There are a few minutes of exercise at the end of the film. Joe Cross is shown riding a bike for a few seconds near the beginning, then not exercising until he's already down to a healthy weight. From what I can see of Cross's muscular condition, he looks like he's been working out throughout his regime. This should've been given a lot more film time.
shareYeah, obviously eating right and exercising would have done the exact same thing.
I felt this documentary was a big commercial for a juicer.
I doubt you watched the Doc. I remember Joe losing an average of over 2 pounds per day. No amount of "eating right" will allow you to do that compared to juicing healthy, organic leafy greens.
shareNo, the key is eating right and/or exercising. If you do enough exercising you don't even have to eat right.
Basically the crux of it is calories in, calories out. This is it no matter what. Either you starve yourself and let you body get its energy from your fat cells (as in this doc) or you exercise loads so your body needs more than the food you give it and also turns to your fat for energy.
I haven't actually watched the documentary, but a typical (yeah) 300lb man needs at least 3000 calories tomaintain that weight. So eat less than 3000 and you'll lose weight. You either stop eating leaving you a 3000 calorie deficit which is taken from fat or you carry on eating but do a tonne of exercise to increase your calories needed and put yourself into a calorie deficit. If you can create a deficit the same as not eating by exercising then you would have the same results.
It is literally that simple. Either eat less to create that deficit or exercise to create a deficit.
No, the key is eating right and/or exercising. If you do enough exercising you don't even have to eat right.Erm, the key to what exactly? Certainly not to being healthy that's for sure.
No, only exercising will not get you to the point that these men got to, esp in the same length of time.
This is not JUST about weight. They both had illnesses caused by a lifetime of eating highly processed foods AND being sedentary.
The documentary is about SICK and morbidly obese people getting "healthy." Not getting thin. There's a difference. Thin people are not necessarily healthy.
When you watch the documentary, if you pay attention, you will see not just weight loss, but a glow to the skin of the men, rosy cheeks, an uplifted face. Especially that woman who did it for a couple of weeks. The first video she did after she was on the fast, I could tell immediately she was healthier. Her undereye bags were gone, her face looked smoother and slightly lifted. She looked healthy.
I think the scientific basis for it is that you are only consuming the nutrients you need, and since they're in liquid form, your body can use them at high capacity and very quickly. There's no meat, no chemical, no nothing else to interfere with that process.
These are morbidly obese and sick people. There is a difference between that condition and being a few pounds overweight.
You don't seem to know much about weight loss. If you starve yourself, your body will slow down and learn to get by on fewer calories, so you have to eat even less. You cannot exercise away 200 pounds of fat. It's impossible. Get our your calculator and figure out how many calories you burn doing a certain amount of reasonable exercise daily (for a person who is commuting and working 12 hours a day already). Exercise speeds up the metabolism, firms you up, makes you healthier, and helps you lose weight. But it is not the solution for morbidly obese people. It is hard for a morbidly obese person to even walk, much less exercise to any degree (that's why swimming is important to them).
There is no chance he was losing 2 pounds per day. A pound of fat is 3500 calories, so to lose 2 pounds a day he would have to be burning 7000 calories more than he was eating. Even eating nothing and exercising all day that would be nearly impossible.
shareI agree there is no long term weight loss without exercise Period!! You can have short term maybe medium term gains but as you get older your metabolism slows down. Thats when diets don't work. The only way to increase your metabolism is through Cardiovascular exercise.
shareRubbish. I am living proof that exercise needn't be taken in large quantities at all. I hate exercise, always have and always will.
Despite that, I've lost 80lbs over the past couple of years - by controlling my intake and learning how I need to adjust it as the weight drops.
Exercise? You can keep it, matey.
You might agree but it's nonsense. I loathe exercise especially any that involves sweating. But I lost 2 inches off my waist in 2 months simply by replacing most of what I used to eat for dinner with vegetable juice. I was normal weight to begin with and had a decent diet anyway, but wanted to reduce belly fat and increase isothiocyanate intake. And like Joe, my mysterious rashes disappeared. No need for exercise or pseudo-science "detox" diets or willpower or effort. As this was a permanent change and not a fad diet, I expect to continue losing belly fat.
shareThat's incorrect.
When you're hugely overweight, it takes a large caloric intake just to maintain everything. That's why, generally speaking, the bigger you are, the easier it is to lose weight, and vice versa. When you're overweight, and cut down drastically on your caloric intake (1500/day or less), it drops off you. When I was ill and unable to eat (practically anything), I lost ~28lbs in two weeks, doing no exercise.
I agree that exercise is more important than diet when it comes to losing weight, or indeed any physical conditioning. And the point is, he had so much energy (and free time, not spent stuffing his face), he had to/wanted to exercise to expend it all.
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I disagree. While exercise is important, it is mainly our diet that is the problem. 20-30 minutes of light to moderate exercise is certainly beneficial. 60 minutes even more so. But our diet has become so unbalanced that the average person could not possibly find enough time to exercise to counteract the damage caused by eating a micro-nutrient poor diet.
I once thought I could balance my life by doing two hour intensive workouts per day, which I believed would boost my metabolism and allow me eat what I wanted. What I found was that while I was consistently exercising, I would maintain my weight or perhaps lose a pound or two here or there. However, my poor eating habits frustrated any attempts to lose significant weight. What's worse, eventually, my exercise regimen would start to falter. A two hour workout would become a one hour workout, then a half hour workout, and so on. But my diet would remain the same and I would begin to gain weight again.
The beauty of eating a micro-nutrient rich diet is that you can maintain an ideal weight regardless of how much you exercise, because you will only eat when you are truly hungry.
Exercise is very important, but for many of the morbidly obese people in the movie, such as the truck driver, strenuous exercise is not possible.
shareEverybody wants the lazy way out. The big lie, that so many readily fall for, is that you can eat some magic combination of food and that's all it takes to lose weight or maintain perfect weight. Atkins and all the other fad diets are great examples, and the long-term results of these in general are failure.
"Yes, I want to continue to sit on my butt with the remote watching the football game all weekend, wheel myself around in a car, parking as close as possible to where I'm going, take elevators and other no-effort devices, and have people wait on me, while I eat a magic formula and get nice and trim. Dream on.
If you couldn't lose weight by consistent exercising, you were simply eating too much, too many calories, unless you've found a way to flout the simple laws of physics (which some delude themselves into thinking is possible). What you eat can either go into producing energy, or producing fat, it's your choice, but you're fooling yourself if you think you can't lose weight by exercise.
A juice diet is OK if it's sustainable over a lifetime...otherwise it's an often-repeated map to failure in the long run. Eat reasonably in whatever manner you can maintain over time, but you won't be able to eat much without gaining weight if you don't use up the energy. People are so easily fooled when you're telling them what they want to hear, that's why there are so many lardbutts around, they can't accept a simple truth, or at least aren't willing to put out any effort to get results, but instead look for ways around reality. Short-term success, maybe, long-term failure, most certainly.
First of all, no one is saying a juice diet is sustainable over a lifetime. The juice diet is more for short-term detoxification and is a fast way to get a lot of nutrients in the body. This should not be done without guidance from a doctor, IMO.
But to your larger point, I agree and disagree:
Yes, we have gotten to be a nation of lazy-asses. No question about it. I live in a neighborhood with some wonderful walking pathways and sidewalks. Believe it or not, my wife and daughter and I are just about the only family in a neighborhood of 26 families that will regularly walk to the store 3 blocks away rather than get in a car.
And inside the stores, the laziness gets even worse. I can't tell you how many able bodied people I see driving those little carts, pretending they are disabled. Of course, many of these people will eventually become disabled by obesity if they don't get up and walk.
But the scientists that I have heard speaking on the subject say the recent skyrocketing numbers in obesity are most likely caused by the changing diet rather than changing physical activity. Simply put, physical activity hasn't changed as much as the food supply has. Which is not to say that it hasn't changed: the advent of the computer has certainly made most people more sedentary. It's just the increasing supply of processed food over the last 50 years has been even more radical of a change.
Personally, I would like to walk at least 5 miles per day, or run at least 2 miles, or work out in the gym at least an hour. But as a practical matter, with work to do, a long commute, and a child to raise, I probably only exercise 4 or 5 days a week. I have been able to drop 25 pounds not by increasing activity, but by orienting my diet towards whole foods, primarily fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and very limited amounts of poultry and fish. And by cutting out processed foods almost completely (I do stray from time to time), my health has improved significantly.
Sorry, no matter what people who work out would like to think about what they're doing, the simple fact is: Calories in must be < calories out.
Exercising burns very little in itself, but the true benefit is raising the basal rate which allows you to burn more while just living.
Point is: The two people mainly showcased in this film(Joe & Phil) don't -NEED- exercise to get major results. Simply cutting out the insane intake of calories is enough to achieve a decently healthy weight(and in many cases, a perfectly fine weight).
Diet has everything to do with weight loss. It's convenient for people to go to a fast food place rather than take the time to cook a nutritious, healthy meal. It's also more expensive to eat healthy. Diet is why there are so many extremely obese people in the US not lack of exercise. Exercise is definitely important but how can someone who's pushing 400 lbs realistically infuse an exercise regime into their lives?
What I got from Joe was that he did the 60 day fast which helped transition him into a healthier way of eating... then he started exercising which is covered late in the film. The focus of the film, however, was how juicing is life-changing and can actually cure disease.
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For those of you regurgitating nonsense like "Calories in must be < calories out", you obviously know nothing about nutrition and health.
Caloric intake is not that simple. It's not some simple mathematical formula you learned in grade school.
Eating 3,500 calories of celery is NOT the same as eating 3,500 calories of hamburger meat. Not all calories are equal, or basically, a calorie isn't always just a calorie. Each is digested differently. Each is converted to energy differently.
That's where programs like Weight Watchers fail. People on those programs think one calorie equals one calorie no matter how you slice it. But 100 calories from a Pepsi is not the same as 100 calories from an apple.
And a "healthy weight" doesn't mean you're always healthy. I know people who, technically, are overweight, but they're healthy (low cholesterol, etc.). And I know people who are thin who are unhealthy (high cholesterol, etc.) with impending heart problems.
What I'm saying is that calories, weight, and everything related are not always black and white.
The reality is, as some of you already know, that the healthiest lifestyle is one that incorporates a healthy diet and exercise.
Do you think eating spinach all day exercises your heart? No. It's stupid to even think such a thing. Along the same lines, do you think running 10 miles a day and then eating a bag of Cheetos is good for you? Of course not.
We are what we eat. Everything we do goes into rebuilding our bodies (as cells replace themselves). The food we eat, chemically, affects how our cells grow. Unfortunately, it takes a lot of knowledge and research to realize that not all calories are equal. Or just some plain common sense.
glroberts: you have it dead wrong. you can lose weight and achieve your optimal weight without exercise. I have done it. we should all exercise for health benefits like muscle tone, bone strength, cardiovascular improvement, etc. but not as a tool for losing weight. To lose weight, it is all in the calories in versus calories expended. A few ways to do this is to keep your daily calories to 25% less than your current basal metabolic rate requires, or find out what your optimal weight is for your height/age and multiply that by 10 for total daily calories, or just stick to fruits, vegetables, lean meats and whole grains in sensible portions and you will not be obese.
shareHave you had your body fat % measured?
I'd be willing to bet its high.
Weight coming off doesn't necessarily mean you are healthier. Strength improvements and reduced running times should be the way to measure success, not seeing a lower number on a the scale.
The problem is a lot of people think exercise is the answer, and too many people who exercise eat junk. That either counteracts all the exercise they're doing, or it hides the internal damage they're doing to their body. The focus of this documentary was on the right place.
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Agree. And to all the posters on this board, let's not forget that Phil' s and Joe's difficult symptoms of their autoimmune diseases were significantly reduced by changing their diets to greens/juices. This diet change was not solely about losing weight!!! So much more than weight loss!!! Improved energy, improved mobility, improved concentration, clearer thinking, reduction of skin inflammation flare ups, improved relationships!!!! You can't get all that just by exercise alone. Putting all those anti oxidants in their freshest form into your body every day changes the body's immune system, it's glycemic index (reducing diabetes type2), it's metabolism and it's nutrient absorption. You can't get those benefits with exercise alone.
Yes, physical activity is important, and these guys did what they could to be and stay active, but that was not the primary focus of this film, and didn't need to be.
There's no way to predict how many more years either of the guys have ahead of them. The only thing worth measuring is the quality of life in those years, however many are ahead.
agreed.
there are aprox. 3500 calories in a pound of fat. a coke has roughly 140 calories in a 12 oz can of coke.
You burn around 100 calories running a mile. So you can run 15-20 miles a week and lose a pound of fat or you can cut out those 2 cans of coke.
obviously the ideal is do both - but exercise is not the road to weight loss, diet is.
Exercise is essential for a healthy lifestyle, but if obesity is the chief medical problem, diet needs to be addressed first.
You must have watched a different movie than I did. I saw Joe swimming and working out in the gym several times, they talked about the importance of exercise, and then Phil stayed at the condo where he swam every day and they showed him walking as well.
I also agree with Lenlarga tho. Diet is so important when losing weight. I hike 4-5 miles every single day but I didn't start to lose weight until I adjusted my diet. The exercise made me feel strong, but it alone did not cause me to lose weight. They explain extensively in this film why the micronutrients are so important for our bodies. I didn't feel it was a commercial for anything except living a healthy lifestyle.
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WTF, he was moving throughout the entire film!
Obviously you did not watch the hunter-gatherer segment.
The energy that you get from this type of diet allows you to lead a more active lifestyle without necessarily trying, and really hitting the gym hard will only improve your results.
Most people feel the need hit the gym so hard because they hit the food so hard.
I'm actually someone who loves working out so it's just a part of my every day life, but for some people, just moving around a lot all day is how they exercise.
Exercise wasn't downplayed (remember when he checked into the hotel on the lake, he started walking 5 minutes a day then worked up to swimming?), but you're forgetting the fact that many people are so overweight that they have debilitating diseases that don't allow for much physical activity. They first needed the energy and mental clarity the fruits and vegetables provided to take that first step.
shareIt's always a combination of diet and exercise although diet is more important. You don't have to do intense exercise but light exercise(30 minutes a day on average of brisk walking or weight lifting) is fine if you're eating plenty of greens, fruits, and beans with a moderate amount of meat, dairy, and processed grains. I found that eating all the food I could in one day(4000 calories) was barely enough for me while I was doing moderate-intense exercise for 90 minutes per day. Now that I've dropped it down to about 60 minutes of only moderate exercise, I have to watch what I eat as not to gain weight. If I did no exercise, I would be gaining 1-2 lbs per week eating around 3500 calories per day. In summary, you need to find your balance between diet and exercise.
Weight loss without exercise has been proven to work. My sister never exercises and she lost all the weight she put on just by doing Weight Watchers.
With men the only thing is we won't build muscle, in fact we'll probably lose muscle without exercise. So if you want to build and maintain visible muscle you do need strength training.
People over-think the whole thing and that's why gyms and gimmicks make so much money.
This documentary showed that you don't need to count calories or do anything fancy to lose weight and be healthy. You need to know what you're putting in your mouth and the best way to do that is to eat food in it's raw natural state.
I saw a lot of walking in the film. Walking is still exercise, isn't it? When Phil did his initial stint, I remember an emphasis on his walking--which when you're his size is about the most rigorous activity that can be managed.
The film mentioned that humans no longer have the same daily physical activity as we once did. Remember the cartoon about the cave man chasing his food... and then running from it?
For a film that was not about exercise, it seemed to include it pretty well.
Actually 70% of wight loss is diet, 30% is exercise. I think this film did wonderful by emphasizing the eating healthy part of weight loss.
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