Excersize not as helpful for weight loss as was thought

An article from Time Magazine about Exercise not being as effective a weight loss strategy as we think. (Read it before making up your mind).

Quotes that sum it up:

"The basic problem is that while it's true that exercise burns calories and that you must burn calories to lose weight, exercise has another effect: it can stimulate hunger. That causes us to eat more, which in turn can negate the weight-loss benefits we just accrued. Exercise, in other words, isn't necessarily helping us lose weight. It may even be making it harder."

"Whether because exercise made them hungry or because they wanted to reward themselves (or both), most of the women who exercised ate more than they did before they started the experiment. Or they compensated in another way, by moving around a lot less than usual after they got home. "

"Many people assume that weight is mostly a matter of willpower — that we can learn both to exercise and to avoid muffins and Gatorade. A few of us can, but evolution did not build us to do this for very long. In 2000 the journal Psychological Bulletin published a paper by psychologists Mark Muraven and Roy Baumeister in which they observed that self-control is like a muscle: it weakens each day after you use it. If you force yourself to jog for an hour, your self-regulatory capacity is proportionately enfeebled. Rather than lunching on a salad, you'll be more likely to opt for pizza.
Some of us can will ourselves to overcome our basic psychology, but most of us won't be very successful. "The most powerful determinant of your dietary intake is your energy expenditure," says Steven Gortmaker, who heads Harvard's Prevention Research Center on Nutrition and Physical Activity. "If you're more physically active, you're going to get hungry and eat more."

"In short, it's what you eat, not how hard you try to work it off, that matters more in losing weight. You should exercise to improve your health, but be warned: fiery spurts of vigorous exercise could lead to weight gain. I love how exercise makes me feel, but tomorrow I might skip the VersaClimber — and skip the blueberry bar that is my usual postexercise reward. Read more: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1914857-4,00.html#ixzz0YDy8PpPQ

I think the reasonable conclusion should have been that incorporating exercise into your life naturally would be the way to use exercise for weight loss. If the research makes it clear that short burst of exercise that leave you tired and hungry don't work well; why not study the effects of little efforts that still use your muscles but don't exhaust you or stimulate your appetite? (what comes to mind is the way kids get exercise) It also should have addressed the emotional reasons for overeating, which obviously thwart weight loss as well.