Can You Lose Weight with Exercise Alone?

Reams of evidence on this issue point to an unequivocal answer

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Don’t stress too much about cutting calories if you want to shed pounds—focus on getting more exercise. That’s the controversial message beverage giant Coca-Cola is backing in its new campaign to curb obesity. Coke is pushing this idea via a new Coke-backed nonprofit called Global Energy Balance Network, reported on August 9. Money from Coke, the reported, is also financing studies that support the notion that exercise trumps diet. But is there any merit to such a stance? Not much, says Rutgers University–based diet and behavior expert Charlotte Markey. She is the author of an upcoming cover story in Scientific American MIND on this topic, and spoke about the Coke claims with on Monday.

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In your fall feature you write “study after study shows that working out is not terribly effective for weight loss on its own.” Why is that?

Two years ago there was a review study in that concluded dieting often actually led to weight gain. Why would that happen?

Coke’s message is don’t worry so much about dieting but worry a bit more about exercise. Is there something to that then?promotional video from Coke’s group, linked to by the exercise scientist Steve Blair says we don’t know what is causing obesity and we need more research. That message is oversimplified and terribly misleading. We actually know a great deal about what leads to obesity. It’s not a great mystery. People are eating too much and not exercising enough…that makes it inevitable that people will be obese. The group’s emphasis on physical activity is misleading based on what the data shows. There’s no data to support saying if you exercise for 30 minutes three times a week that this will take care of the problem. We have data refuting that. 

In reality, we need people to stop drinking sugary beverages like soda. Soda is the one consumable beverage that is repeatedly cited as having the biggest impact on obesity rates. From a public health standpoint, we want soda out of schools and we want cities to really decrease intake of soda—and Coca-Cola knows this and knows they are being proactive and defensive against taxes on soda and other limitations.

What does a sustainable weight loss regime look like?

Exercise is important for sustaining weight loss though, right? Can you talk a bit about what the literature says on that?

But exercise also has real physical benefits.

Researchers are supposed to note their funding sources. So if scientists acknowledge their work is supported by Coke, does it resolve conflicts of interest?

I think the issue is what is done with the results and how they are presented to the public. Coke is spending millions of dollars here and has a marketing PR budget that researchers don’t have so they can take the findings and share them and use them to try to fight policy and all these laws that are being debated about taxing soda. Coke has this body of evidence that is biased since they are funding exercise studies and not diet studies. They can then use these in public policy debates, and I think that could be really worrisome.

[ Scientific American ]

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