The FastDay Forum

I just saw this article on an American website today:

"Exercise does not burn off pounds
TRUE: It's hard to believe, but in a study of 411 women, those who worked out for over one, two, or three hours a week for six months didn't lose significantly more weight than those who'd devoted themselves to Sudoku or other sedentary pursuits. You'd think this finding was a fluke, but a recent review of 15 studies came to the same conclusion: Moderate workouts don't lead to weight loss, possibly because they make us hungrier. But there's also a biological explanation: As with weight loss, one of the ways your body adapts to an increase in exercise is to lower your resting metabolic rate about 7%, so you actually end up burning fewer calories - anywhere from 50 to 75 fewer per day, the review found."

So, if we just follow the 5:2 and sit around all day, we will lose the same amount of weight?? I don't believe this - do you???

Well I'm not an expert. Funnily enough Dr. M did a programme around this topic fairly recently. One of the things he did was to measure how much jogging it would take to burn off the snack he had just eaten, and it was quite a lot. Certainly in my own case I often overcompensate for my exercise by what I eat afterwards. However, exercise is a good thing for all the reasons you probably could already list: heart and circulation, mood improvement, reduction in development of certain diseases etc. etc. but if the only reason you are exercising is to slim then you may not get the results you want unless you are training very very hard. Combine the two though ( diet and exercise) and you are Ono a winner.
Interestingly, Dr. M concluded the programme with findin tat 12 minutes of high intensity exercise a month would give him the health benefits that he needed!

The extra calories i would burn through exercise aren't hugely significant - a few hundred a day compared to a few thousand per lb of fat loss.

It's true that clinical studies generally find exercise to be fairly ineffective. At best the use of resistance training helps preserve muscle mass and reduce the decline in metabolic rate that may otherwise occur when eating less.

A regime like Biggest Loser with hours of intense exercise per day is a different story.

I think to some degree it depends on your personality. Some people regard a stint of exercise as an excuse to indulge. I'm more of the attitude that if I've made all that effort I want to benefit from it with some weight loss.
I also think that if your diet/calorie restriction is going to be fairly short term then the fat you burn off through exercise isn't going to make a great deal of difference but if like me you are looking at months if not years of 5:2 then the regular exercise can mount up to a significant lump of fat burned off.

It's fairly straight forward:

1lb = 3500 cals = 3 to 4 x 1000 cals sessions per week in the gym or 7 x 500 cals sessions or whatever.

But even a 30 minute brisk daily walk can greatly help. For me, that's just shy of 200 cals a day, or 1000 cals a week during lunchtime at work.

A couple of things though:

1. "those who worked out for over one, two, or three hours a week"

That's 'a week' so we are talking of 60/7 (= 8.5 mins a day) , 120/7 (=17.2 mins a day) or 180/7 (= 26 mins a day). This does't seem to be a great amount in the grand scheme of things.


2. "Moderate workouts don't lead to weight loss"

What's meant by moderate? What intensity, target pulse range and for what duration?

Please remember that Dr Michael Mosley is an advocate of both 'walking' and 'High Intensity Interval Training' (HIIT), additionally in the BBC documentary "Eat, Fast and Live longer", Dr MM is shown walking the Trans Penine Way, that is from one side of the UK across the Penine's to the other (and during which he had fast days) and this was during the 5 weeks that form a part of the "more than a stone loss in 5 weeks" on 5:2 quote at the end of the program... So I think that a degree of 'activity' is required of the plan.

...You can draw your own conclusions from all this.

8 hours per pound in my case, at 75% of VO2max.

According to Gmaps:-

http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/

10 hours of walking for a pound of fat for me.

For every journal report saying one thing, there'll be an opposing one. Everyone is different and for me I know if I eat well and exercise lots I'll feel healthy and energetic. Not always easy though and not sure how I'll feel tomorrow after my debut pole dancing class. The other thing is that if you lose loads of weight through diet alone, you might lose muscle and tone. It's not just about the numbers on the scale, it's about feeling good.

I wonder whether the effect exercise has on weight varies a lot between individuals?

My own experience is that, whenever I have been unable to exercise (because of injury or pregnancy or working silly hours) the weight has piled on - and nothing has shifted it until I have got back into an exercise routine.

I also find that after a midday session at the gym, I'm simply not as hungry as usual for my lunch - that must help, too!

Into my second week and as it is Monday it's Fast Day. I have exercised this morning - 1/2 hour in the warm calm sea here in Townsville North Queensland Australia, the exercise might not amount to much but what it did for my mental health was incalculable and that is the benefit I need at present. I will never run a marathon but just being able to get off the couch and out the door is a bonus.

I also find that exercise improves my mood and the way I feel about myself. There is a lot more to it than just crunching numbers.

I enjoy exercise, to an extent . . and will continue to do it as it makes me feel better mentally, probably more than physically.

I just started to follow carorees tip of 20 second bursts of very fast cycling on my stationary bike with cool-down periods in-between. Going to try and build up and do more as I get more used to it. Anyone else trying that, or something similar . . say, running on a treadmill ???

[Debs]

Yes, I have been doing that three times a week recently in the morning as a change to my routine and am building up with 20 seconds of cycling followed by 2 minues of recovery , mostly as I hate spin classes!

As some of you may know I run quite often during the week and everytime I go out training is at least for an hour and I do between 10/12km each time. I do ultramarathons and therefore my trainings and races are around 70% of MaxHR and therefore I consume mainly fat. On Saturady I had a race that lasted 6hrs during which I covered 57.8Km but apart from loosing lots of water that I need to replenish imemdiately both during the race and afterwards I also need to eat a lot to keep me going. I know that running for long at such low intensity makes me use fat, but I also know that I don't loose weight by doing so. It gives me all the other 1000 benefits an exercise can give (therefore the importance of doing some kind of activity at least 3 times a week based on a propoer level of fitness), but if I over indulge myself when I don't train or in our case when not fasting I just stay the same or even can gain weight. Sport or excercing is very good for everybody (even more for those that have some kind of disorder) and I find it quite relaxing, gives me a lot of energy and above all find most of the solutions to problems i have to solve. That's my experience coming now from more than 10 yrs of running.

Exercise lowers our resting metabolic rate? That is counter-intuitive. Some contrary info here. And of course if the exercise results in increased muscle mass, that must somewhat raise your RMR (because muscle requires energy).

Another point implicit in the above link is that short bursts of very high intensity exercise (like Dr M's [and Caroline's!] 3 x 20 seconds HIIT which might typically burn 35-40 calories) might well raise metabolic rate for a significant period after the end of the exercise and therefore be significantly more effective for calorie-burning than amount of exercise would suggest.

I would also surmise that:

• the less fit we are, the more post-exercise calories we burn (because our body takes longer to return to RMR)
• if we do HIIT when our metabolic rate is at a lower level (e.g. on a fasting day when we get cold), it might be even more effective for calorie burning (because our metabolic rate is pulled up from a reduced level to an elevated level)

It certainly warms me up!