physical activity and appetite control: does physical activity stimulate appetite? Proc Nutr Soc, 62, 651-661. 2003
Donahoo WT, Variability in energy expenditure and its components. Curr Op Clin Nutr Metab. 7: 599-605. 2004.
King NA, et al, Individual variability following 12 weeks of supervised exercise: Identification and characterization of compensation for exercise-induced weight loss. Int J Obes, 32, 177-184, 2008.
King NA, effects of exercise on appetite control: Implications for energy balance. Med Sci Sport Exer, 29(8): 1076-1089. 1997
King, NA, The relationship between physical activity and food intake. 57: 77-84. 1998.
Lluch A, Exercise enhances palatability of food, but does not increase food consumption, in lean restrained females. Int J Obes, 21: supp a129.Melzer K., effects of physical activity on food intake. Clin Nutr, 24: 885-895. 2005
Slentz CA. Effects of the amount of exercise on body weight, body composition, and measures of central obesity. Arch Intern Med. 164: 31-39. 2004
Titchenal A., Exercise and Food Intake: what is the relationship? Sports Med, 6: 135-145. 1988
Yoshioka M, Impact of high-intensity exercise on energy expenditure, lipid oxidation and body fatness. Int J Obes. 25, 332-339. 2001

Taubes is not infallible. The right types of exercise combined with sensible nutrition do amount to greater fat loss than do diet alone or exercise alone.

Thanks for chiming in, Jamccain.

Overdoing exercise can cause a negative hormonal influence on the body, but for the most part, exercise has favourable influences on hormonal influences of fat regulation. Let's take insulin - the hormone that Taubes argues is the ultimate factor in fat regulation. Exercise increases insulin sensitivity, which stands to reason that it will keep insulin levels in check, thereby keeping weight in check.

Again, you would have to show me studies that regular (but not excessive) exercise negatively impacts hormones that control weight.

You can post your studies here - it just gets held for a bit for moderation. Or feel free to email it to me at coreconcepts@shaw.ca

Take care.