Originally Posted by article

Diet, exercise take off equal pounds, study finds

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Eating less and exercising more are equally good at helping take off the pounds, U.S. researchers said Friday in a study that challenges many of the popular tenets of the multibillion dollar diet and fitness industry.

Tests on overweight people show that a calorie is just a calorie, whether lost by dieting or by running, they said.

They found there is no way to selectively lose belly fat, for instance, or trim thighs. And their carefully controlled study added to evidence that adding muscle mass does not somehow boost metabolism and help dieters take off even more weight.

"It's all about the calories," said Dr. Eric Ravussin of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center, part of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.

"So long as the energy deficit is the same, body weight, fat weight, and abdominal fat will all decrease in the same way."

Ravussin said the study, published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, is one of the few done under controlled conditions that can actually demonstrate what happens to a human body while dieting and exercising.

Ravussin's team has been testing volunteers for another reason -- to see whether taking in fewer calories helps people live longer. Strict diets have been shown to help animals from worms to dogs live longer, but it takes longer to study monkeys and humans.

They tested 24 people, 12 who ate a calorie-restricted diet, and 12 who dieted and also exercised five times a week for six months.

The dieters ate 25 percent less than normal, while the exercisers reduced their calorie intake by 12.5 percent and increased their physical activity to lose an extra 12.5 percent in calories.

An additional 10 volunteers acted as controls. All food was provided by the university in carefully measured portions for most of the study.

The volunteers in both groups lost about 10 percent of their body weight, 24 percent of their fat mass, and 27 percent of their abdominal visceral fat. Visceral fat is packed in between the internal organs and is considered the most dangerous type of fat, linked with heart disease and diabetes.

The distribution of the fat on the body was not altered by either approach -- helping prove that there is no such thing as "spot reducing", Ravussin said in a telephone interview.

This suggests that "individuals are genetically programmed for fat storage in a particular pattern and that this programming cannot easily be overcome," he added.

Ravussin has published other studies that also dispute the idea that exercise builds muscle that helps people lose weight.

"If anything, highly trained people are highly efficient, so they burn fewer calories at rest," Ravussin said.

Dieting alone also did not appear to cause the volunteers to lose muscle mass along with fat, Ravussin's team found.

"There is a concept that if you exercise, you are going to lose less of your muscle," he said. But his team found no evidence this is true.

Ravussin believes exercise is crucial to health, however.

"For overall health, an appropriate program of diet and exercise is still the best," he said.

His team found some small suggestion that cutting 25 percent of calories by either diet or diet and exercise might extend life.

"We found that 2 of the biomarkers of aging were improved -- core temperature was 0.4 to 0.5 degrees C less," he said. "Insulin, which has been shown to be a biomarker of aging, was reduced," Ravussin said. That finding was published in the Journal of the American Medical Associaton last April.

Originally Posted by Turboem1

I feel like there are to many variables when testing on humans since we aren't wild animals. I think our brain is to advanced compared to other animals thats studies do not really work unless the person doesn't know (which is illegal).

Originally Posted by hopperja

When muscle tissue grows new cells are created, which require energy to sustain. People generally don't gain fat cells, on the other hand, except in utero, in early adolescence, or for women when they are pregnant. Fat cells, unlike muscle cells, are like balloons that fill up with fat. They do not require additional energy because there are no more cells (I'm not a cellular biologist, but I believe cells contain mitochondria - the power plant - which takes energy from the food we eat so the cell can survive). This is commonly why it is said that muscle is a metabolically active tissue while fat is not.

That being said, it doesn't make sense to me that adding muscle mass doesn't increase metabolism. It's only logical that it would increase base metabolic rate: the more mitochondria, the more calories burned.

Maybe the MDs or cellular biologists out there can help out with this one...

Originally Posted by Air

The 3500 hasn't worked for me. Been tracking since May and the only correlation was more about the miles on my bike. When my calories alone were low I still gained weight (my rant was lost).

Originally Posted by cohophysh

I found it quite interesting too...all we have heard is adding muscle increases metabolism...hmmm does anyone know where this thought process came from...it does make sense that the more muscle the more energy is burned to maintain..just trying to look at both sides

Originally Posted by hopperja

When muscle tissue grows new cells are created, which require energy to sustain. People generally don't gain fat cells, on the other hand, except in utero, in early adolescence, or for women when they are pregnant. Fat cells, unlike muscle cells, are like balloons that fill up with fat. They do not require additional energy because there are no more cells (I'm not a cellular biologist, but I believe cells contain mitochondria - the power plant - which takes energy from the food we eat so the cell can survive). This is commonly why it is said that muscle is a metabolically active tissue while fat is not.

That being said, it doesn't make sense to me that adding muscle mass doesn't increase metabolism. It's only logical that it would increase base metabolic rate: the more mitochondria, the more calories burned.

Maybe the MDs or cellular biologists out there can help out with this one...