First things first.  Welcome back from the awesome holiday weekend!  We finally got a beautiful long weekend in MN and the summer is over.  Oh well.

Anyway, between the site maintenance last week and the holiday yesterday, the blog schedule is a little off this week.  I’ve got a guest post for you today, Workout of the Week tomorrow and the Post-workout Nutrition article will be out this Thursday (sorry, we couldn’t give it to you last week).  I haven’t decided what I’m going to do Friday yet   That’s actually because I’m going to be away at a 2-day training in Kentucky.  I’m heading off to Boot Camp Boot Camp!  2 days of boot camp business owners learning marketing, business, and of course more great butt kicking training methods!  I’ll see what creative spark gets fired and shoot something out on Friday for ya

Now, let’s get on with today’s post.

You know, nothing bugs me more than people who make excuses of why they can’t exercise…until now.  Recently, there was an article in Time magazine that was basically trying to argue that exercise won’t make you lose weight and get fit!

Unfreakinbelievable!!!

Well, instead of me losing my mind on this one, I’ve got a special guest blogger today.  Barry Duncan from Volo Innovations (a kickass member management software that I’ll be integrating into my business in the near future) is going to take care of this one for us today.
Sunday Aug 9th 2009, Time magazine decided to publish an article, Why Exercise Won’t Make you Thin that puts the fitness industry several steps back in the fight against obesity. In this article the author lists several areas that he feels are reasons that he and others like him do not have success with exercise as a means of weight loss. I think we as fitness professionals need to set the record straight.
Breaking down the article:
Point 1:  John tries to connect a study to show an increase in activity to the rise in obesity.

The problem here is that the study quoted was The Minnesota Heart Survey 1980-2000 and was only in Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area. Yet he compares it to a national obesity rate 32% but Minnesota has a lower rate of 24% of obesity far below the national average, could be due to their increase in activity.
Point 2:  Exercise causes hunger and hunger cause us to eat.

I say yes to both of these, however the problem is not the hunger or the exercise that induces it, it is the choices that the people make to appease the hunger. Part of any good exercise regime is diet and the choices of food that we make before during and after exercise will have an effect on our desired out come. The right choices here can help to facilitate weight loss.
Point 3:  Another study from a Dr. Timothy Church; this time about compensation of activity with too much rest or additional eating.

Not much to say here since the exercise group in the study he quotes had the largest drop in weight without a change in diet, imagine if they did both.
Point 4:  Time to exercise is too hard to find.

I had decided long ago to never again debate the time to exercise excuse. The most efficient and effective form of exercise, High-Intensity Interval Training only requires about a half hour of your time.  Everybody can make time for that.  Get out of bed 30 minutes earlier if you have to.  Stop making lame excuses!
Point 5:  His next few points are all positive towards exercise and activity from reducing back pain to increase in brain function. Then he kind of loses it with the kids and activity comparison as a means to tell us adults to get out and move more. He mentions that the kids will grab bikes, run upstairs and play sports all of which helped them be equal no matter the amount of physical education they received in school. In John’s mind this means exercisers are too tired to shop, cook, go for walks and even clean. A strange conclusion to make since none of the kids in the study quoted complained of fatigue.
Point 6:  Has to do with duration and calories burned -  most of you will relate to this as slow steady verses high intensity cardio.

If you want to do long slow duration training then the more power to you. But for someone that was worried about time issues I am not really sure how this is going to work. The end result is that you are exercising and being active which is sort of contrary to the point of the article.

Conclusion:  His final point on ‘why exercise does not make you thin’ is one that I completely agree with, you do not have to thin to be aerobically fit.

I was reminded of this when running a marathon and was passed by a person 20lbs heavier and 20 years older than me. However, that person is still carrying extra weight which wreaks havoc on the joints and is linked to various diseases that lead to DEATH!

I will point out that his final effort to defend the non exercise plan is that obese people burn more daily calories, nearly a 1000 per day, due to their increased weight. He fails to point out this same group is riddled with health and medical problems that far out way the extra calories they use to get off the couch so even I do not think John is stupid enough to believe that you are better to weigh 300lbs in order to burn more calories. Then again he did write this article which proves that he is a bit dazed and confused about the body, mind and health.
The bottom line here is that freedom of speech is necessary and magazines like Time will do anything to capitalize on a topic, even at the expense of the health of a nation. My suggestion is that you be active, eat smart and enjoy life for as long as you can because the one thing for certain is that none of us know for sure how long we have; so you best enjoy it while you can.

Barry Duncan is the co-founder and COO of Volo Innovations, an online billing and scheduling software with fully integrated member management. He is also the co-owner of Momentum Fitness a personal training studio in Vancouver BC. Volo was originally designed to handle all the complicated scheduling and billing that is a part having a personal training studio and then was enhanced to handle any type of fitness business. Volo is designed to streamline your business, improve your revenues and automate billing so you can focus on the things you love to do.

You can follow Barry on Twitter and friend him on Facebook

Have Faith & Take Action!

Justin Yule, B.S., CPT

Your friendly neighborhood Chaska boot camp instructor and online personal trainer.

Burn 9x more fat at a fraction of the cost of other personal training programs.

P.S. – There’s still time to enroll in the Back-to-School Fat Loss Transformation Challenge.  The kids are going back to school.  It’s time for you to get on the fitness bus!