Diet is way more important than exercise for removing body fat. The insulin response causes the body to store fat. You can burn it off by exercising but if you're having a strong insulin response to the foods that you're eating, the unbearable hunger that you'll face will cause you to overcompensate for the exercise by eating even more.

Aerobic exercise greatly improves insulin sensitivity.

http://www.news-medical.net/news/2009/04/23/48760.aspx http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090901082406.ht... http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2010/02/01/Exercise-affects-i...

Here is evidence that exercise on it's own works for weight loss.

https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.duke.car...

You can find lots more in sports medicine textbooks. Plenty of studies have varied exercise and diet in order to fine tune muscle gain vs fat loss for various purposes (mostly related to weight class).

I would not trust Gary Taubes in general. I've only had one exposure to him, but I found him to be dishonest in that instance.

http://crazybear.posterous.com/how-1-graph-reveals-what-3000...

With all due respect, that perfectly fits the theories that Taubes is advocating. "High intensity" exercise over six months manages to drop only 3.5 kilograms on average (and add 1.4 kg in muscle). That is not terribly significant by any definition, let alone the one I gave, and based on my (other) reading it seems likely that actually happened fairly early in the study and everyone has plateaued by the end. I dropped that in my first two weeks of dropping carbs and have kept it off for a few years now in addition to a couple dozen other pounds and drop that amount pretty much at will when I accidentally gain it back from slipping on the carbs too much. (Which I am slowly but surely getting better at avoiding.) And I guarantee you that I did not exercise during that first period. (I do now, because it's much easier now.)

It might be significant if we could just assume that's a linear progression and you'll keep losing that every six months, but that's not a conclusion you can make. The bar for proving exercise works as a weight loss method in the literature is low, because it can't get over any higher bar than maybe ten pounds with a fairly large exercise load.

("But you're just citing your own anecdotal evidence!" In this case, only as a tidbit to show how unimpressed by that study I am, not because I consider it proof. Proof I'm leaving to others who have done it better.)

I was only arguing against this statement from your post: "I am not aware of any evidence that exercise on its own actually works for weight loss..."

I'm not disputing that the obese need both diet and exercise to reach a healthy weight (that's pretty easy to see, just by looking at the Harris Benedict equation), I'm just making you aware of evidence that exercise on it's own does work for weight loss.

As for whether 11lbs of fat loss is significant or not, I guess that's mainly a question of where you draw the line for "significant". If you want to label anything less than 20lbs in 6 months "not terribly significant", be my guest.

Also, jogging 4x/week (what the paper described as "high intensity") is not a "large exercise load".

My own personal experience always causes me to shrug, in reaction to the carbo-phobia that seems so rampant, of late. I put in several hundred kilometres per week on my bicycle during the warmer months. I eat a massive amount of carbs, including some with the dreaded "high glycemic index" that's so chic to discuss. I've never been healthier (great numbers for my weight, blood pressure, etc). But again, my personal anecdote does not constitute a scientific study.

Exercise can decrease appetite, makes you feel better (which decreases binge eating), and makes unintentional exercises (like climbing stairs and moving furniture) easier.

On the other hand, it takes 15 minutes to lose 100 carbs on a treadmill, and about 3 seconds to get them back at McDonalds.

Nobody is saying exercise is a bad thing, we are just saying it isn't the best thing for making you lose weight.

I lost about 15 pounds earlier this year and it was entirely by changing my diet (and by changing my diet I mainly just cut out beer and pizza on the weekends which were a staple of my friday & saturday nights, and switched in sushi for the nights when i didn't want to cook and ate microwave food, that's it)

Now I'm going to the gym for 4 weeks, and I feel great. I have put on a little bit of muscle but I just plain feel better. But I'm working my ass off in the gym and my weight hasn't gone down 0.1 lbf, while I burned off 15 by just changing my diet and never stepping foot in a gym.

Just now, looking around the office here in Tokyo - most of the engineers here sit at their screens day in day out from 9.30am through to past 10pm. Most of them don't exercise more than walking to the elevator and maybe standing on the train for the half hour daily commute. They are all, with a couple of exceptions, "skinny" by western standards. Why are these sedentary office workers not gaining the pounds? It's got to be the diet.

...or genetics.

(I'm not arguing the specific cause, just pointing out that it's not as simple as diet alone.)

yes there is that too.. but I would like to add some anecdotal evidence.. I am not Asian and while living here I've gradually adopted the same diet ( and adapted to the portion sizes ) and it has done me wonders.

There is also a very popular article in Time this week on this subject, "Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin":

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1914857-4,00....

Gary Taubes is a journalist, not an expert in nutrition. He also has a track record of questionable academic honesty. He's an excellent writer who has been able to cash in on fad diets, but follow his advice at your own risk.

http://reason.com/archives/2003/03/01/big-fat-fake

Having read GCBC, that is not at all my impression of Gary Taubes. As well, the piece to which you link is what comes across to me as dishonest, so I was glad to see Taubes' response:

http://reason.com/archives/2003/03/01/an-exercise-in-vitriol...