PSA – BBC2 9pm The Men Who Made Us Thin

For all you diet hungry STW’rs.

Looking at exercise and weight loss.

Do they owe anyone any money?

Last weeks was a bit annoying, they touched on the science, but seemed more interested in confronting the diet company ceo’s in a “look at me I’m a hard hitting investigative journalist” manner. Which revealed nothing new about the diet industry than hadn’t already been covered in a couple of concise sentences.

😆 😆 😆

Last weeks was a bit annoying, they touched on the science, but seemed more interested in confronting the diet company ceo’s in a “look at me I’m a hard hitting investigative journalist” manner. Which revealed nothing new about the diet industry than hadn’t already been covered in a couple of concise sentences.

Agreed. Mr Peretti needs to at least let the people talk. If they are in the wrong they will usually talk themselves into a corner. Although I think most of them are right, it’s not their fault humans are so bloody predictable when it comes to failure.

ooof, below the belt that flash…… 🙁

ooof, below the belt that flash……

That’s where he usually operates 😀

Just to add, the counterpoint ‘The Men Who Made Us Fat’ is repeated at 23:20 on BBC2. Something for all tastes 🙂

I like it down there! 🙂

The Men who made us fat was brilliant

I have been able to watch the men that made us thin as it seems to want to prove that exercise doesn’t help weight loss. Which seems annoying

Which seems annoying

True, though.

Is it

The reason that I question it is that in the Uk average calorie consumption has dropped a lot, 25%. But average body weight is up

The reason that I question it is that in the Uk average calorie consumption has dropped a lot, 25%.

It has? Who says that then?*

*Not being confrontational, genuinely curious.

currently looks like I’m talking bollocks. I’m sure I heard that as a fact but my research now suggests that it has gone up. I’ll keep looking

So is your previous statement bollocks as well? 🙂

Both episodes of this show have been hyped up bollocks. Incredibly annoying to watch but the wife insisted on watching for some reason.

Last week implied that diets were a racket because people stop dieting. That’s like saying cars are a rip off because if you stop driving them they don’t take you anywhere.

Tonight’s episode seemed to be continually driving at the idea that exercise was some how a lie and a con because you had to do a lot of it, not just a little to lose weight. SHOCK HORROR!!

The programme makers themselves have something to answer for in my opinion as there will be thousands of fatties sitting on their asses watching this and doubtless conclude

“yeah, I knew dieting was bullsh*t, because I always put weight back on, and I tried jogging once and I didn’t lose any weight. It’s genetic”.

zilog good question

based on weight loss happening when energy consumption exceeds intake it seems unlikely that increasing out put doesn’t help

Oh and I’ve not really ridden since easter and put on a few kg

Tonight’s episode seemed to be continually driving at the idea that exercise was some how a lie and a con because you had to do a lot of it, not just a little to lose weight. SHOCK HORROR!!

The thing is, for a lot of people this probably is news (whether theses people are the ones watching the programme is a different matter). Forums like the one on runners world are full of posts from people who have taken up running but can’t understand why their twice weekly 5k stroll isn’t make them shed the pounds.

^^^ Exactly. IME the amount of exercise you would actually have to do, probably on a daily basis, to burn enough calories to actually make a difference to your weight is beyond most people unless they are already fit. So it’s generally much easier just to eat less instead.

Whoever said that exercise doesn’t help you lose weight is a bam pot. Exercise doesn’t help you lose weight easily like a gastric band can, but it does help you lose weight if you’re willing to put the work in. Lots of work. Lots of hard work over a decent amount of time.

If you make a half arsed attempt at losing weight you will get a metaphorical half arsed reduction in your weight.

I think the message of tonight’s program was very confused. The only scientific ‘evidence’ given to support the notion that exercise does not improve weight loss was based on a study of children. How does that apply to adults choosing to exercise on top of their regular daily routine?

Further, there were no linkages made between improving diet and reducing mean calories as well as exercising, which would lead to weight loss in most people. Nor were any questions raised as to type of exercise – the primary target here is big business profiteering from failures of willpower in diet and exercise.

If tonight’s program were taken to its logical conclusion the viewer would assume that a sedentary lifestyle alongside freedom of choice in calorie consumption would be preferable to exercising regularly…patent nonsense. A better balance should have been struck between attacks on hawkish profiteering and sane advice on diet and exercise.

At one point, Peretti mentioned how x minutes of spinning equates to a loss equivalent to two chocolate bars as if this is trivial. A misleading argument indeed. He neglected to mentioned that, in the context of a regular healthy diet, this would make a significant impact on daily calorie expenditure.

Two chocy bars is quite a lot of energy! He’s comparing the discomfort of spin class vs the denial of pleasure from eating two chocolate bars, and saying “it’s not worth it”. A subjective opinion from a chap who probably splits his time between the lab and the sofa.

Spin class is only “hard” because people have come to expect physical comfort all the time. I quote my sister: “I don’t like sweating”. Physical fatigue and working my body feel good to me, so hard exercise is as enjoyable as eating chocolate.

That’s it.

Two chocy bars is quite a lot of energy! He’s comparing the discomfort of spin class vs the denial of pleasure from eating two chocolate bars, and saying “it’s not worth it”. A subjective opinion from a chap who probably splits his time between the lab and the sofa.

Spin class is only “hard” because people have come to expect physical comfort all the time. I quote my sister: “I don’t like sweating”. Physical fatigue and working my body feel good to me, so hard exercise is as enjoyable as eating chocolate.

I can see why people give up – exercise is pedalled as this “do MY class/regime/plan and you can eat what you like”. But I have found out the hard way it’s more about the food really.

I lost a load of weight last year using couch25k and myfitnesspal apps. Basically working on the notion that if you eat less than you burn off you’ll lose weight.

It took me 3 months to be able to run 5k. It was agony and I hated it (well maybe eventually I enjoyed it once or twice). Everytime I ran I estimated the calories burnt and it always was around 350-450 each time (checked app and various guides online, didn’t matter it wasn’t 100% accurate but a ballpark was ok).

Realising it only burnt off a couple of rounds of toast or a decent choccy bar each time eventually meant that finding out those calories burnt didn’t make me run more to burn more, it made me eat less. It was so difficult to find stuff that was healthy when you travelled round for work like me too.

People don’t realise what crap is in the food they eat!

I think the theory from the study of children was that if you exercise then you rest afterwards to compensate. Which kind of makes sense, but they got the reality a little twisted. Modern sedentary lifestyles basically mean we are in a near permanent state of rest, and we actually need to exercise to compensate.

Now I only watched the first 5 mins or so, so I can’t really comment on the direction of the whole program, but it seemed to be concentrating on “vanity” exercise. Did they bother getting away from spin class scenarios to more fun pastimes like riding a bike, kicking a ball around with your mates or walking up some mountains, where the health benefits are secondary to the actual joy of participating.

I think the idea of the programme is to investigate the lengths that large Pharma and food production companies have latched onto “quick fixes” (drugs and going to the gym, crash diets etc) in order to deflect investigation and regulation into the damage their products are doing.

In terms of exersize his point (a little obfuscated for sure) was that you can’t just carry on with eating the same quantity of this crappy food and offset it with a bit of exersize down the gym. Which is the message that a lot of food companies have been pushing.

Exercising lots, and lots, in order to mitigate a poor diet. Is a mug’s game, imo. However, not exercising, as we all know. Is an equally poor lifestyle choice. Not withstanding disability or injury, etc, etc.

“yeah, I knew dieting was bullsh*t, because I always put weight back on, and I tried jogging once and I didn’t lose any weight. It’s genetic”.
Sounds familiar…. 😉

Yes, the point about the sophism of big pharma and the exercise industry is well made, but the rest of it was clutching at straws. Another example of hyperbolic contemporary reporting trends. Nobody would watch it if it was a focused expose, so the viewer is intentionally misled to believe that Peretti is actually suggesting exercise is somehow unviable as a weight-loss aid.

The study on kids and exercise, which provided the backbone to the contention that exercise does not help weight-loss, seems completely misguided IMO. How many fat kids did you know at school (in the pre-90s period)? When you played football/netball/skipped/ran about all break-time, did you then get away with periods of ‘rest’? Sure, I imagine that if you put kids in a controlled environment and told them to ‘exercise’ (rather than ‘have fun running around’), then they might be out of their comfort zone and rest up afterwards. To then apply what I believe to be a flawed experiment to adult exercise behaviour simply does not work. Adults aren’t children, for one glaring thing.

There definitely should have been a ‘test-case’ along the lines of a sample of people who have made permanent lifestyle changes, e.g. commuting to work by bike/foot, doing physical activity every day, rather than ‘fad’ exercises. Otherwise it comes across as though Peretti is confusing two different forms of ‘exercise’ in his rhetoric. How many fat athletes do you know?

A proviso to the whole program could have highlighted how dangerous a completely sedentary lifestyle is – a viewpoint backed up fairly uncontroversially in medical science.

I’m obviously a bit wary of my fact bank but I read that there is a link between American people get out and walk between places have on average less weight than cities where getting out is harder

This article is bit rubbish but sort of bears this out

http://www.mensfitness.com/training/lose-weight/the-fittest-and-fattest-cities-in-america

How many fat athletes do you know?

Of course, there are some activities in which excess weight is actively encouraged. However, this is far from healthy – generally, the higher the BMI, the shorter the lifespan.

My own slimming plan: Cycle 200 miles a week and eat carbs like they’re going out of fashion.

10 months on – three inches off the waist.

Of course, there are some activities in which excess weight is actively encouraged

Was just kidding.
😀

I think the theory from the study of children was that if you exercise then you rest afterwards to compensate. Which kind of makes sense, but they got the reality a little twisted. Modern sedentary lifestyles basically mean we are in a near permanent state of rest, and we actually need to exercise to compensate.

The study on kids and exercise, which provided the backbone to the contention that exercise does not help weight-loss, seems completely misguided IMO. How many fat kids did you know at school (in the pre-90s period)? When you played football/netball/skipped/ran about all break-time, did you then get away with periods of ‘rest’?

Hey, I actually know a little bit about the actual science for this, been reading it for work. This type of compensation effect is pretty well known – been pretty well documented with things such as exertion games (wii, Kinect etc.), for which the touted health benefits are very dubious (largely based on short term studies where people were actively encouraged to exercise, and ignoring the fact that the moment you stop actively forcing people to exercise, they don’t bother, and ignoring daily compensation effects).

There’s also evidence that asking people to exercise to help their health is of dubious use in the long term, because whilst people’s motivation for starting doing exercise is often health based, the only people who continue to exercise are those who achieve more intrinsic motivation from exercise, ie. people who actively enjoy doing exercise and feeling fit, rather than people who are only doing it because of the health benefits. Possibly why free gym referral programmes basically don’t work for most people (12 month ‘success’ rates of 20% or so).

Shall watch the second one today, but I thought the first program was quite good – made the point that pay/fad diets involving impractical amounts of change, the inevitable branded products and sessions, essentially don’t work.

As I understand it, the current evidence is that a combination of a sensible mixed diet without too much of anything, and doing outdoor exercise is the best thing to do for health. It hasn’t changed massively, despite many years of fad diets and miracle gym classes.

Cycle 200 miles a week and eat carbs like they’re going out of fashion.

I did that when I worked up town. My girlfirend at the time told me that I had the physique of a T-rex, massive legs and tiny pointless arms.

How many fat athletes do you know?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2149781/Jessica-Ennis-fat-comments-Heptathletes-coach-Toni-Minichiello-hits-Olympics-official.html

There definitely should have been a ‘test-case’ along the lines of a sample of people who have made permanent lifestyle changes, e.g. commuting to work by bike/foot, doing physical activity every day, rather than ‘fad’ exercises.

My own slimming plan: Cycle 200 miles a week and eat carbs like they’re going out of fashion.

This is my point about intrinsic motivation – how many people who run every day, cycle every day, play sport to a serious level or whatever can there be who purely do it because they feel they should lose weight, or because their doctor tells them too. They do it because they enjoy doing it and like feeling fit and looking good.

The problem is that monetising and really convincing people to ‘go for a run because it is fun’ is much harder than ‘come to the gym because you’re fat’, even if the second has a very low long term success rate. The low long term success rate being part of the business model for gym based exercise anyway – their dream customer is someone who pays a subscription, then stops coming whilst still paying. It isn’t in their interests to turn everyone into regular athletes.

joemarshall – yes, but the program doesn’t deal with the multiple complexities of this issue. I think everyone gets the point that Peretti is making about financially exploiting lack of intrinsic motivation – the industry encourages failure, offers more of the same exercise/diet re-packaged, creates a cycle. That’s capitalism!

As for the childhood study – again, how does a study of childhood ‘exercise’ (if you can call wii-fit type games ‘exercise’) bear on adult populations? Does the activity/rest model apply to kids in play, which they most often sustain over the course of a whole day?

As I say above, fair enough, attack the false claims of the big corporations through good science, but you can’t apply those findings to claims that ‘exercise does not help in weight loss’. The opposite opinion requires qualification (e.g. “build exercise into your daily life and reduce overall calories”), but it’s more coherent than saying exercise doesn’t work.

As for the childhood study – again, how does a study of childhood ‘exercise’ (if you can call wii-fit type games ‘exercise’) bear on adult populations? Does the activity/rest model apply to kids in play, which they most often sustain over the course of a whole day?

Here’s a recent study about fat adolescents who were made to do high intensity and low intensity exercise:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2047-6310.2013.00148.x/full

The key thing is that ‘Total DEE[daily energy expenditure] was not significantly different between conditions in the three studies.’ ie. the people who did exercise didn’t overall expend more energy than on a resting day. Depressingly, it appears that this effect possibly isn’t true for thin kids, but is for fat kids (essentially the take home message for parents is to try not to let your kids get fat and unfit in the first place).

And something interesting about adults that certainly supports the idea of full time physical play and keeping active throughout the day rather than structured bursts of exercise – essentially saying that (on some particular measures) 1 hour of ‘proper’ exercise and then sitting down for the rest of the day is worse for health than doing larger amounts of low intensity walking.

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0055542

Essentially they (and others) argue that reducing sitting down time is what is important for health, rather than a simple calorie balance equation which we can game by doing high intensity exercise for short periods of the day. Right bugger for those of us who sit in offices all day!

Not to mention the whole weight loss versus health thing – weight loss is what people want to sell, but healthy is what people ought to want to be (weight loss might come from healthy lifestyle changes, but making weight the one true goal probably isn’t the best.)

Depressingly, it appears that this effect possibly isn’t true for thin kids, but is for fat kids (essentially the take home message for parents is to try not to let your kids get fat and unfit in the first place).

That’s sad, isn’t it? Perhaps parents should be made clear about their responsibility for their child’s future (poor) health.

Some interesting reports there, but are you suggesting that it’s essentially a psychological issue rather than a physical and social one?

How can it be a psychological or physical issue?

The Human race hasn’t just gone through a genetic transformation. Thirty years ago when I was at school there was one fat kid who probably did have a glandular problem, on today’s proportions there would be 300 obese ones.

The program is saying its not their lack of activity. Its the ever increasing quantities of sugar rich food they are encouraged to eat more frequently and in bigger portions.

Tax sugar , regulate the marketeers – humans return to a normal shape and weight.