Andrey Khavryuchenko himself

Why I “love” the journalists

The Scientist and the Stairmaster. Why most of us believe that exercise makes us thinner—and why we’re wrong.

In 1977, for instance, the National Institutes of Health hosted its second conference on obesity and weight control. “The importance of exercise in weight control is less than might be believed,” the assembled experts concluded, “because increases in energy expenditure due to exercise also tend to increase food consumption, and it is not possible to predict whether the increased caloric output will be outweighed by the greater food intake.”

That same year, The New York Times Magazine reported that there was “now strong evidence that regular exercise can and does result in substantial and—so long as the exercise is continued—permanent weight loss.”

By 1990, a year after Pi-Sunyer’s pessimistic assessment of the evidence, Newsweek was declaring exercise an “essential” element of any weight-loss program, and the Times had stated that on those infrequent occasions “when exercise isn’t enough” to lose weight, “you must also make sure you don’t overeat.”

It’s wonderful how they are easy to put things exactly in a wrong order.