From time to time, I am amazed at how much junk science exists when it comes to the diet and fitness world. The strange thing about this is…if this amount of bad information floated around inside any other industry (banking, insurance, security), there would be heads rolling out the door. It seems when it comes to the most precious thing we have – our bodies – the lousier the information becomes.
The other day there was a “bombshell” report by some “university group” that said it doesn't matter if a calorie is consumed by diet or fitness as “a calorie is just a calorie” and it doesn't care how it is eventually burned. This is partially true, but mostly based on junk science. This report ignores a basic premise: the energy supplies to fat and muscle require different caloric loads.
Fat sitting around your abdomen is generally not mobile (minus the occasional jiggle) and therefore does not require energy to move or perform a function. It just hangs around and requires a food source to exist. On the other hand, muscle tissue is meant to be used and built up, otherwise it suffers from atrophy and shrinks. Since muscle tissue was created for the express purpose of movement, it has to use more energy or your body will cannibalize it and use it as a food source.
If the study were true, then an age old myth would also have to be true: if you don't use your muscles, they turn to fat. This is wrong because fat tissue and muscle tissue are not made up of the same type of tissue, and muscle cannot morph into fat.
The fact is if your muscles use a lot of energy, the body will lose more calories. Dieting will help you to lose weight, but that entails water and lean muscle, not fat. If the muscle tissue relies on stored fat as a fuel source but dieting has cannibalized the lean tissue, the body is not burning calories efficiently. Chances are high the body is not burning them at all if the weight loss is water and lean muscle.
It is no different than the woman who sells a product called “Shapely Secrets”, who claims you can lose tons and tons of weight by breathing and performing “motionless exercise”. This is total garbage because in order to burn fat, you need to put a load requirement on the body, otherwise it does not expend energy and burn stored fat calories. Everyone knows your heart must be pumping in the fat burning zone for this to take place, and it's hard to get there if you're performing motionless exercise. The body must use the readily available energy first (glucose) before it starts to burn the stored fat tissue, and this means you have to move it to lose it.
This is nothing more than a sexy, lazy pitch to bilk the wallets of the emotionally vulnerable population desperate to make a lasting change in their lives. Of course you never hear that she was shut down by the FTC for making false claims on past products .
The other unfortunate thing this junk science report does is give credibility to the diet industry. Since most people know when they come off a diet they end up fatter than when they started, this is a godsend for them. “See? We told you exercise wasn't necessary!” They will ignore the tiny last line in the report that still says the best way to lose weight is with a combination of diet and exercise, and so has the mainstream media.
The reason exercise is the better option is simple. At the end of the day, which looks better in a bathing suit: fat or lean muscle? I can honestly say I've never been turned on by a skinny “girly man”. What about you?
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