A quick ‘True’ of ‘False’ session on the subject of diet, exercise and weight loss.
If you expend more calories than you consume each day, you will lose weight.
True or False and why?
Aerobic exercise isn’t essential for weight loss IF you’re expending more calories than you consume each day.
True or False and why?
This one may sound a bit weird but I have it on good authority (an exercise junkie friend of mine), that you burn off the same number of calories walking 2 miles than you would if you ran 2 miles. In other words, it’s distance what counts.
True or False and why?
Any and all informative replies are much appreciated.
Well this is just what i’ve picked up over the years. I wouldn’t take it as gospel (i’m sure you won’t) but this is how I understand it.
True. However the body can adapt. There have been studies on overfeeding where if a person eats more than they need that some people’s bodies respond by increasing metabolism and increasing energy. Some people become energized and overly physically active if they eat too much. The same can happen when you cut calories, the body adjusts and your energy and metabolism go down. However at the end of the day its still calories in/calories out even though they body has tricks to manipulate how many come calories in or go out.
True. Here is a good study showing just this.
It showed that when two groups were compared (one who dieted, one who dieted and did aerobics) the weight loss was almost identical. Weight lifting on the other hand can preserve muscle tissue and should be done while losing weight.
No I don’t agree with this. I can tell a major difference in how much oxygen I intake and CO2 I exhale (signs of metabolic speed in case you didn’t know) from when i’m walking at 4mph and running at 6mph. When I do ellipticals the machine ‘says’ i’m burning about 1100 calories an hour. When I am running my oxygen consumption is alot higher than it is when I do ellipticals so I assume my metabolic rate is closer to 1500/hr while running at 6mph. Calculators say my 4mph walking metabolism is about 500 calories/hr.
Calories consumed are not necessarily calories digested. Fiber, sugar alcohols, and glycerin all “count” as calories, but have little or no effect on insulin levels.
People often find the jogging vs walking the same distance hard to understand but forget that if you jog it is quicker. So you expend more calories for a shorter time. Basically it takes the same amount of energy to lug your body X miles no matter how long you take to do it. However some exercise gurus cite a raised metabolic rate for some time after strenuous exercise which would favour jogging.
Years ago I saw a book that I think was called The California Diet and Exercise Program. The principle behind it was that active people eat more than sedentary people but don’t gain weight. The plan involved initially cutting calories and then increasing both exercise and food intake. By the end of the diet you were eating more than when you started but had lost weight.
Wesley Clark has it right, but here are a couple other thoughts.
With regards to aerobic exercise, no, it’s not necessary. But it certainly doesn’t hurt, and what’s the point of being thin if you’re in piss-poor aerobic shape?
With regards to jogging vs. walking, yeah, it is the same number of calories. However, jogging leads to a much higher post-exercise metabolism because it’s higher in intensity. Realize that no matter how much you exercise, you spend a lot more time not exercising, and that post-exercise metabolic boost starts to look more and more attractive.
btw, don’t trust the calorie counters on elliptical machines. They pretty consistently significantly overestimate your metabolic rate.
Yeah I assumed as much. I don’t think i’m breathing hard enough to be burning 1100 calories an hour, since every 1L of oxygen inhaled is only 5 calories.
On its face, if you run x miles or walk x miles, you have done the same amount of work; hence you have expended the same number of calories. (Time is not relevant to calories expended.) However, you actually burn a few more calories running since your body internally is doing more work (increasing your metabolism): your heart rate is higher, ATP is being renewed much more frequently, etc.
True. It’s works because the food you consume as well as the fat in your body are oxidised in a process similar to burning, and just like when wood or is burned oxidised food is converted into carbon dioxide and water. Both those substances are simply breathed out as gas and lost to the air. IOW all food that is burned is converted from a solid in your body to a gas that is removed form the body. Naturally your body weighs les s after it has burned food in that manner.
However food is always coming into your body as well, and being laid down as a solid. Provided that you burn more food to gas than the amount you are eating you will lose weight.
When you consume less food than your body needs for energy it makes up the difference by using your own body fat as a food, and that fat is burned exactly the same way as any other food, and turned into water and CO2 which are then breathed out. Provided you burn more calories than you are taking in the body will make up the shortfall with body fat, and the fat will be converted into gas and lost.
True. It’s true pretty much for the reasons I gave above. So long as food intake is less than the energy needed to keep your body running the body will make up the shortfall by burning fat. The body doesn’t care whether the energy is required for aerobic exercise, anaerobic exercise, warmth or simply for basic maintenance, the end result is the same. Energy is required and the body make sup the shortfall with fat.
So aerobic exercise, or indeed any exercise, isn’t essential for weight loss. You will lose weight lying on the sofa all day watching TV if your calorie intake is less than the energy being burned lying around watching TV. The reason exercise is recommended is because it’s far harder to keep calorie intake lower than output if you aren’t exercising, simply because so few calories are being burned.
That can be true, but it depends on a great many factors and it’s not true for most people. Unfit people will burn off far more calories running than they will working because the body is not used to the exercise and thus is very inefficient. The more inefficient the body is at something the more energy (read calories) are required to complete the task, hence more weight loss. As fitness improves the calories expended in running rapidly begin to decrease, and for even moderately fit people running can consume less energy than walking the same distance. Generally speaking as fitness continues to improve the gap narrows again and walking once again becomes more efficient than running.
Of course it also depends on a great many other factors such as what running and walking styles you are using and your basic body type, strength and so forth. But it certainly can be true to say that walking and running consume the same number of calories per mile.
Actually you have done more work while running tan you have walking. That’s because running requires you to life the centre of mass far higher than while walking. Thus the amount of work done is higher. The reason the same or even less energy is required is because the elasticity of the tendons conserve a lot of the energy returned through gravity and return it at the next step. So although the work done by your body is higher the work done by gravity is also higher, resulting in around the same efficiency.
I don’t see why there is any reason to think you will expend the same number of calories running a distance as walking it. Work is force applied over a distance. In principle, if your velocity is constant, you should be doing no work. But inefficiencies in methods of locamotion require work to maitain a velocity. So, the question of which will burn more calories is a question of which method is more efficient. I am pretty sure that walking is more efficient than jogging, so jogging a distance will burn more calories.
3 is False. While at the time you stop exercising you will have burned almost the same amount of calories (slightly more for aerobic but negligible), you will ultimately burn more from aerobic exercise because of afterburn.
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Studies on the effects of HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) have demonstrated a much higher EPOC (Excess Post Exercise Oxygen Consumption), which can add substantially to the day’s calorie expenditure. In one study, scientists from the University of Alabama compared the effects of two exercise protocols on 24-hour energy expenditure. The first group cycled for 60 minutes at a moderate intensity. The second group performed HIIT, cycling for two minutes at high intensity followed by two minutes at a low intensity. The group that performed the HIIT burned 160 more calories in 24 hours than the low intensity group. That means the HIIT group would burn an extra 11.8 pounds of fat in one year if they did HIIT five days a week instead of conventional training.
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Not to mention that your exercising for 4 minutes versus 60.
The best explanations of the realities of exercise that dispels all the myths and includes all the qualifiers can be found in Cover Bailey’s “Fit or Fat.” Don’t be put off by the cheesy sounding title.
While I have no knowledge as to the actual answer to 3, I see no reason why it has to be true. Take cycling for example. You can cycle 5 miles as fast or faster than you can run the same course, yet feel much less tired - remember those images of the boxer being followed by his trainer on a bike during grueling road work? Pro cyclists can go 100+ miles/day at racing speeds for extended periods. Yet you are moving the same body mass, plus the mass of the bike, over the same distance. Cycling is just more efficient at converting energy to forward motion than running (I think it was Steve Jobs who likened computers to ‘bicycles for the mind’).
Is running more/less efficient than walking? My gut reaction would be less, otherwise nature would have us run everywhere.
If you traverse a distance on foot, you are doing work, whether your velocity is constant or not. I just don’t understand that statement. You are applying force over a distance. See Blake’s comment supra:
In addition, as I said in that posting that you quoted, your metabolism increases when running: more ATP’s produced and other enzymatic and cardiac reactions, all of which require more energy. More energy means more calories expended. In addition, one who is on a regular exercise regime will build up more mitochondria, acquire corollary blood vessels, etc., all of which require calories. After you finish running, your metabolism remains elevated for a while, unlike walking.
This calculator says a 200lb person burns 359.25 calories in 1hr of walking at 4mph and 612.36 by running for 30 minutes at 8 mph. The numbers given for running at 9mph for 20 minutes, 6mph for 30 minutes and walking 3mph for 60 minutes are 453.60, 454.51 & 315.71 respectively.
Running is a different physical action than walking. Walking uses the leg as a pivot and you lean from one leg to the next while running is a form of jumping forward. Jumping will use more energy than pivoting from one leg to the other with each step. Saying running and walking use different calories per mile is understandable as they involve different means of locomotion.
I’m with Wesley on this one.
I know that my heart rate monitor shows a big difference in Calories expended between when I walk, jog, or run. Also if I ride my bike at 5 mph or 20.
I also agree that walking and runing are not the same type of locomotion. If I walk at 3.4 mph I have a hard time getting my heart rate into the the training zone (65% of max) If I jog at the same speed, I have a hard time keeping it in the training zone (below 80%)
I can walk on a treadmill at 3 mph all day long. If I start running at 6 MPH I will redline my heart rate at 100% in less than 1/4 mile.
Part of this has to do with my crappy VO2 max and the other part is my very short little legs. I am not built to run.
I am going down to work out here in a bit, I will walk 1/4 mile and let Mr. Polar track my calories expended. I will then zero the watch and run a 1/4 mile and report the results.
Oh, and one more vote for reading Covert Bailey’s book.
But those calories are computed at a rate of the quantity of calories per hour (or other fixed time). Naturally you will cover more miles per fixed time running faster than running slower, or walking.
I also agree that walking and runing are not the same type of locomotion. If I walk at 3.4 mph I have a hard time getting my heart rate into the the training zone (65% of max) If I jog at the same speed, I have a hard time keeping it in the training zone (below 80%)
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We’ve just been discussing calories expended in this thread. Of course working out harder will get you fitter.
I’m not a doctor or a fitness instructor; however, I would take that a step further and not trust calorie counters on any machine at the gym. Most machines are 10 - 20% off on heart rate and the number of calories burned. Most of them are on the high side, meaning that aerobic machines, including treadmills, bikes and elliptical trainers, frequently indicate that you’re working harder than you actually are. This is especially true for women - since women have less lean muscle than men (meaning many women burn fewer calories than a man would, even if they exercise for the same amount of time at the same exertion), and most of these machines have been calibrated for men, the reading a woman would get on an aerobic machine is probably inaccurate.
To get a truly accurate reading, you might try purchasing a personal heart rate monitor with a calorie counter on it. You can personalize it for yourself so that you’ll have a better idea of how hard your heart is working and how many calories you’re burning.
In a word no. The Polar heart rate monitor gives a constantly updated value for calories burned, not calories per hour. The unit is programmed with age, weight, height, sex, and activity level. Much more accurate than what is on the treadmill at the gym.
So I’m back from the gym
I did two quarter miles on the treadmill.
Run 1
3.0 miles per hour 5 minutes elapsed time total (my average walking speed)
105 average heart rate
18 calories burned
Run 2
6.0 mph, 2.5 minutes elapsed time total (hauling ass for my stubby legs)
161 average heart rate
45 calories burned
Conclusion: I burned 2.5 times the calories running than walking. YYMV depending on fitness level.