Who would of thought: The exercize makes you fat claim makes Guardian's Bad Science feature

[EndersDame]

Why would you listen to a government health message, or your GP, when the Sunday Telegraph has more exciting news? "Health warning: exercise makes you fat" is the kind of full-width headline you want to see across a broadsheet page: it's affirmative, it's reassuring, and it gives you clear permission to sit on your arse all day. "Re-programming body fat is the key to weight loss, not working out." Praise be. "Is it possible exercise is doing nothing to make us slimmer?" Please let the answer be yes.

-Snip-

I have this trial in front of me. It's simply not true. Only 15% of all participants gained weight during the study, and these were the only people to increase their food intake, but the weight gained even by these people was lean tissue, and they lost fat tissue.

In fact, what the Telegraph don't tell you, bafflingly, is that overall, participants doing supervised exercise in this trial lost more weight. People doing exercise lost 3.2kg more weight, on average, over just 12 weeks.Prof Blundell says: "The Telegraph article was a complete distortion of the facts of our investigation, which showed that exercise is very effective for weight loss. They completely reversed the outcome of our study."

Misleading journalism such as this is becoming a public health problem. We've previously seen the evidence that people change their health behaviour in response to what they read in the media.To add to this, the World Cancer Research Fund recently commissioned a survey from YouGov. This was a proper survey, in a representative sample, from a reputable data collector, where anyone is allowed to see the questions and the results, not a secret PR survey to get free advertising in a newspaper. Healthy living advice hasn't changed at all for at least a decade – don't smoke, exercise, eat more fruit and veg. And a quarter of all respondents said that because scientists keep changing their minds, you might as well eat whatever you want, because it won't make any difference anyway. Have another pastry and put the telly on

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/aug/29/telegraph-exercise-fat-bad-science

[damntexdem]

1. Even if it did, fat and fit is healthier than skinny and unfit.

It's time for the Guardian to take a hike, at least 30 minutes every day.

[orpupilofnature57]

3. When is fat fit? At a barbecue?

[EndersDame]

8. Burger Curls!

[BlooInBloo]

4. Yes. Clearly those are the only two choices.

[orpupilofnature57]

2. An ounce of prevention ,cant make them ,their pound.

It's selling mental well being ,which is what people care more about than their health ,until it's in jeopardy.

[defendandprotect]

5. Obviously the main "fix" for losing weight is undereating . . .

which in itself causes many other problems --

That's what most people replying to the other thread were indicating --

Meanwhile, exercise will make you hungry -- but it can also help with many

health conditions -- helpful for the heart, etal.

[EndersDame]

6. I was thought that the best thing to do was eat good for you foods and exercize

[flvegan]

7. FINALLY! Someone actually read the PLoS study.

I've been saying this since the first idiot first published an article about this. See, when you actually READ the study you're basing your article on, you don't look like such an idiot.

[Pharlo]

9. To say exercise will make you fat is

completely erroneous. You can slim down and gain weight. If your SOLE quantitative measure is the scale, it will appear you are gaining weight. But, if your clothing is becoming looser, it is obviously not fat. This will happen to me if I stop exercising for a while. I'll 'lose' weight, but clothes get tighter. When I start exercising, I'll 'gain' weight. It's the whole 'muscle weighs more' argument. So, I bypass the whole issue by not weighing myself and just making sure my clothes fit.