Why doesn’t exercise really affect body weight?

[StrayHairsEverywhere]

As per the title really Why is it that food is so much more important than exercise when it comes to losing weight?

Is it because when you consume calories the body stores them with little effort but to burn the calories off you would need a lot of exertion.

So to lose weight it’s easier to eat less as the exertion needed to lose the same amount of calories lost through eating is more than most people can manage.

Exercise also makes you hungry as you need x amount of calories to sustain x effort at x weight. Your body assumes you should stay the weight you are IYSWIM so you have to think about what you are eating in order to lose weight.

Consider time and effort spent on eating a mini donut.

Now calculate time and effort spent of burning the same calories through exercise.

My scientific calculation.

Big Bertha eats 2000 calories a day. Her weight stays the same on that amount of calories.

But if she adds exercise to her day and runs for ten miles a day she will lose weight.

Ain’t nobody got time for that.

Instead she eats 500 calories less each day and loses weight.

Hope that makes sense.

As Socrates once said

“A minute on the lips, a lifetime on the hips”.

Therefore we can learn from this great wisdom and eat less/eat healthily.

Funny enough though I am about to eat a doughnut!

Because it is hard to outrun a fork

I think it is the case that often people overindulge when they exercise as they feel they need more fuel but if you think about it logically we are used to eating so much more less than we do and in previous times before the industrial revolution expended far more energy.

So in my opinion (which counts for little as I make no claim to being a nutritionist ) I do honestly think it makes you feel rather than be hungrier and people eat more when exercising...hence no weight loss.

However it drives me potty when people merrily go onto weight loss thread and make a single statement like " exercise won't help you lose weight " which I've seen a few times on mumsnet.

What a load of tosh....if you eat healthily and burn (using...da daaa...more exercise) more calories...you will lose weight. It's really not rocket science. (I don't mean you OP I realise you aren't saying that but I see it a lot on here and it's annoying)

Also on some cases when most of the weight is gone and people are a healthy weight...but they work out with weights they may well not lose weight but tone up and lose inches...however that's not the same as an overweight person not losing through exercise.

So TLDR
..personally I think people eat more to compensate when they exercise.

Plus at a healthy weight some exercise causes you to tone and maintain...again dependant on your calorie intake.

If you did enough exercise it would. But most people can't commit to the level of exercise needed.

My friend who's an exercise instructor does 18 spin, pump, combat classes a week and struggles with their weight unless they really watch their diet.

On average, to burn off a 350-calorie doughnut, a person who weighs 150 pounds would have to swim for about 35 minutes, walk for 54 minutes, or attend an hour-long yoga class.

I think most people over estimate exercise calories inc stuff you read on the internet.

I only burn 200 calories on an hour walk, wish it was 350.

And no way would I burn 350 calories in a yoga class, I'd be lucky to burn that in body pump.

It does, just not as much.

When people say something like "it takes 30 mins of running to burn off one chocolate bar" , I think that's OK. If the rest of your diet is healthy then you can have a chocolate bar for 'free'.

The only problem is that some people think that if you go to the gym for an hour, that will cancel out a sweet latte, piece of cake and a takeaway dinner.

I find it impossible to maintain my weight unless I go to the gym regularly, so I think it probably depends on the individual to some extent as well.

An average woman burns about 100 calories by walking or running a mile. I ran 6 miles yesterday = 600 cals, but then ate half an Easter egg (about 100g choc = about 500 cals).

I’m glad I’d already burned off the calories, but it might have been easier to just not eat the Easter egg!

You need to have a calorie deficit of 3,500 to lose 1lb of weight - that’s 35 miles of running. In a good week I can run about 22 miles over 5 sessions (I’m not quick, though), so I still need to reduce my calories if I want to lose a pound a week.

The thing with exercise for me is it's helped me change my shape. My legs and hips are slimmer and now have more muscle which makes you look slimmer I think.

I can burn about 500 calories in a 40 min non stop class. The key is that i don't eat these calories back anymore whereas I used to. That along with just watching my intake has helped me lose just over a stone in two months

I don't really weigh any different to before I started running. But my body shape is completely different, and my body composition has far more muscle. So it's not just about weight.

This is only anecdote, not data.

I have been trying to lose weight for years. I eat reasonably, but my weight is firmly fixed. I have to eat vlc to lose any weight, which then goes back on when i go back to my 1500/day.

I’m about 2 st overweight.

I recently had minor surgery and ate 400 cals/day for two weeks. No cheating, no underestimating, i couldn’t eat solids so had 3 cup a soups a day.

I lost 2lb. Bit of an epiphany that diet wasn’t going to fix anything.

So i started circuit training. I am utterly shit as i have done no exercise for years. I can’t do any weights, and it takes me 4 days to recover.

But the scales are starting to move downwards, and stay there.

So as with everything, i think it’s balance. If you are sedentary, it is incredibly difficult to reduce your calorie intake to lose weight. It is also very hard to do enough exercise to be able to eat completely what you want.
Like pp said, you can do a lot of exercise but if you aren’t increasing your load your body will adapt.

And the more muscle you have, the more calories you burn at rest.

It's almost impossible to out train a bad diet. Unless you are really active for hours a day any calories you burn are so easy to take back on via food.

tour De France cyclist calorie use with a useful chart on what that equates to in food. But unless you're racing your bike for 6 hours a day, every day for weeks it's difficult to balance out a high calorie diet with excercises. As you can see from the chart they burn the equivalent to 9.5 whoppers (not whooper meals with fries and a coke!)

@Knockout my DH actually does outtrain a bad diet and it’s massively infuriating 😂

It does if you do enough of it!

I used to work as a riding instructor at a busy stables- so I was on the go at least 5 days a week from 8.30 til 5. I wasn't doing much cardio, but I was constantly standing/walking/lifting/riding- I lost about a stone in the first year, and about half a stone over the second summer, mostly through exercise as my diet was crap, although admittedly I wasn't eating huge amounts due to being so busy. I also had a great core that made me look naturally slimmer.

After I left that job, I did try to keep my fitness up, but when you are in a sedentary job for most of the day, it's just impossible to exercise to the same level. If I went for a run, that might burn 300-500 kcal depending on distance, speed and hills, but that would be all I'd do that day, and I'd often eat more during the day due to boredom/having time to notice I was hungry! I also had rest days from running, where I was often completely sedentary, which didn't help! I didn't gain much weight in this time (maybe 5lbs) so I think the running did help me keep the weight off.

The change in exercise did change my shape, and I had proper hamstring muscles for the first time in my life.

Now I'm doing a PGCE, which is pretty intense and I haven't found that much time for exercise. I eat a lot of convenience food, so my diet is poor too. If I started exercising regularly, it would make a positive difference to my body- but I think I'd have to do at least an hour a day to make any difference to my weight- and I just don't have time. It would be much more time effective to cut my calorie intake by say 500kcal a day!

However, if I went back to being physically active all the time, I definitely would lose a lot of weight again. But unfortunately, 30 minutes in the gym 3-4 times a week (which is what a lot of people talk about when they say exercise) won't make a hugely noticeable difference.

Also, replacing fat with muscle can mean you don't see results on the scales straight away, even though your body looks better and long term it will allow you to eat more calories without gaining.

I also think people just use the word exercise to include everything. For example I don't class going for a walk as exercise unless it involves lots of uphill, pumping arms, getting out of breath type stuff. A normal walk is simply movement - still very good for you but just keeping you ticking over. Swimming is similar, unless you are swimming hard, getting out of breath and maintaining that for quite a time then it isn't improving your fitness, it's just movement.

I only view what I do as exercise if I get very out of breath for at least 20 minutes and it causes my muscles to work hard until they can't do anymore (in the case of weights).

Lastly people seem to have little knowledge of calories and type of food and how your body deals with them. So they overestimate how much exercise calories they burn and underestimate the calorific value and type of food they eat.

It's certainly true if you do enough of it. Long distance hikers on the really long American trails like the Appalachian trail will eat about 5000-8000 calories a day and the weight falls off them. There's always a massive difference in the beginning of trail and end of trail photos. But they're obviously burning more than they're eating with excessive exercise for months.

So you can put train a bad diet but you have to train hard for three hours a day

@bluebluezoo “I recently had minor surgery and ate 400 cals/day for two weeks. No cheating, no underestimating, i couldn’t eat solids so had 3 cup a soups a day. I lost 2lb. Bit of an epiphany that diet wasn’t going to fix anything.”

That is depressing but also so interesting to have realised.

I cycle 1hr30 mins a day at a good pace and do 12 gym classes a week and I can't out train a bad diet. I have however broken my leg due to too much exercise!

Bizarrely I've done no exercise in 2 weeks due to being in a cast and lost 1kg!