Friday, September 28, 2007

Does exercise make you thinner?

Meg sent me this article about studies showing that exercise doesn't really make you thinner. I like the article because it rings true for me impressionistically in addition to being well argued. Every time I have trained for a marathon, for example (which has been lots more times than I've actually gotten through the training and actually run a marathon), I've gained weight over those few months when I was training. Whether this was because I ate more because running made me hungry (or because I felt justified eating more when I was running more) or because I was gaining muscle, or some combination of the two, I don't know. But I didn't really care, because I knew I was getting in shape regardless of the number on the scale. And I also knew there were plenty of good reasons to keep up the running besides the (nonexistent) weight loss.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

that article/study is a LIE. for the past 8 months or so I have been eating LESS food and I do an hour on an elliptical machine every day, on manual mode on level 15. That is over 1100 calories burned. And guess what? In that period I have gone from 215 pounds to 168 pounds. Maybe you should stop obsessing over food. Being fat sucks.

Mary said...

One anonymous person's totally unverifiable anecdote does not disprove an entire study.

And furthermore, the article is about exercise. You're talking about *dieting* and exercise. So your anecdote is not only worthless but irrelevant.

Thanks for stopping by!