It's great for your health and⏤I exercise⏤it's great for your heart, but absolutely not...

If your goal is weight loss, you have to do something about changing your diet.

- Exercise doesn't help weight loss. - No.

Well, we've got a fitness group among some of my friends, about 10 of us in it,

and we've been tracking how often we work out and how frequently we work out and the workouts that we do.

And one of the things I have to say is, pretty much no one in the group has lost any weight.

We've been doing this for a year.

And that kind of bucks what you would th⏤so, the only time that I lost weight was actually when I went on the keto... keto diet.

I went from 14 stone 8 to 13 stone 8 in roughly⏤in several weeks.

But exercise, and exercising for, almost religiously, for the last 2 and a half years, doesn't really seem to impact my weight at all in, you know, in the way that the fitness experts might tell me on Instagram.

What's your stance on the role that exercise play... plays in weight loss?

(It) Has very little role in weight loss.

All the studies⏤long-term studies⏤show it doesn't help weight loss, and it's been grossly exaggerated as an easy fix for our obesity problem.

- Exercise doesn't help weight loss. - No.

All the studies show that.

The only caveat to that is if you have changed your diet, improved your diet, and you've lost some weight, maintaining some exercise does help prevent it going back up again.

But as⏤on its own, if you don't change your diet, it's of no use.

And that's well-known, now, by all the obesity experts and all the studies.

Does sugar make us fat? Is that the culprit?

Is that one of the main things that's contributing to...

No, again, that's... that's reductionism, you know?

But... the reason... the reason exercise doesn't work...

It's important to realize this is because, we all know this, that, you know, you go for a walk, build up hunger before a meal.

That's what your parents told you, you know.

And everything about exercises is, after it, your body slows down, your metabolism slows down, and it tries to regain the energy that you've lost.

That's just our evolution.

And, so, that's why it's⏤you're not gonna... it's great for your health and, you know, I exercise; fantastic for your mood.

It's great for your heart, anti-cancer, all kinds of things; we should all do it.

But absolutely not⏤if your goal is weight loss, you have to do something about changing your diet.

And I think that's... that's the big⏤huge myth, particularly perpetuated by gyms and fitness apps and everything else.

It is complete nonsense.

I read that you... when you looked at studies over 30 years and you looked at how many studies have been done on the relationship of exercise and weight versus things like sugar and weight,

there was 12 more⏤12 times more studies done on the relationship of exercise and weight versus sugar and weight.

And why... why is that? Why is there less research done on the latter?

I think that's the influence of governments and the food companies and the drink companies.

So, a lot of the exercise research done in the last 20 years was sponsored by large corporations who wanted to make this link between exercise and weight loss

so that they could continue to sell sugary, ultra-processed foods and drinks, and just say it's childhood obesity is because we... we don't have playgrounds and we don't encourage this.

And that's why the cokes and Pepsis are always there.

The Olympic⏤sponsoring Olympic events and associating themselves with sport.

And they gave hundreds of millions to various physiology departments, sports departments, nutrition departments to do research in this area.

Basically, it was really hard to get anyone to do research into how sugary drinks make you gain weight or cause problems because they...

The amount of money for nutrition has been abysmally poor, you know, in... from... from governments.

And, that's why, you know, we⏤the only, the first-ever study of ultra-processed food in a controlled trial was only about 3 years ago, and it's been around for, you know, 30, 40 years.

So, such is the power of that lobby that it... it doesn't necessarily distort the research in a, sort of, in an evil way,

but they point it to make sure that the researchers are working in an area that they want people to work in, and distracting them,

keeping (them) away from talking about sugars or even artificial sweeteners, which, in my view, are nearly as bad, ' cause they're, sort of, you know, "hidden".

And deflecting us from the idea that, yes, giving kids sugary drinks or even artificial sweet drinks is gonna be bad for them and cause obesity.

Wait, so, I'm... I've been... I've cut my... I cut out sugary drinks about a year ago; I still have the same brands, but I have the no sugar version.

Oh, dear.

Oh, shit; what do you mean, "oh, dear"?

All the... all the summary of the trials shows that if you take young adults, young adults and kids, and they were, say, on two cans of, you know, full-sugar sodas and you change them to the diet version,

there's no real difference in... in weight or metabolic changes in their blood.

You will go to the dentist less, so, you don't get as many fillings, but...

And, yet, you should be gaining "300 calories", right, if you were doing two cans a day.

So, it doesn't work out as it should do, and that's because of the extra... these chemicals are not inert.

So, the sweeteners, in kids, they changed their... their brains to give them⏤they want more sweetness in their food, OK?

So, it... it could reflect your wish for your... your late-night milk chocolate; who knows?

It makes it very difficult to train kids to have more bitter foods or sour foods if they've got these artificial sweeteners in their diet all the time.

But they've now shown that all these sweeteners actually affect your gut microbes.

So, even stevia, you know, these, sort of, so-called healthy ones, have an effect on your gut microbes and they're not inert.

So, we know that saccharin and sucralose also cause spikes in your blood sugar.

When I did it, you know, have a trace, they're not supposed to⏤but they actually do things they're not supposed to.

So, we know very little about these... these products, and my view is that they are harmful, probably not as bad as having the sugar, but they are absolutely not a health drink.

And we should be encouraging people to have, you know, teas and kombuchas and more bitter-tasting, interesting flavors and foods than just these ultra-sweet chemical concoctions.

This sugar conglomerate that have been funding much of the research that points towards some of the things you're talking about there,

that's also the conglomerate that wants us to believe the "calories in, calories out" approach.

Because if I just view every⏤all foods as kind of equal and on this, sort of, calorie number, then I can drink some of the sugary fizzery⏤fizzy drinks and some of the processed foods,

as long as I keep it within that, sort of, calorie deficit, I'll be fine.

And, so, are they... is that sugar conglomerate⏤is the processed food conglomerate for the calorie model?

Absolutely.

They need that, right?

They⏤absolutely vital, you know.

Zero calories or one calorie, you know, on the can, that's what you see and,

you know, you're fooling people into thinking this is a healthy drink and, you know, if I used to have full coke or Pepsi and now having the diet version, I'm getting 300 calories less a day, I should lose weight.

If you love the "Diary of a CEO" brand and you watch this channel, please do me a huge favor, become part of the 15% of the viewers on this channel that have hit the subscribe button.

It helps us tremendously, and the bigger the channel gets, the bigger the guests.