Why You Should Avoid Exercise (3 page)

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Training intensity was set at the heart rate associated with 50 percent of each woman's peak VO2 [equivalent to very slow jogging or fast walking]. In this study of previously sedentary, overweight or obese, postmenopausal women we observed no difference in the actual and predicted weight loss with 4 and 8 KKW of exercise (72 and 136 minutes respectively)
". Source: Timothy S. Church, et al, 'Changes in Weight, Waist Circumference and Compensatory Responses with Different Doses of Exercise among Sedentary, Overweight Postmenopausal Women', February 2009, PLOS One, 10.1371/journal.pone.0004515.

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If you're more physically active, you're going to get hungry and eat more. There is a widespread assumption that increasing activity will result in a net reduction in any energy gap [i.e. a net reduction in obesity]. When kids start to exercise, they end up eating more — not just a little more, but an average of 100 calories more than they had just burned
". Source: K R Sonneville, et al, Total energy intake, adolescent discretionary behaviours and the energy gap, International Journal of Obesity (2008) 32, S19–S27; doi:10.1038/ijo.2008.203.

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The majority of interventions aimed at increasing physical activity to prevent obesity in childhood have not shown favourable results
". Source: Campbell K, et al, Interventions for preventing obesity in children, Cochrane Database Syst Rev 2002; (2) and Syst Rev2005;(3): CD001871, PMID: 12076426.

If you want to lose weight and stay slim you need to stop doing exercise. Remember that by 'exercise' we mean any physical exertion that is sufficiently vigorous and/or sustained as to make you breathless and/or sweaty; this is the usual understanding of the word exercise. On the other hand, physical activity that does not make you breathless/sweaty is good for the body and indeed essential for avoiding obesity.

In a nutshell, breathless/sweaty exercise is bad for you and greatly increases your propensity to become fat, but non-breathless/non-sweaty physical activity is good for you, and helps keep you slim and healthy. There are various reasons for this as explained under the following five headings:

1. Exercise and Malnourishment.
Exercise causes severe malnourishment, and this in turn makes you over-weight however nutritious the diet.

2. Exercise and Energy depletion.
Exercise drains your muscle energy and greatly increases your propensity to store body-fat.

3. Exercise and the Cortisol Factor.
Exercise increases the level of cortisol in the blood, and this in turn makes the body store surplus body-fat mainly around the hips and thighs in women, and around the abdomen in men.

4. Exercise and the Leptin Factor.
Exercise reduces the level of leptin in the blood, and this causes hunger, over-eating and junk-food consumption.

5. Exercise and Stress. Exercise stresses the body adversely (however much you may enjoy the exercise) and this makes you gain surplus body-fat.

1. Exercise and Malnourishment

Exercise causes severe malnourishment, and this in turn makes you over-weight however nutritious the diet.

Exercise robs the body of valuable vitamins and minerals (the loss is very significant). This in turn causes malnourishment. You cannot lose surplus body weight in a sustained or healthy manner if you are malnourished. If you do this, you will become ill and lose all motivation to lose weight.

Growing research is now clearly showing that you lose significant amounts of vitamins and minerals in your sweat. The point here is that a body that is depleted of essential vitamins and minerals is a body that desperately tries to store as much body-fat as a survival mechanism.

It is well known to medical science that when the body detects a threat of starvation it switches into a fat-saving mode so that as a last resource the body can try to survive by living off fat stores. Medically this is known as the 'starvation response'.

When essential vitamins and minerals are depleted, the body will 'think' that there is a threat of starvation even though clearly there may be no such threat. However fat or thin you may be, however much you may eat daily, and however nutritious the diet, it won't compensate for the severe loss of vitamins and minerals caused by regular sweaty workouts. Furthermore, taking vitamin and mineral supplements will not make up for the loss of such nutrition.

A key point here is that you don't need to be under-weight to be malnourished. Indeed, most obese people are malnourished; the consumption of junk food bereft of vitamins and minerals makes you fat and leaves you malnourished. Such people are fat mainly because they are malnourished.

Two key points here:

1. A malnourished body will store more fat (from the food you eat) than a well-nourished body.

2. There is ample and incontrovertible evidence that a malnourished body is much more prone to accumulate surplus body-fat.

The evidence for this is plentiful; here are just a few examples of such evidence.

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Malnutrition is a medical condition caused by an improper or insufficient diet. Malnutrition is technically a category of diseases that includes under nutrition, obesity and overweight, and micronutrient deficiency (known as 'hidden hunger')
." Source: Wikipedia.

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Americans are overfed and undernourished. The most obese children and adults in the country are also the most nutritionally deficient. The mistake is to think that if you eat an abundance of calories, your diet automatically delivers all the nutrients your body needs. But the opposite is true. The more processed food you eat, the more vitamins you need. That's because vitamins and minerals lubricate the wheels of our metabolism, helping the chemical reactions in our bodies run properly.
" Source: How Malnutrition Causes Obesity, Mark Hyman, MD, Practicing physician, USA.

"Even though [obese] children may consume an excess of energy, they may not be meeting all of their micronutrient needs". Source: Can J Diet Pract Res. 2005 Winter; 66(4):237-42.

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Malnourishment is one of the major reasons many people are overweight and could be why you are carrying more body-fat than you'd like or you have stubborn fat you can't get rid of. I'm referring to micronutrients like minerals, vitamins and enzymes, etc. ...the small stuff that is required to make the metabolic processes of the body actually work. When you don't get the nutrients your body needs to sustain your metabolic processes, this sends a hunger signal to your brain to eat more food...which you then satisfy by eating more nutrient-poor food...which then repeats the signal that your body is lacking nutrients...so you eat more food...and so on. When you're in a nutrient deficient state, your body sees that as a famine situation, and the metabolic rate gets slowed down. Fat-burning grinds to a halt as your body fights to hang onto all the resources it has in order to survive. Eating more healthy foods is a HUGE step in the right direction, especially focusing on organic foods and unprocessed foods
". Source: Nick Nilsson, degree in Physical Education and Psychology, with more than 20 years physical training experience. Nilsson is the author of a number of bodybuilding books.

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Obesity and diabetes are increasing in prevalence worldwide. Despite excessive dietary consumption, obese individuals have high rates of micronutrient deficiencies. Glucose metabolism and insulin signalling require cofactors and vitamins that are essential in the diet. Deficiencies in any of these micronutrients have potential to impair glucose metabolism...
" Source: Michael Via, The Malnutrition of Obesity: Micronutrient Deficiencies That Promote Diabetes, ISRN Endocrinol. 2012; 2012: 103472.

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The highest rates of overweight and obesity are now often found in low-income groups. Large parts of the developing world are plagued with micronutrient deficiencies such as iron, iodine, zinc and vitamin A. [This] contributes to 'hidden hunger.
" Source: Tufts University, Malnutrition And Obesity Increasingly Co-exist In Global Community, Science Daily, August 2005.

You may consider that fat people are malnourished because of their poor diet rather than because of sweaty exercise. This no doubt is so in most cases because most fat people are not in the habit of doing regular sweaty exercise. But equally, most people who do regular sweaty exercise suffer chronic malnourishment, become overweight, and face a life-long battle against obesity.

To summarize: significant vitamins and minerals are lost in sweat through regular exercise. This causes chronic malnourishment, and this in turn causes obesity. The solution is to switch to non-sweaty physical activity, and switch to a nutritious diet bereft of junk food.

2. Exercise and Energy Depletion

Exercise drains your muscles of energy and greatly increases your propensity to store body-fat.

When you exercise to the extent of becoming sweaty and breathless you make the body think that it is facing some kind of emergency, known medically as the 'fight-or-flight response'. This is so however much you may enjoy the exercise. What happens is this:

Exercise quickly drains your muscles (and liver) of energy, leaving you exhausted and feeling weak and hungry. Note: The energy stored in muscles for all our everyday activities is known as glycogen

As a result, you will inevitably eat food (at some point) following exercise, and the body will use energy from the food you eat (instead of using surplus body-fat) to replenish muscle energy. In doing so, no surplus body-fat will be lost because, to replenish muscle energy, the body always gives priority to taking energy from the food you eat rather than taking it from body-fat.

Going without food after exercise in the hope that body-fat will be 'burnt' is a forlorn hope. You would have to fast for at least two whole days before the body begins to use up stored fat. And this would be totally counter-productive to losing weight.