Was reading a little bit more of the Weight Loss for Food Lovers book this morning. I was up to the Chapter on exercise and why apparently it's not really that important. Supposedly there was a study done saying that people who exercised for 1 hour every day only lost on average 2kgs per year. (This was without modifying their diet at all, so the study was able to look at exercise only.) Therefore, he says, there's not much point in exercising if you don't feel like it. He says that if you take the figure of 10-12kgs per year for safe and achievable weight loss, then you should put 5 times as much effort into modifying your diet as you do exercising. This is great news, as "most people" don't like exercising, he says.
Firstly, that study sounds a bit dodgy - I've read from many sources that people shouldn't exercise every day; it becomes less effective over time. Also, what sort of exercise were they doing? Many sources also say it's important to mix up different activities to keep your body challenged or, again, it becomes less effective over time. And were they all eating exactly the same thing for the howwever-many-years that the study ran? I can't be bothered looking it up, so I'll just leave those questions hanging and move on.
I could go on about how I disagree with his conclusion - I think that exercising is a very valuable thing to do for many reasons (which I think I've talked about before), but I'm not going to go into it, because in the very next paragraph, he contradicts himself. He says that, ok, you don't need to do planned exercise - but he talks about the importance of Incidental Activity in making sure you do enough activity to get the small amount of exercise that you do need (the 5 times less, remember?). He recommends purchasing a pedometer and working to increase the number of steps you do every day. But oh dear - the target number of steps is so high that the average person who does a desk job simply couldn't achieve them in a day without having to do some planned exercise. So he says that "most people" should go for a walk to achieve their target number of steps. Ah ha! So exercise is required after all. All the readers who purchased the book on the exciting promise of never having to exercise again are starting to pout.
I should mention that he goes on to explain why exercise is important (again, contradicting himself) - it reduces stress and anxiety, the endorphins make you feel good, toning exercises can help to change your body shape, etc. I do have to admit, this is a noble attempt to talk up the benefits of exercise. Unfortunately though, after a whole chapter of explaining why we don't have to do exercise, it rings a bit hollow.
On the plus side, the next chapter explains why we should drink alcohol every day. (Red wine, to be specific.) Woohoo! No more than 3 glasses, but no less than one glass - every day! That's a soothing balm after the whole nasty exercise business, isn't it? Now that I think about it, perhaps there's a reason why the Chapters are in this particular order....