Diet and exercise do work (if you have different goals).

In my last post I said that diet and exercise don’t work.

I have tried both diet and exercise. Exercise is supposed to make you more feel better and be more energetic. But add dieting into the equation and I don’t get any of the benefits of the exercise. I’m hungry constantly, more than I am on the diet alone, distracted by the hunger, stressed because I can’t work, and generally down on myself for having such a hard time with it. Eventually I quit both, which of course means that it doesn’t work because I’m not able to keep doing it.

I haven’t tried that particular strategy very often, by the way. Making every waking moment miserable is not a hobby I care to cultivate.

I have tried just exercising more, though. When I am working out regularly I feel great. Less stress, better sleep, more energy, more confidence. A better outlook on life. And then I quit working out because — get this — the exercise isn’t working. I don’t lose weight.

I probably don’t lose weight because my body, realizing I am putting more demands on it, also demands that I provide it with more food. That happens to a lot of people.

Some people say that’s evidence of weak willpower on the part of dieters, and perhaps it is. But it’s clear that most people fail to lose weight when they attempt diet, exercise, or both. And a “treatment” that does not work for most people is not a treatment at all.

A lie for our own good

Now, many health professionals I interviewed privately acknowledge these facts, but nevertheless still think that calling obesity a disease can be a useful mechanism for getting people to adopt healthier habits in their lives. If people see their body fat as a disease, the thinking goes, it may scare them into eating better and exercising more. It may also move their health insurers and doctors to get involved in this process. J. Eric Oliver in Fat Politics

Oliver makes the above point several times in Fat Politics: diet and exercise fail at weight loss so often that many health professionals don’t really believe it will work either. But they continue to recommend it, because weight loss is the carrot on the stick that keeps the obese dieting and exercising.

The problem with this: if you can never get the carrot, you’re going to get discouraged. You’re either going to try something else, possibly dangerous, or just give up.

Remember that I felt much better when exercising, but the fact that I wasn’t losing weight made me feel like I was failing. By all reasonable measures — stress reduction, cardio condition, mood, ability to concentrate — exercise was working wonders. But in fit-in-the-airplane-seat terms, it was a failure.

And, of course, we’ve all been told that being fat is, on it’s own, dangerous. So if I’m not losing weight, then I’m not reducing my health risks. Right? Any improvement I’m seeing is nice, but ultimately meaningless. Right?

As it turns out, that’s wrong. Fat people who exercise regularly and eat properly can reduce their health risks to where those risks are nearly negligable. Being fat alone does not kill; and it’s apparently possible to be physically fit and fat. That’s definately worth trying.