Considering exercise (especially resistance training) increases your metabolism and overall oxygen intake for many hours after, if you aren't getting antioxidants you will be slowly killing yourself. They don't have to come from vitamins, though. Green tea, blueberries, and purple corn are all excellent sources.
> Considering exercise (especially resistance training) increases your metabolism and overall oxygen intake for many hours after,
This is popular knowledge that seemingly everyone believes is important (along with the belief that gaining muscle mass increases metabolic rate by an important amount), but the magnitude is tiny.
> Exercise of the intensity and duration commonly performed by recreational exercisers (e.g., walking for 30- 60 minutes or jogging at a pace of 8-10 minutes per mile for 20-30 minutes) typically results in a return to baseline of energy expenditure well within the first hour of recovery. The post-exercise calorie bonus for this type of exercise probably accounts for only about 10-30 additional calories burned beyond the exercise bout itself.
20 calories.
In practice, exercise also makes you hungrier. It is far from clear that it's even a net win for weight loss at all, when you look at studies and data.
I was looking for info on the opposite effect, lower metabolism from crash dieting earlier today and couldn't find anything useful. However, using the term RMR (Resting Metabolic Rate) from your link I found far more interesting stuff.
The short version: yes crash dieting can lower your metabolic rate, but the effect is small, and not permanent.
It can be a difference of 10% of your RMR which is 60-75% of your total calories burned per day. Therefore crash dieting can cause you to burn 6-8% less calories. So that's roughly 1 lb of fat less lost (or more gained) per month.
This is why I said "especially resistance training."
The metabolic benefits from aerobic exercises like walking, running, swimming, etc. are rather short (1-2 hours.) Intense resistance training gives a benefit for 12-36 hours (until your sleep, generally.)
This is why resistance training in the morning helps weight loss.
How many extra calories does intense resistance training (say for 1 hour) burn, beyond the training itself? I believe the answer is something small enough to be practically insignificant. (I'd appreciate if you can prove me wrong with data.)
The point of the article is that, somewhat surprisingly, the body seems to use the reactive oxygen compounds released during exercise as a signal that the body should regulate its insulin sensitivity, so if you're exercising to help keep diabetes in check, taking antioxidants (which destroy them) is actually going to be cancel out those benefits.
As with most studies (particularly anything involving nutrition!), further studies will be necessary before there's a consensus on the specifics.
Unfortunately the NYT's coverage of nutrition lately has been so bad as to make me think of most of the articles as press hits by the pharmaceutical and food industry.
The conclusions from the study are interesting. However, giving people the impression they should cut antioxidants to improve overall health (via insulin regulation effects from exercise) is suboptimal. The antioxidants are rather important long term.
Exercise is critical but not sufficient if you're going to continue eating refined sugars and grains that bring about a need to improve insulin regulation to begin with.
So, to be clear, the prevention for diabetes is: Exercise regularly and remove all refined/processed foods from your diet. Don't cut out antioxidants.
The issue of grains is a really striking example of how people (up to nutrition professionals and medial doctors) engage in group-think when the facts don't fit preconceptions and aren't convenient. As far as I can tell, grains, including corn, whole wheat bred, and rice, are pretty unambiguously bad for health in practically all respects, yet many people cling, with strong emotions, to the belief that they are healthy foods.
> So, to be clear, the prevention for diabetes is: Exercise regularly and remove all refined/processed foods from your diet. Don't cut out antioxidants.
Or, just have a simple operation and cure it for real (type 2 anyway):
