by Dr. Karl Nadolsky
Not a day goes by when I get a patient who wants to lose weight. A few days a week, the scenario goes something like this:
Me: Hi Mrs. Smith, has anyone talked to you about losing weight in order to help fix your diabetes?
Patient: Not really
Me: Would you like to know more? I actually specialize in helping people get off their diabetes and blood pressure drugs using weight loss as a tool.
Patient: That would be great! Tell me more.
Me: Well give me a run down of what you eat during the day and we can start by making small changes to your daily diet.
Patient: Well I eat pretty well. I think I need to just exercise.
Me: (gritting my teeth but trying not to show it) Hmm maybe, but why don’t we go over what you eat too because I think we will be able to improve that area as well.
This might go on for a few more minutes as frustrations increase on both ends. This is a common occurrence in my practice as well as in other fitness professional’s (personal trainers, nutritionists, etc.). Many fitness pros are starting to figure out that exercise itself doesn’t lead to that great of results. In fact, there are NUMEROUS studies showing that exercise without diet, leads to pretty poor results in terms of weight loss. Now, my point is not to convince you as a patient/reader that you don’t need exercise. My point is that your efforts should focus mostly on your diet first… and then exercise later (can be shortly after, but just depends on the individual).
In a recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers found that diet only or diet plus exercise improved metabolic syndrome… not exercise only. Here is what they did:
One year with 107 people with an average age of 70 years and BMI of 37 (class 2 obesity) split into 3 groups:
- Diet only (advised to lower calories, take a multivitamin, and increase protein)
- Exercise only (three sessions a week of 90 minutes duration including aerobic, resistance, and flexibility training
- Diet plus exercise (both of the above)
What did they find? Here are the results of the diet and diet plus exercise group (decreases in the following):
- weight (-10% and 9%, respectively)
- systolic blood pressure (-9% and -10%)
- diastolic blood pressure (-8% and -6%)
- waist circumference (-7% and -7%)
- abdominal visceral fat ( -25% and -33%)
- serum triglycerides (-26% and -27%)
- C-reactive protein (-27% and -27%)
- tumor necrosis factor receptor (-7% and -9%)
And the exercise only group? None of these. NONE!
Now granted the group was an older crowd (closer to the age of a lot of our patients), but this same finding has been shown in many other studies to date. The bottom line is this: If you’re not losing weight, it is likely your diet… not your exercise program! Also, if you combine the two you have one powerful fat and diabetes/metabolic syndrome fighting treatment (just think if they added in some berberine! – Shameless plug done!)
If you would like to lose weight yourself as well as improve your health, you may want to consider signing up with Lean Doc Consulting Program. The presale is going on right now.
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