No, the amount we're eating is making us fat.
Yes, yes, animal models != human results. But what about the experiments that were done on humans? The kids in Guatemala, or in Florida? The Navy sailors? I'm willing to bet they controlled for amount of food in those cases, and yet they all saw increased weight gain on antibiotics.
Net, that seems pretty indicative that it may not just be how much we're eating, and I think that's worth exploring further.
Some is known to help people put on weight. Some is known to help people stay at a normal weight.
It's an interesting extra method to tackle obesity, because what society is trying so far doesn't seem to be working.
The problem is that in a culture where junk food is cheap and pushed 24/7, there is no tradition of healthy nutrition, and there is much unbalance work/life, such education is clearly impossible.
I don't know why you're getting downvoted for this question. Epidemiologic studies tend to support the notion that in a practical setting (not an ideal laboratory), exercise is helpful for keeping weight off, but not really for losing weight.
So yeah, exercise is very important, but in the normal setting, it seems that exercise is counterbalanced by an increase in appetite, so it doesn't promote weight loss (but somehow does promote weight maintenance once weight is lost).
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These are studies of what people do in the real world, not whether thermodynamics applies to people (which, of course, it does).
Second, and most important, I think you never lived in countries having different lifestyles, so that your idea on the subject is purely theoretical.
Nutrition research itself is not "wrong", but it's much more important to have a broader view and experience.
Nutritional "discoveries" have been coming and going for decades, and yet the situation didn't improve at all.
If you'll have a very simple walk around a city, and possibly in a supermarket, in a country where obesity is not epidemic, you will see immediately why the situation is such.
Lots of things that seem obvious turn out to be mot true or much weaker than people thought when put through a proper trial.
To answer your specific question: muscle weighs more than fat, so if a person reduces fat percentage but increases muscle percentage will they lose weight or not? They'll be fitter and healthier, but will they be lighter?
You unfortunately used the phrase in the literal meaning lose weight, while it is commonly used to indicate that someone is going to start reducing their fat percentage and improve the body shape. If the word phrase has a different meaning to you, fine, but whenever it was used in conversations I was involved in it had that definition, thus the confusion. You should have used the word mass and there would be no misunderstanding.
Exercise will definitely work, but it might not strictly lower your mass.
Read through this thread. Sometimes people spout utter nonsense about nutrition. While "exercise makes you lose weight" sounds reasonable I'm keen to see what the research says.
So far someone told me that I'm talking shit and a bunch of people downvoted the post that requested research, but no one has provided any links to any research.
If you want this kind of researches, you will find by yourself lots of researches that support one thesis, then lots of researches supporting the opposite.
I've stopped reading nutrition research, because it's essentially a jumble of conflicting, unfounded theories.
The smartest thing one can do, for this specific question, is this: go to a sports club, then ask to the people: when you stop practicing your sport, do you get fatter? And conversely, when you started, or in periods of intensive training, do you get leaner?
If you're really curious about the subject, do that, you will get the answer.
I've been practicing sports for 20+ years, so I know the answer, and the experience of any person who's been practicing sport intensively for decades, is worth way more than a platoon of armchair academic nutritionits can possibly theorize.
This should remind that research (at least, this type of research) should be grounded and not detached from reality.
Unless you can find another way to explain why his 10,000 to 12,000 calorie diet - that included pancakes and sugary energy drinks - didn't result in massive weight gain, as it would in a sedentary person.
http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2008/08/13/the-michael-phelps-di...
http://nypost.com/2008/08/13/phelps-pig-secret-hes-boy-gorge...
Breakfast: Three fried-egg sandwiches loaded with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, fried onions and mayonnaise. Two cups of coffee. One five-egg omelet. One bowl of grits. Three slices of French toast topped with powdered sugar. Three chocolate-chip pancakes.
Lunch: One pound of enriched pasta. Two large ham and cheese sandwiches with mayo on white bread. Energy drinks packing 1,000 calories.
Dinner: One pound of pasta. An entire pizza. More energy drinks.
As a fat guy who has run 15 or 20 races (including a triathlon) at this point and is training for another, my personal experience is that adding exercise doesn't help me lose weight.
But of course, 90 % is diet. 10 % is hard work. And these numbers come from my hat.
Effort and discipline -- everybody knows those can get us anything, but the question is, how can we minimize effort and discipline and still get what we want?
I'm mean really... just read it out loud. :)
It might make them healthier and fitter and less likely to die but it doesn't help them lose weight.
Any chance you can link to some of the research that shows where the rest of the energy comes from?
I think the key insight is that the body is a complex, dynamic system. So the exercise required to burn 2500 calories will vary between individuals, and even for a single individual based on any number of factors. I won't profess to have all the answers here, but I don't think it's as simple as X calories per mile x Y miles = 2500 calories, where X comes from a table on the Internet. I think it's more of f(X) calories per mile, where f is a compound function that includes the composition & fluctuations of your gut biome and its effect on your metabolic rate. My foggy memories of the research are that in practice, solving f in the real world is quite difficult.
So while your calorie deficit theory works, in practice unless you're precisely measuring your compound (i.e. you plus your gut flora) metabolic rate in a lab, you don't actually have a way to know how many calories you're burning.
Your claim falls apart very quickly and very simply with basic math (and everybody can test this starting immediately):
Scenario: I'm a 225 pound, 6'2" male, basically healthy. 30 years old. I keep my diet constant at 2500 calories, and begin burning 750 calories per day through exercise. I will lose weight, and likely gain muscle (which will accelerate my body's natural caloric burn rate), and there's nothing that can prevent that from occurring in a healthy person.
Weight loss is a total calorie equation. Exercise forces your body to consume calories at a higher rate, reducing the total left for the body to store. It's that simple.
Another extraordinarily easy proof for this: Michael Phelps. Phelps was famously consuming 10,000 daily calories, lots of it trashy carbs like pancakes. His exercise routine - swimming countless hours per day - is the sole reason he didn't balloon to a thousand pounds. So run this test: consume 10,000 calories per day, do zero exercise, watch your weight explode upwards by 50 pounds in about a month; begin exercising heavily, enough to burn the excess calories, watch as your weight 'magically' falls.
There's no one serious that questions calories in vs calories out, but there are lots of people who question whether it is the right place to start, because of things like measurement difficulty and the relative unlikeliness of adherence to a given diet/exercise regime.
:-/
I think the most convincing clue that there is something nonobvious going on is that lab animals are also getting fatter, despite being on a standardized and controlled diet (http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101124/full/news.2010.628.ht...).
An overweight person can be eating caloric diet equal to a skinny person and not only not lose any fat, but also be painfully constantly hungry, and be technically starving themselves as their body leeches what it needs to run from their vital organs.
Meanwhile a fit person can be eating excess amounts of calories, but because they eat minimal carbs/sugars their body doesn't hold onto the extra calories they are eating (mostly eating fats, veg, meat) and they more easily lose body fat, and not only that but be constantly feeling full and never have hunger on their mind.
Obesity is an inflammatory disease. It's not as simple as the amount of food you eat irregardless of what you eat. What you eat is extremely important, and when you eat right portion size is less important because your body won't allow you to eat more than what you need.
Calories in calories out is incorrect. A person who accepts this as truth is setting themselves up for painful failure.