Is Exercising to Lose Weight a Myth?

Usain Bolt can scarf down 47,000 calories worth of chicken nuggets and look great, while some dieters work out 4 hours a day and never shed a pound. So is exercising to lose weight a big scam? And what does Calvin Coolidge's exercise horse have to do with it? Featuring Dr. Herman Pontzer.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Guess what, Mango, what's that? Will do? You remember back
in two thousand and eight when Michael Phelps had that
daily diet that got so much attention because he was
eating these insane amounts of food. Yeah, he was eating
something like eight thousand calories a day. You try twelve
thousand cowers a day during his peak training, he need
a whole pizza, pound of pasta, three fried eggs, French toast,
multiple burgers, and it seemed like anything else he could

(00:22):
get his hands on, which seems so gross but also
kind of the best thing ever. And during those same Olympics,
Hussein Bolt reportedly ate forty seven thousand calories worth of
chicken McNuggets. Yeah, he was eating them with fries for breakfast, lunch,
and dinner. That seems at less great. Yeah, but wouldn't
sixteen year old Mango think of it's pretty incredible. So

(00:44):
I started thinking about this, and I know you've been
getting back into the tennis, and I've been running a
good bet these past few years. But I thought, if
I could just take this to the extreme, I may
be able to follow a similar diet. Like let's say
I'm running twenty miles a week, right, now, and I
just keep doubling up for the next five weeks, I'd
be running six hundred and forty miles a week by

(01:04):
the end of this. I'm so excited about this. Then
I could eat like twelve Chipotle burritos every day and
still have room for a half dozen Wendy Spicy Chicken
sandwiches and maybe even a couple of those naked chicken
choloopas after I run for the border. It's gonna be great.
But after our research for today's episodes, Science may have
crushed my dreams again. It turns out there's not quite

(01:25):
as strong of a connection between exercise and weight loss
as we once thought. So that's what we're gonna talk
about today. Stupid science. Yeah day their podcast listeners, Welcome

(01:55):
to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always
I'm joined by my good friend Man guesh Ticket and
today we're diving into the topic of exercise, its benefits,
it's limitations, whether it can actually help us shed some
unwanted pounds, and if it really makes us healthier people.
And fear not. We also have a couple of our patented,
ridiculous quizzes along the way. Who've we got on the
line today A mango. So we'll be talking to Herman Pontzer,

(02:18):
and anthropology professor at Hunter College in New York City.
He's responsible for some truly incredible research on exercise, and
he's gonna help us get to the bottom of just
how useful physical activity really is for burning calories. We're
also going to talk to a couple of personal trainers
and see if we can whip them into shape through
the power of our trivia. Right, So, before today's episode,

(02:38):
I would have told you that exercising is probably the
best way to lose weight, simply based on the conventional
wisdom of calories in, calories out. I mean that sounds sensible, right, Sure,
We're taken calories through what we eat and drink and
then burn them up through exercise. The more you exercise,
the more calories you burn, and the more weight you lose.
It just makes sense, it does. But there are actually

(02:58):
all these studies conducted over the last few years that
suggests exercise really isn't an effective way to lose excess weight.
For example, Dr Timothy Church at the Pennington Biomedical Research
Center at l s U. He held an experiment where
hundreds of overweight women were given strict workout regiments for
six months. The one group of them exercised a little
over an hour each week, another one for a little

(03:19):
over two hours, and another for over three hours. There
was also a fourth group that stuck to their typical
routine and didn't exercise at all. And against all logic
and fairness, there was no major difference in the weight
loss between the women who had exercised and the ones
who had And how pissed would you be if you
were that three hour group. In fact, some of the
women in the exercise groups actually gained weight, which doesn't

(03:42):
seem fair at all. I mean, they put in the work,
they deserve a reward. Well, it's funny you should say that,
because Church actually concluded that the rewards were the problem.
You know, exercise stimulates appetite, and many of the women
counteracted their work by over eating afterward. Church suggested that
it was justified in their minds. Is kind of a
self reward for all the energy that exerted through exercise. Yeah,

(04:03):
we hear that sort of thinking all the time, like
cheat days and junk food rewards for going to the gym.
But if we're canceling out the calories we burn. Then
we're probably imagining our workouts to be much more effective
than they really are. I mean, the Department of Health
and Human Services recommends people aim for at least thirty
minutes of physical activity every day, But at thirty minute
workout that only burns about two hundred calories, and the

(04:27):
average slice of pizza contains close to like three hundred calories.
So you can see how the math doesn't quite work.
It's really just not fair at all. But it isn't
just those powerful post workout indulgences that counteract calories burned
through exercise. You know, the things we consume in preparation
for or even during a workout can also take a toll,
which is a good point. I mean, those two hundred

(04:48):
calories you burned during your thirty minutes on the treadmill,
every single one goes right back into your body thanks
to that bottle of gatorade or that energy bar you
might have scarfed down while running right right, And the
same goes for the eagle or the oatmeal used to
carbo load before your workout. And we think the energy
from these meals is going to help us power through
and burn more calories at the gym, But it's actually

(05:09):
the calories from those pregame foods that are going to
get burned off first. And why is that Well, because
sugar from what you've just consumed will still be floating
freely in your bloodstream, and it takes muscle tissue much
less energy to take that sugar than it does to
burn off the existing fat stores. So your most recent
meal will always be the first to go during a workout.
But we can always just exercise a little longer, right,

(05:31):
I mean, once those preliminary calories are gone, our muscle
cells will start tipping away at storage fat for fuel. Well,
I mean yes and no. According to some breakthrough research
from Herman pons Er, there are a lot of assumptions
we've been making about human metabolism that they're not quite right.
So you know, it's true that a longer workout would
result in more calories burned and even some from storage fat.

(05:53):
But we know there's a limit to how many calories
your body will metabolize in any given day. So I'm
definitely intrigued. But before we get too far into this,
we should probably clarify the basics of metabolism. All right,
well I'll let you do that. Go for it, okay.
So metabolism is basically the sum of all the processes
that takes place in our bodies. We're talking digestion, respiration,

(06:17):
the production of cells, the movement of substances between cells,
you name it, and all these processes require energy, which
our bodies released from the calories we consume. So even
without exercise and other forms of physical activity, we still
burned through or metabolize a huge number of calories simply
by being alive. Yeah, exactly. So back to Herman Ponsers

(06:38):
World Shattering Research and February's issue of Scientific American, Herman
shared findings from his study of the Hadza tribe and
rule Tanzania. He and other researchers spent a whole month
living with the Hatsa, who were one of the last
traditional hunter gatherer cultures left on Earth. It was during
this time that Herman and his partners recorded measurements of
the daily energy expenditures of a couple dozen tribesmen and women.

(07:02):
So this allowed them to compare the daily calorie burn
of a society in which every member is highly active
to a Western society like our own and which members
are more you know, sedentary. Well, back up a second.
You said the researchers measured the hadzas daily energy expenditure.
But I'm wondering how they pull that off. Are you
really wondering that mango orre you just sensing there's an

(07:23):
opportunity here to talk about doubly labeled water? Of course
it is, you know, I love the d LW. Doubly
Labeled water is the special water in which the hydrogen
and oxygen molecules have been either partly or entirely replaced
with heavy isotopes that aren't usually found in the human body.
And it's safe to drink this stuff completely. They're stable isotopes,

(07:46):
so they're non radioactive. But here's what's great about them.
After somebody drinks d l W that's been enriched, researchers
suddenly have this tracking mechanism. Basically, by measuring the concentration
found in urine samples, researchers can determine person's daily rate
of carbon dioxide production. And since carbon dioxide is a
waste product of our bodies energy making processes, calculating how

(08:08):
much c O two someone produces in a day is
the best way to measure their energy expenditure. That is
pretty neat. Yeah, Doubly labeled water has become the gold
standard for measuring how much energy a person consumes. Like,
the margin of error is pretty small, and in fact,
the only downside is the cost. D LW is expensive,
like are we talking smart water expensive or like Fiji

(08:30):
water expensive? No, it's so much more than that. Dl
W runs researchers about dollars per test subjects. Actually, you
know what this really expensive water reminds me of? And
I know that this is totally off topic, but did
you know that the federal government actually sells a two
jar of peanut butter and there's just six ounces of

(08:50):
peanut butter in there. It's like a tiny jar. And
it also goes by this incredibly catchy name. Are you
ready for it? Standard Reference Material number two, three eights
of it. Oh, that sounds delicious, But why is it
actually so expensive? Is it more delicious? No, it's the
wonkiest reason ever. It's the super precise like peanut butter,
with specific levels of amino acids and fats and carcinogens.

(09:14):
And it's mostly used for quality controls so companies can
test their standards against the governments and make sure it
measures up. But as a result, no one actually eats
the peanut butter. It's just for lab purposes, which only
makes me want to try it more like with a
really cheap jelly. All well, let's get back to D. L. W.
Let me tell you what herman and his partners were

(09:34):
actually able to learn from having the Hods of tribe
drink it lay it on me. Well, first, let me
preface this by saying that the Hods are the kings
and queens of exercise. Every single day, the men trek
miles and miles to hunt for game with homemade bows
and arrows. They scale forty foot trees to hack tree
limbs with hatchets and gather wild honey. Now, the women
forage all day for wild berries and other edible plants

(09:57):
like tubers that they dig out at the ground with x.
Even the kids of the tribe are put to work
by hauling pails of water from a mile or more away. Okay,
so they're seriously active and no one sitting at their
desks right, definitely not. But what the researchers found was
that even though the Hadzas lives are far more physically demanding.
The amount of calories they ate and burned through in

(10:17):
the day was the same as in Europe and the US,
and the men went through about twenty six hundred calories
a day and the women burned through about nineteen hundred.
According to Herman, we looked at the data every way imaginable,
accounting for the effects of body size, fat percentage, age,
and sex. No difference at all, which is insane, isn't it.
I mean that you naturally assume that physically active people

(10:40):
would burn more calories, of course, but the research really
doesn't bear that out. In fact, they did a follow
up study with about three hundred participants and it showed
the exact same thing. The people who were the most
active burned the same daily amount of calories as those
who were only moderately, and the participants who barely left
the couch at all burned about two fewer calories than them,

(11:01):
the same amount they would have burned from a mere
thirty minutes of exercise. Doesn't seem to suggest that our
metabolisms are like fixed like. It almost seems like there's
a preset amount of calories that your body is willing
to burn in any given day, and no matter how
far you run or how many push ups you do,
you won't be able to top that max limit. But
my bigger question is this, why doesn't the Hadza hunter

(11:24):
burn more in day than the average office worker. Well,
I'm not sure we really have the answer to that yet,
but one thing I've seen researches suggest is that our
bodies account for the calories burned through physical activity by
dialing back on the number of calories we devote to
the background functions that keep us alive. About six of
the calories we burn each day go to these unseen

(11:46):
or unconscious processes, so it's possible that when our physical
activity pushes us beyond that other daily cloric expenditure, our
body is just cut back on the calories spin on
metabolic processes. This would help even the scales and keep
us from exceeding our preset energy budget for the day,
which is really cool but also disheartening. Right, no wonder,

(12:07):
I've got this paunch. I feel so betrayed unt I'll
take it too hard. So a fixed daily energy expenditure
limit is likely, and evolved trade meant to help conserve
our fat stores for when we really need them. I mean,
imagine if the Hotsa hunters were free to burn through
ten thousand calories during a hunt instead of the typical
two thousand or so, if they were to come up

(12:28):
empty handed, they would have lost five days worth of
calories in one with no prospects for replacing them. And
at that rate they're already limited. Fat stores will be
depleted in no time, and they'd find themselves on the
brink of starvation. Which is a great point but still
doesn't make you feel like maybe all that time spent
exercising was I don't know, kind of a waste. Well, no,
hold on a second, so don't forget that exercise has

(12:50):
all kinds of great benefits beyond weight loss. For starters,
exercises fantastic for your heart and blood vessels. It makes
your heart contract with greater force and frequency, which increases
blood flow leads to less artery clogging. There's also plenty
of evidence that exercise helps reduce the risk of some cancers,
as well as type two diabetes and cardiovascular disease. But

(13:11):
one of my favorite benefits of exercise that often goes overlooked.
Not only does it help strengthen your muscles, it helps
strengthen your bones too. Just like muscles, bones grow stronger
when they've been made to carry more weight than normal.
So your muscles contract during exercise, they apply force to
the bones that support those parts of the body. The
added force stimulates the bones and causes them to reinforce

(13:32):
themselves by building new tissue, which is really cool. But
you know, Will, I'm pretty sure we'd have to forfeit
our part time Genius membership cards if we miss the
chance to talk about some of the more amazing mental
benefits of exercise, like thanks to Fernando Gomez Pinia, a
neuro surgery professor at U c l A, we now
have some firm evidence of that connection. Namely, we know
that exercise increases the number of certain molecules in the

(13:55):
brain that are crucial for cognition. For example, there's one
molecule called brain derived I have neurotrophic factor, or b
d NF, and that stimulates the growth and survival of
brain cells and even helps facilitate communication between them. And
there have been some studies on rats that have shown
that physical activity boost b d NF levels in the hippocampus,
which is a part of the brain that's super important

(14:17):
for learning and even memory function, all right, but how
exactly does that help the rats? Well, that higher level
of b d NF actually allowed them to better remember
how they find their way through underwater mazes, and there
are tons of studies that suggest that same kind of
mental improvement from fitness happens in humans as well well.
A better brain is definitely a nice perk. But there's
another mental benefit to exercise that I like even more,

(14:39):
and that's mood enhancement. You probably heard of runners high
or exercise high, sure, and I've heard of both of those.
That's the euphoric feeling you get when you're need even
a strenuous workout, right. And while most people think it's
caused by endorphins, you know, those dandy neurochemicals that minimize
pain and stir up feelings of well being, exercise highs
are actually do more to neurotransmitters serotonin and neuro epinephrin,

(15:02):
So our bodies pump more of these throughout our nervous
systems during workouts, which elevates our mood and helps fight
back feelings of stress and depression. Okay, so maybe our
bodies aren't quite the turn coats I made them out
to be. But we've definitely been misinformed about the role
of exercise and weight loss. How do you think this
misunderstanding got started? And uh, is there really no basis

(15:22):
for thinking exercises an effective way to lose weight? Well,
there's a great questions. But before we exhaust ourselves, but
we check in with our guests for a little QUIZD.
So our guest today is partially responsible for our interest
in today's topic. His research has contributed to a much

(15:43):
better understanding of the relationship between our daily activity, our
daily calorie consumption and energy use and calorie burning and
all of that. And his name just kind of sounds
like he should have a theory named for him. Herman
Ponzer welcomed his part time genius. Hi, how you doing.
I'm doing well? Thank you? See what I mean, Mango,
I mean, can't you just imagine something called the Herman

(16:04):
Ponser theory of why we're still so freaking fast? Sounds right? Yeah, yeah,
we'll see if we can make that happen. So all right, Herman, Well,
let's just start with your research and Tanzania, I mean,
which got a lot of attention a few years ago,
and people are still talking about it. Can you tell
us why you were studying there and and and just
let our listeners know about your findings from that research. Sure. Well,

(16:26):
I'm an evolutionary biologist who's interested in how humans got
to be the way they are and how the human
body works from a kind of an evolutionary perspective. Um.
And of course humans we've all spent the most most
of our history as hunter gathers. If you go back,
you know, a couple of thousand years, all of us
are hunting and gathering, and you know, back two million
years ago with hunting gathering kind of starts. So we

(16:48):
have a long evolutionary history of hunting and gathering. Uh.
Not many populations hunt and gather anymore, um, but that
makes sort of understanding how they're lifestyles and they're you know,
their physiology works all the more important because we think
it's a really important sort of uh touchstone for understanding
how our bodies work, even in our weird environments today.

(17:09):
So in northern Candonia, there's a population called the Hotza,
who are one of the last um populations on Earth
that still hunt and gather regularly, so they don't have
any crops or domesticated animals or vehicles or guns or
machines or anything like that. They wake up every morning
and go off and hunt wild game and gather wild

(17:29):
plant foods, just like you know all of us, did
you know, just a few generations ago. Uh. And so
there's this really amazing and cool and generous and wonderful
population to work with to try to understand how that
lifestyle affects the way our bodies work. And one of
the fundamental things we wanted to understand was how many
calories they burned every day, because we thought, well, they're

(17:50):
so active. We know they're extremely active, but they've burned
tons more calories every day than we do here in
you know, in the US and Europe another kind of
westernized societies. And what we found instead, to our huge surprise,
was they burned the same number of calories every day
as you and I do. Wow. So if they were
wearing a fitbit or something like that, would it, I mean,

(18:13):
it would tell them that they had burned probably thousands
more calories than they actually had. Is that true or
they're right? Yeah, the fit that would tell them the
same lies that it tells you, which you know, however
active you are determines how many calories you burned. So
we know from other studies that we've done since that
they just to confirm our intuitions there. Uh, and this

(18:33):
is obvious to anybody who's worked with these With these folks, Uh,
they are incredibly physically active, sort of like three to
five times more physically active every day than the average westerner. Um.
And yet despite that, they're still burning in the same
number of calories as we do. So you know, they're
also really healthy. They have really healthy hearts and immune systems,
they don't have diabetes or anything like that. We think

(18:54):
the physical activity is a big part of that. So
it's important for their health, but it's not what keeps
and um, you know, sort of protected from obesity. Yeah,
and that's a big part of what we're trying to
remind our listeners of today is just because there's not
this as strong of a connection as we might have
thought between exercise and weight loss, they're obviously very real

(19:15):
benefits to doing the exercise that we do. Yeah, that's
a really important point because you know, when we came
out with this study and said, hey, look, these hunter
gather folks who are important to understand our history and
and how our bodies work. Um, and we thought that
they would burn so many work couties and then the
rest of us do. Turns out that that's not true. Um.
The response that we got was, you know, emails from

(19:37):
out of the blue saying, you know, you're destroying the
world because you're telling people not to exercise, right, And
of course that's not what we were saying at all.
You still to exercise, It's still important for your health.
It's just that it doesn't work the way that we
thought it worked, which was the exciting and fun part
of the science. You know, something that's been puzzling to us.
And this really isn't related exactly to the HODSA, but
you know, you remember during previous summer Olympics when you

(19:58):
see all these stories on Mike Phelps and his daily
diet and Michael Phelps questions, I knew it was exactly
so yeah, you had to know it was coming. So
so just I mean, and again that's this is called
the Ponser effect. So, um so, the the insane amount
of food that he would eat in order to keep

(20:19):
up with his fitness regiment. I mean, how was he
not super fat during this process. Yeah, well so there's
two I guess there's at least two pieces of this.
One is that, um, Michael Felts is not a normal
human and uh that's obvious if you watch him swim
and how fast he is an amazing as he is
an athlete. Um. And so you know what he's doing

(20:42):
during those those workout you know cycles where he's burning
ten talent colories. By the way, he's actually measured how
many calories he's bringing during these cycles. So we don't
really know. You see numbers thrown around like eight thousand
calories a thing, um, which maybe it is true. Um.
We know that if you look at like a Tour
de France cyclist like is happening right now, um, or

(21:04):
where you look at Michael Phelps during or another Olympic
athlete during these really intense training and competition times, that
for a few weeks or even you know a couple
of months, your body can burn tons more calories than
the would be normal. Um. What we don't know is
what are the limits to that. I don't think Michael

(21:24):
Pelps can burn it susan colories a day forever. I
think that you know, his body would break down. Um.
And I think that you know, he can do that
during certain periods. And the other piece of this is that,
you know, there's a reason that not everybody's Michael Phelps.
And it might well be that people who are flexible
enough and they're metabolic rate to to sort of be
able to handle that huge influx are the people who

(21:46):
end up being Olympic athletes, you know. Um. And I
think the third thing I'd say is it just goes
to show you, um, you know, we we think of
I think sometimes the paleo diet folks imagine these elite
athletes as being kind of indicative of what our path
was like, right Like if we were only if we
only exercise like Michael Phelps, we'd all be back in

(22:08):
the sort of state of nature. Um. And in fact,
people like Michael Felts are way on the extreme of
of beyond what's what's normal for any human society anywhere.
The cycial activity levels extremely too, extremely high. Well, I
feel like we've been ponsored. So it's time to turn
the tables here and put into the test. We're gonna
play a little quiz with herman here. What's our quiz

(22:29):
called today? Mango. It's called real, vintage diet or something
we just made up. All right, So this is a
pretty simple game. We're going to read you a list
of diets and you're going to tell us if they're
real or whether we just made them up. Does that
sound sound good to you? Herman? All right? Here we
go five questions. The first one the seven day milk diet,
real or made up? Um, I'll tell you this. A

(22:52):
guy ran across the US in two other drinking almost
drinking milk and almost nothing else. So I want to say.
I want to say true, because full a lot of
good stuff for you. That sounds terrible, Yeah, it's true.
In nine seventies, pamphlet put off by the California Milk
Advisory Board advised eating less and drinking milk with every meal. Wow,

(23:16):
that sounds horrible, and then running just sounds then run
across the country, all right. Number two the sexy pineapple diet,
which happens to come from Denmark. Um, the sexy pineapple diet.
I'm gonna say there's no but there's no way. I
studied people, and to tell you about people is no
human culture. Pines, pineapple sexy. I'm gonna say no to

(23:40):
the s this is actually true? And where did this
come from? Yeah, buzz, we had found this diet book
for nineteen seventy and the Chicago Tribune it actually reviewed
it and they panned it, saying, if you're ready to
be miserable about something, this diet guarantees twenty four hour dismay.
So here we go, alright, one out of two, number three,

(24:04):
Chowder through the thirty day Chowder, Power diet, Chowder through
the thirty day Chowder Power Diet. I just I don't
want that to be true, so I'm gonna say no.
You know, Mano, I don't know how many skills you have,
but this is one of your skills to make up
things like this that just sounds so real. So yes,

(24:25):
this is this is in fact fault. Right, Yeah, it's false.
There was a tune around the clock diet for a while.
Tune around the clock. Alright, so he's two for three.
Let's see the next one. Skinny like Lincoln the Gettysburg
ration diet um fault because Lincoln was skinny because he
was he had a condition. I think I don't think

(24:47):
he was skinny because I would he ate. I'm yeah, right.
So the last one here, he's three out of four
the Drinking Man's Diet. Do you have any deep held
on this? I mean man side and I got to
be give me detailed to kind of gives it away,
doesn't it. Um? So so tell me nothing, tell me nothing, um. True,

(25:11):
Absolutely true, It's true. I like that. You didn't need
any more detail, but we'll give you a little. It
was subtitled how to Lose Weight with Minimum Willpower and
it was basically in nineteen sixties Atkins Diet. It was
based on eating steak and drinking nothing but whiskey. All right,
Well that's pretty impressive. So so how's herman done today?

(25:33):
Herman did an incredible four for five, And in addition
to our harder than admiration, we're actually gonna send him
a copy of a book we found called Help Lord
the Devil Wants Me Fat, a scriptural approach to trim
and attractive bodies. That's gonna be a great prize. Well, Herman,
thanks so much for joining us today. Thank you. It
was a lot of fun. You're listening to part time

(26:08):
genius and we're talking about the surprising truth behind exercise.
So mego before the break I was wondering who to
blame for the fact that exercise has sort of become
synonymous with weight loss in our minds. Any ideas on that.
You're asking me to name names, I actually am. Yeah. Well,
I did some digging, and while it might be a
little unfair to lay the entire blame for a widespread

(26:29):
cultural misunderstanding on one individual, there's no denying that John
Mayor makes a pretty good scapegoat. I'll take it. So,
who is who is? John Mayor? Said? Well, John is
this French American scientist and nutritionists who did some high
profile research on the physiology of hunger and metabolism during
the mid twentieth century. In fact, thanks to his breakthrough

(26:51):
studies on rats, babies, and school girls in the nineteen fifties,
Mayor became the first researcher to make a connection between
exercise and weight loss. He showed that the less physically
active a person was, the more likely they were to
be overweight. All right, hold on, so you're saying that
prior to Mayor, nobody thought that burning calories through exercise
might result in weight loss. Yeah, it sounds so crazy,

(27:13):
but that line of thinking was unpopular in the scientific
community before Mayor came along. In fact, during the nineteen thirties,
some scientists actually argued that bed rest was the most
effective way to treat a beast patients, not exercise. Can
you imagine this a are you guys going to hike
without me? And my doctor says I need to shut
a few pounds. I'm just gonna lie right here right.
It sounds like one of those crazy diets or miracle

(27:35):
cures you sometimes hear about that you know never actually works.
But back to Mayor. He actually served as an advisor
to both the White House and to the w h O,
which made him a top name in nutrition and one
of the most influential figures in the public health sphere
thanks to the connections he made between exercise and weight loss.
The idea of getting fit took off in the sixties

(27:56):
and seventies, which led to this uh thriving jim industry
and a cultural obsession with working out as a way
to lose weight and to live healthier, and it clearly
snowballed from their Obesity rates have risen dramatically over the
last few decades is more and more of the population
began trading jobs on farms and in factories for these
desk jobs. It probably made sense to conclude that this

(28:18):
more sedentary lifestyle was the cause of all that weight gain, right,
But today's scientists, no, that's not the full story. It's
actually a case of mixing up cause and effect. People
aren't overweight because they're inactive. They're inactive because they're overweight.
It's harder to stay active when you weigh more, so
many people just don't. Well, it makes sense because it
points back to the real culprit behind the obesity epidemic,

(28:39):
and that's diet. We really have an obscene amount of
food options today, and thanks to lifestyles that are more
sedentary compared to previous generations, we have plenty of opportunities
to over indulge on all of that variety, and we
take full advantage of this. For instance, researchers at Harvard
conducted to surveys on food consumption. One was in the
mid nineteen seventies and then a second in the mid

(29:01):
nine es, and they found that although the number of
calories expended didn't change significantly in that time period, the
number of calories consumed in a day increased by two
hundred and sixty eight calories for men and a hundred
and forty three for women. Yeah, it really does sound
like our unfettered access to affordable, no muss prepared foods
has taken a toll on our waistlines. I mean, we're

(29:22):
constantly surrounded by food, and according to Brian wantsonk uh Cornell,
researcher who studies how we eat, we eat the amount
of food we do mostly because of what's around us.
In his book Mindless Eating, Brian writes, we overeat not
because of hunger, but because of family and friends. Packages
and plates, names and numbers, labels and lights, colors and candles,

(29:43):
shapes and smells, distractions and distances, cupboards and containers. This
list is almost as endless as it's invisible. I think
he was just showing off his illiterative ability. That was impressive.
So it's not so much that are less active lifestyles
have made us gain weight, but that we've developed the
bad habit of filling that downtime with mindless eating brought
on by food cues. Exactly. It's the reverse principle of

(30:05):
out of sight, out of mind. Brian calls it insight
in stomach creative. This guy is just full of them,
and it's a serious problem. For example, if you have
cookies or chips sitting out on your counter, there's a
strong chance you'll weigh about eight pounds more than a
person who doesn't. Oh wow, we really are that suggestible,
aren't we. Yeah, and it gets much worse. Soda is
one of the big examples that gets brought up as

(30:27):
a contributor to rising ob CD rates, and it looks
like that's for a good reason. Apparently, if you keep
soda on hand in plain sight, like front and center
in your fridge, you're gonna weigh on average twenty five
pounds more than a person who doesn't. Okay, you're just
scaring me now, my god. So we've got to figure
out a way to keep our weight in check. And
it's clear now that exercise alone isn't going to cut it. Still,

(30:49):
I don't want to write off weight loss through exercise
completely like the nineteen thirties type. So let's try to
make sense of how to really maximize its benefits. Great,
but before we get into that, let's break for quiz.

(31:09):
Welcome back to part time Genius. So here we are
Mango four chiseled bodies all in one room, or rather
rather two personal trainers and two podcasters. I think yeah,
but there's a twelve pack between the four most I'm
with you on that. So, so who do we have
us in with us in studio today? Mango, We've got

(31:29):
Janet Wortz and Mario Jordan's from the form Athletic Club
in Pont City Market right here in Atlanta. That is
just right downstairs from us. So welcome guys, thanks for
having us having us. All right, So we were just
talking before before we started out that, Mario, you were
telling us a little bit about your your breakfast regiment
every single day. What is it that usually? Um, it's

(31:50):
basically two cups of old meal and six hard boards.
It's basically, so say, okay hard Well, you didn't say
that before because I was gonna ask if we're doing
this like Rocky? So no, no, yeah, have you have
you ever done that? Can't do it? Okay, it's horrible.
I don't do scrambled eggs or yeah, you're always horrible.

(32:13):
How about you? Janee? Do you how many do you have?
Eight eggs? Oh? No, probably throughout the day I could,
but um, generally I'll have about four egg whites, sometimes
one whole egg and either protein pancake or ezekio bread oatmeal.
It just takes so long to eat for me, so
I really don't know how Mario gets through. And actually

(32:35):
with the hard boiled eggs, I have this problem where
I used to when I would travel a lot and
I would stop in and grab a couple of hard
boiled eggs real quick, and I would eat them too fast,
and I just knew that I was dying because I
couldn't breathe, like you're choking up because they're so dry.
Does that ever happen to you? Sometimes? Most of them?
I mean it depends on how long you cook it.
Something just overcooked and it will be watching. Yeah, this

(33:04):
actually speaks to what we've been talking about today. That
is important as exercises. Clearly, diet is very important. That's
why these two are in such great shape because they're
not exactly slacky. Now do you guys have your cheat
days or how does that work for you guys? Um?
For me, I prep my food um pretty much weekly,
whether it's for seven days or three days. And then yes,

(33:25):
I do cheat. I'm human. I actually work out and
eat right, so I can't eat it like that's one
of the things I do. So yes, okay, how about you.
I'm the same way. Um, I have cheap meals here
and there, that Derito's Loco stock, uh, milkshakes from Chick
fil A good, those are insane. That's my advice right now. Yea,

(33:48):
mine is case so Mexican food in case. All right. Well,
I know you guys have put yourself through a lot
as as as personal trainers, and you work really hard
every day. I don't think you've ever seeing anything like
you're going to see with today's quiz, though, Mango, what
are we putting them to the challenge with? Today? We're
gonna play a game called real Exercise fat or nonsensical
equipment we just made up? All right? So this game

(34:10):
is super easy. We're gonna read you six questions and
you just have to tell us if the gym equipment
we're talking about is real or something we made up.
You got it, got it, all right. So because we
know you like a challenge, we're gonna put you against
one another, all right, So, Janey, we're gonna let you
go first. Now. The first one is and I'll read
you the tagline along with it. Okay, it's Hawaii chair.

(34:32):
If you can sit, you can get fit. This is
promising you can lose weight the Hawaiian way. This electric
seat keeps your hips and bottom moving and a constant
hul emotion and you as you answer phones and file paperwork.
Is this something we made up? Or was this a
real exercise fad? Oh god, I really I watch a

(34:52):
lot of infomercials. Yeah. Um, I'm gonna say that it's real.
It is real, a one for one so you really
like move around moves. It moves your bottom around like
it's so crazy as this is how Hawaiian. Alright, Mario, alright,

(35:13):
she's one up on he. Here we go the human
slink a sizer because you're slinky, shouldn't have all the fun.
So this is building off the slinky craze of the
nineteen fifties. This rubber suit and helmet with a spring
on it was made to help obese obese kids somersault
downstairs while shedding away the pounds. Is this a real
exercise fad or equipment we made up? Uh, I'm gonna

(35:35):
say it's they're so good at this. It is something
we made up. Mang goes a threat on this He's
pretty good at making these things up, all right. Number three,
This is back to you, Janet. The mulby revolving hammock
guaranteed to make your spine young. This young hammock treated
your body like the net and slowly spun you around

(35:56):
for better back health and weight loss. Is this a
real exercise fat or something we made up? I was
trying to visualize it, and I couldn't even visualize that.
So I'm gonna say it's made up. We finally have
a wrong answer. They're not perfect. We thought this is
a real exercise fat and super bizarre. A picture of this.

(36:17):
Number four, Mario, this was back to you air shorts
great for shedding body moisture. These versatile, inflatable shorts were
supposed to bake your stomach, thighs, and bottom, causing you
to sweat as you worked out or wandered about town.
Is this a real exercise fat or something we made up? Uh?
As ridiculous as it sounds, let's say it's real ridiculous.

(36:45):
The pressure is on. Okay, I think this is a
two pointer, though, if I'm not mistaken, if I'm reading
the rules correctly, the official rules of our game here okay,
tag suit, the it new way to weight loss, A
weighted suit you can wear as you run around playing
adult tag with your friends. Just don't stay on base.
Is this a real fat or something we made up?

(37:09):
A real thing? Oh no, it's equipment we made off.
She didn't see as I was trying to make eye contact.
All right, here we go. Now this one, actually, unfortunately
Mario comes with a penalty if you miss it of
negative one. So let's see. So the pressure is on
the game. One last one. This one is called Twist

(37:31):
in Tone, the exerciser that's fun, easy and works. Basically,
it was a plastic lazy Susan that you could stand
on while doing the twist. Totally worth the five dollars
and cents. Real fat or something we made up? It's real?
Oh I remember seeing something like that. Oh wow. All right,

(37:56):
we'll tell us how our contestants have done here today,
Mango well as all ways, first place wins a handwritten
note from us to your mom or boss, singing your praises.
So Mario, that's coming your way. And because we don't
want anyone going home empty handed, Jane, you're getting a
pair of hander pants. The number one underwear inspired gloves
on the market today. Well, thank you guys so much

(38:19):
for joining us today on Part Time Genius. Thank you
for having us. So we were talking before about how
we've been conditioned over the last fifty years or so

(38:40):
to associate exercise with weight loss and what has turned
out to be a fairly unhealthy way. Yeah. I mean,
a lot of people start workout routines because they expect
the pounds to just melt off based on everything we've
been told about how to stay fit. But when that
doesn't happen as much as we expect, and the payoff
seems too slow or too little for the amount of effort, well,
then it's good body or gym membership exactly. And that's

(39:03):
the real shame. So many of us put unhealthy pressure
on ourselves as a result of these unrealistic expectations that
we put on an exercise, and the end result is
often that we blame ourselves and just give up on
losing weight altogether. And that also causes us to miss
out on the very real mental and physical benefits of
regular exercise. So let's try to help avoid that. Mango.

(39:23):
Let's put the true effectiveness of exercise for weight loss
into perspective. Okay, Well, first off, I think we should
say that the main reason why a lot of people's
exercise routines go could put is the same reason why
sixty of diet or is returned to their original weight
within three years. As diet and behavior expert Charlotte Markey
told Scientific American, people think too much about short term

(39:44):
goals and don't think enough about sustainable changes. If you're
going to lose weight, you have to change your behaviors
for the rest of your life for otherwise you gain
it back. And that's not a sexy message because it
seems daunting. Yeah, it does. And does she have any
suggestions on what kind of lifelong they aavioral changes people
might actually be able to stomach. Yeah, it's all about sustainability.
So for example, people don't have to completely cut out

(40:07):
entire food groups or ice cream or anything like that.
But we should strive for small scale changes that we
stick to, like dropping a soda or two from our
daily diet so we can cut a few hundred calories
from our intake, or staying on the lookout to avoid
mindless eating. Well, I think that's the kind of sustainability
is what we should aim for with exercise too. I mean,
once you stop thinking about the physical activity primarily is

(40:29):
a way to lose weight, it frees us up to
add exercise into our routines and enjoyable ways that will
be less likely to give up on totally. And despite
all we've learned about the limitations of calorie burning through workouts,
there actually are some ways to use exercise to help
us with our weight loss efforts. Like what. Well, for
one thing, exercise helps distract us from our food cravings.

(40:49):
It gives people something else to concentrate on, and there
are some forms of exercise that can help maximize the
amount of weight you lose from fat rather than muscle. Well,
that's a good point. So we've mostly been talking about
exercise in broad terms, but it's worth mentioning that most
forms of exercise fall into one of two broad groups.
So we've got aerobic type exercise like running, biking, swimming, rowing, etcetera,

(41:12):
which helps strengthen your heart and build stamina, and then
anaerobic exercise such as weightlifting or sprinting, which helps increase
lean muscle mass. Right, and both types of workout will
burn fat and help you lose a little weight, But
studies have found that aerobic training does provide the advantage
in terms of most weight and fat burned. So if
you're looking for the best way to burn the most

(41:32):
fat and the least amount of time, aerobic exercises probably
the way to go. That's true, but I wouldn't trade
in your barbells for running shoes just yet. If sustainability
really is the goal, it's not a bad idea to
gain some extra lean muscle. The research shows that an
increase in muscle can speed up your resting metabolic rate,
plus booster strength, and even lead to a better night's sleep.

(41:53):
So if you're really in it for the long haul,
the best strategy is probably do a little bit of both,
which sounds like a smart plan. And other thing I
always wonder about is fitness trackers like garments and Tom
Tom's and fit fits. Lots of people swear by them
and they're everywhere nowadays. Like I even saw that McDonald's
was giving them away in happy Meals last year and
what had to have have been one of the most ironic promotions.

(42:16):
So everybody has these things drapped to their risks, But
did they really help us lose weight or to come
any healthier. Well, you know, we recently had a listener
asked a similar question. So I did some digging, and
it turns out not really. I mean, there isn't a
ton of long term research yet on the effects of
wearable fitness technology. It hasn't yet been around long enough.
But most of the short term studies have found that

(42:38):
wearing fitness trackers only lead to a small boost and
physical activity, not nearly enough to lead to any improvements
in overall health. And what's worse, one study found that
when people were given the option of wearing a fitness
tracker or not, the people who chose to wear it
actually lost less weight than those who didn't know. It
was seven points seven pounds compared to the thirteen pounds

(42:59):
of those who went to cliss Which isn't exactly a
bringing endorsement, no, but it's not completely a lost cause.
I mean, keeping track of steps and calories can be
a useful motivator for some folks, provided they don't take
that success as an excuse to reward themselves with their
extra large pizza. Right, and uh, we've seen how that goes, right,
So fitness trackers can definitely be a helpful weapon in

(43:20):
the never ending battle of the bulge. But just like
exercise or dieting, they're no guarantee of weight loss on
their own. Well, I don't know about you will, but
I'll just talk about exercise has me feeling a little competitive.
Where do you say we go toe to toe in
the part time genius? All right, I'm ready when you
are a mango m Yeah, alright. So here's a tip

(43:50):
that comes straight from one of America's favorite fitness gurus, Barbie.
In slumber Party, Barbie came to your place with a
diet book in hand, and the only tip in it
don't eat terrible. Uh though, here's one that's even worse,
the tapeworm diet. Back in the early twentieth century, diet
pills filled with tapeworms were sold over the counter with

(44:11):
the promise that you could eat more and still lose weight.
And of course, when the baby tapeworms grew up to
be like these twenty five foot monstrosities and started causing
things like meningitis and dimension in their hosts, the government
decided that the weight loss through worms was overrated, and
they banned the pills. Diet coke might not be that
much better for you than regular coke, but it certainly

(44:31):
is lighter. While I can of coke will sink in water,
you know, kind of like a bulldog, diet coke actually
floats more like a hot dog. I'm glad you put
the dog and just really helps you understand what floating is.
My favorite exercise item from the seventies is the Sauna
exercise suit, which looks nothing like a suit. It's more

(44:52):
like a tinfoil marshmallow man contraption that promised to help
you shed pounds as you just went about your daily business.
Calvin Coolige's main exercise in the office was through an
electric horse, kind of like a mechanical bull. He'd write
it three times a day on various settings, from saunter
to gallop, but the regiment sounded so silly he kept

(45:12):
it a secret until it accidentally bucked him from the
saddle and had to be put down by an electrician.
So that's pretty good. But here's a great tip from
the seventeen hundreds, if you want to lose weight, stay
away from swamps. In seventy seven, a so called scientist
named Thomas Short observed that beast people seemed to live
near swamps, so it was important. Work on the matter,

(45:35):
titled The Causes and Effects of Corpulents naturally suggested there
was only one smart way to lose weight, move away
from swamps. Yeah, that swamped. It makes a whole lot
of sense. I think I gotta give you the title
on this when congratulations, Mango. I think that's it for
today's show. Thanks so much for listening, a mango, This
show got me inspired. Want to go for a run?
Absolutely not, Thanks again for listening. Part Time Genius is

(46:11):
a production of how stuff works and wouldn't be possible
without several brilliant people who do the important things we
couldn't even again to understand. Kristin McNeil does the editing thing.
Noel Brown made the theme song and does the mixy
mixy sound thing. Gary Rowland does the exact producer thing.
Gay Bluesier is our lead researcher, with support from the
Research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown and Lucas Adams

(46:31):
and Eve Jeff Cook gets the show to your ears.
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Do we do we forget Jason? Jason who