I like Krista’s Big Boss paradigm of exercise.

Lots of people will tell us that body composition stuff is 90% dietary. So why exercise, right?

I like to think that the exercise leaves the body looking like it exercises once the fat is gone. Why go to the trouble of following an exacting diet if you are just going to look like a deflated bag o’ skin when you are done?

Thanks Krista!

Venuto’s point about exercise reducing appetite is a good one. Many of us have dealt with feeling “hungry” when our bodies don’t actually need food, but when I leave the gym it’s the reverse; my body craves sustenance, but my brain thinks food sounds icky and would much rather take a nice nap.

I wonder what the difference is, nutrient-wise, between my post-workout protein shake and Mr. Cloud’s post-workout blueberry bar. Psychologically, of course, there’s a huge gulf; I don’t regard exercise as “grueling expiation” or “abuse,” and the food I eat after it is not a “reward.” It’s telling that Mr. Cloud admits to “self-medicat[ing] with lots of Italian desserts” during a rocky relationship and its aftermath — more proof, if proof were needed, of an unhealthy attitude toward food. He’s gotten rid of the extra desserts, but not the idea that food should be used as a painkiller.

The whole tone reminds me of the old Roman Catholic practice of selling indulgences — food is “sinful,” and exercise purchases forgiveness for past sins and the license to commit future ones. No, no, no!

@Elizabeth
I think there actually is something to be said for exceptions to rules. Most people who try to loose weight can’t (in the long term, with 5+ years sustainability). The people who do loose weight and keep it off for 5 years are, in fact, statistical exceptions. We can debate the multitudes of reasons why that might be from here until next year, but that’s the reality. You being an exception is certainly not bad or wrong, but it does mean that (for whatever reasons, whether individual or contextual, biological or environmental) it doesn’t always work to generalize from your experience to everyone else’s.

It’s always tempting to say “well, I did it, why shouldn’t you be able to?” People do this all the time in terms of class in the US – “well, i grew up poor and pulled myself up by my bootstraps, got an education, and am comfortably affluent now. those people in the ghettos on welfare only have themselves to blame.” There’s a fallacy in both ignoring all the possible differences between you and whoever else, and the general human tendency to attribute one’s own successes to individual merit/effort and one’s own failures to context while attributing others failures to lack of merit/effort and others successes to context.

I think what really annoys me is the self-control “muscle” simile, where Cloud says that if you make yourself exercise, you “wear out” that muscle and thus cannot resist food. Yes, because doing things and not doing things are the exact same type of effort.

It’s kind of interesting, though, to find myself lumped into a group of lunatic superhumans who have managed to do what no normal person can possibly do, through some combination of extraordinary willpower and not-so-latent masochism. My mom brags on me sometimes, and people have asked her how I’ve lost weight. When she tells them, they say “oh, I couldn’t do that.” What? I can do that! I am doing that!

But I’ve gotten into trouble before for assuming that, if I can do something, it must be easy…

I guess those of us who are eating well and exercising are just hallucinating our gains in fitness and losses in fat?

And by the way, thank you so much for this highly inspirational website!