To explain that exercise does not affect your weight, or impact on obesity rates

[allmyown]

I see this misconception all over MN every day.

Exercise is fantastic for your physical and mental health in many ways, but it is not a weight loss tool.

Posters are forever quoting energy in -minus energy out = energy stored, etc, as if we are petrol engines or something! we are not - this is not how our body works.

It is more like energy available / energy required to maintain weight= energy body decides to use.

Your body burns off excess energy if you are taking in more than your homeostatic systems think you need. Your body slows down and uses far less energy if you have taken in less than your homeostatic system thinks you need.

And so if you lose weight, and go below what your body wants you to be, then your metabolism will just slow down massively to make the weight go back on. And if you exercise a lot, your metabolism will just adjust to accommodate that.

The key to weight loss is making sure your homeostatic systems decide you should be a healthy weight. You can lower the weight your homeostatic systems is attempting to maintain, with healthy eating, cut out sugar, HPF, vegetable oil, margarine, and cut down on wheat.

Eat plenty of fresh food and greens, nothing long dated.

Unless you are running 10K every single day, you are not exercising enough to change your weight, and even if you are, it won't stay changed.

The obesity epidemic is related to sugar, highly processed food, vegetable oil, margarine, etc, and poor diet in general, not too little exercise.

But don't get me wrong, there are other health problems caused by too little exercise, I am not saying exercise is bad, just that an obese child is not necessarily a child getting inadequate exercise, as so many people seem to think.

Read "Why we eat too much" by Andrew Jenkinson, he explains the up to date science in so much more detail.

it is a correct statement! I am trying to correct the misconception that I read so often on MN that exercise makes you lose weight, when it doesn't, however many other benefits it has

Exercise does help you to lose weight.

Is this why "they " say "you can't train out a bad diet " ?

Of course it does.

If I was a twin and we both ate 2000kcals a day but one of us ran 10k a day, whilst the other sat down all day - you know which one would weigh less.

You are saying that these twins would weigh the same but you know that’s not true because you know that athletes need more calories than people that don’t exercise regularly.

No, this is what I am trying to explain! people think this, but they are wrong! but it is a very very deeply ingrained misconception.

If you exercise, then your BR rate changes to compensate. BMR is more than 70 & of the calories you use anyway, and just normal living movements, like sitting up and reaching for the remote, etc, is most of the rest, so an exercise sessions is a tiny percent of calories used up in a day, and your BMR just drops to compensate.

No...hibernating mammals take advantage of harvest time to deliberately eat a lot and build a layer of fat in the autumn, then they go into a state of hibernation which means they barely move and use very few calories. Non-hibernating mammals are also generally less active during the winter. Some of them deliberately store food in order to keep them fed over the winter. Have you never seen a squirrel burying nuts? You will also find that wild animals in March are going to be less well-fed than animals in October. Many die.

I'm not sure if you're being deliberately obtuse or you genuinely have never shown any interest in the animals that live all around you. A massive part of their life revolves around preparing for winter.

I would like to add that I am not trying to say that I am some perfect parent, I'm not at all. It is just the sort of childhood that happened to be that way. The school playing fields and time in the curriculum for games probably helped some too, but all the local children were very active outside school too, and I can't recall any noticeably overweight children in the whole school. I was demonstrating an obvious counterpoint to OP's points. But this is very hard to achieve as parents if you do not have all the factors that were present in the local environment and social structures combined, and that includes enough money, so it therefore it isn't a judgement on other parents because it's a multifaceted problem in current society to solve.

The thing is, I am explaining a scientific truth. People may be shocked to hear that they have been working with a fundamental misconception all their lives. They may go into denial, but at the very least, these people now know that their belief that their is a link between exercise and weight is not a universally accepted fact, and there is decades of scientific evidence against it.

They can look into it themselves, if they want, or not, I can't do any more!

But I hope I have at least raised awareness.

This sounds like the musings of an idle person justifying their idleness.

I am explaining a scientific truth.

OP, you think you are. You've imparted some interesting information which might help some people and may lead some others to go and look up further information or speak to a professonial, but now you have become like a dog with a bone about your specific interpretation.

Doesn’t the author of Ultra Processed Food, say something similar.
Also won’t you need less calories when you weigh less?

OP you are only half true, just like those that think exercise is the sole way to lose body fat.

Resistance/weight training for example burns a lot of calories, so do sports such as Karate.

Yes our biological systems adapt to the food we eat and the exercise we do, this is why people plateau; their BMR goes down as they reduce what they eat but it lags, so people lose weight and then stop losing weight.

This is why some people believe in cheat days, to try and prevent their BMR falling; but the simle fact is people really only have cheat days because they want to continue eating junk instead of real unprocessed low-carb foods.

I know someone who lost several stone over 18 months when they just started walking for 2 hours day with little to no diet change, so exercise can reduce body fat, but it takes a heck of a lot of exercise so losing weight is far easier by eating correctly as you described. If someone is maintaining a so-called healthy weight but wants to reduce their body fat further then just eating healthily will not get them where they want to be, they will need to exercise too.

But there is a reason why they say “abs are made in the kitchen”.

For example when I row for an hour the energy expenditure equates to less than 4 biscuits (if I still ate biscuits it would anyway) - I would need to row for 12 hours to burn the calories in 1 pound of fat - but I can gain or lose way more than a pound in (water) weight with eating salty food for example.

I eat way less than the TDEE calculators say I need for maintenance, but this last week I gained weight, because my BMR has reduced. A healthy individual eats well and is active (exercises).

I’m not sure about this purely because of an anecdote from my mid 20s:

I was an office temp and took on long term placements. At the start of April I finished a placement in an office just opposite the bus station (so less than 2 minutes walk for me) and started a placement in an office around 40 minutes walk from the bus stop. I was a creature of habit then, taking the same lunch and snacks to work every day and I didn’t change the other meals or snacks I ate either. Come august, I tried on a pair of shorts I hadn’t been able to get into for a couple of years and they slid on easily. I hopped on the scales and discovered that I’d lost 9lbs without even realising. The only thing that had changed was the long walk to and from my workplace. 🤷🏻‍♀️

It's true that lots of people who try to lose weight through exercise fail - though equally true for most people who diet, in the long run!

A big problem is that people tend to underestimate how much they have eaten and overestimate how much they have exercised. If you walk for half an hour then eat calorie dense foods while collapsed on the sofa, you're not going to lose weight. Our bodies do try to make us slow down and eat more to compensate for extra activity, but if you are aware of this you can counteract it. Another caveat is that if you have loads of weight to lose exercise is difficult and probably not quick enough to reduce weight.

So no, exercise is not a panacea. But exercise (combined with a healthy, not too restrictive diet and lots of non-exercise activity) is the best way to make long lasting changes for your health.

I'm so confused (I'm not an idiot I promise)

I eat c. 1500-1600 calories a day
I run 7-8 times a week (probably 25-30k a week) plus c.hour walking / day
I fast for 16 hours a day 6 day a week.

Are you saying (and I don't doubt you - I can see you are genuinely trying to help people like me!!) that I would lose...'more' weight, if I exercised less as my body would be less likely to be think I was starving it?

Or...I could sack off the running and eat a bit less and probably lose more?

(I'm not going to sack off the running. it makes me feel alive and yes I realise how utter ARSE that sounds).

It isn’t correct and not sure what you are basing it on?! By moving more you burn more calories and then depending on your BMR which you can increase with exercise, especially lifting weights you will burn more calories even while not exercising. I agree you can lose weight without exercise just by eating carefully. Eg. Herbal life has lots of meal replacements etc and I know ppl who have lost tons of weight without much exercise. But definitely exercising will help you lose weight as long as you eat sensibly. Exercise also has lots of other health benefits.

I have lost 8 kgs and a lot of inches just by adding a 30 min walk/jog on treadmill at 12 incline on a daily basis. I also walk about 10- 12 K steps on average not including the exercise and I have made a conscious decision to watch my portions and reduce carbs. I am currently a 12/14 size for tops and a 10/12 size for trousers. I used to be a 14/16 for tops and a 14 for trousers.

However, I do agree that if your diet is not great, exercise will not make you lose weight.

Yes, and patronising.

Evidence? Controlled studies? You must be able to support these claims surely?

You've read a book which made sense to you because it was cleverly written to sound convincing.

It's the same as my Mum getting all over-excited because she's read a book about how nutritional deficiencies cause neurodiversity and decided that that explains it, despite the scientific consensus showing zero evidence for this theory.

You've also got confused about the fact that anyone who thinks doing a bit of exercise whilst eating loads of rubbish is unlikely to lose weight. Exercise makes you hungry, so if you decide to ONLY exercise without calorie tracking, you just eat enough extra to make up the difference. Especially considering that "exercise" in the context of weight loss is usually something like a class at the gym which happens 1 hour a week and burns off maybe one Mars Bar, rather than a switch to a more active lifestyle. F all to do with BMR.

@allmyown ,

I don’t really understand the argument.

Your metabolic rate cannot just go up or down randomly without major effects on heart rate, breathing rate etc. And, if it did go up, where would the energy go? It would end up giving you a fever, or causing profuse sweating, That is just basic physics and chemistry.

There are modern ideas about sugars causing insulin deregulation and thus laying down fat, which may have some truth, and it is not quite as simple as calories in/calories out, but that is still a pretty good model.

I linked to a proper meta study above showing that exercise and a lower body fat were well correlated.

And, anecdotally, do you see many fat people at your average running club?

Where I live there's a whole "gluten free" cafe, always choc a block. Faddy.

Although at the same time, very useful for people who need a completely gluten free kitchen for medical reasons, or have to forego eating out. So I'm on the fence about this. If someone wants to eat gluten free even if they don't need to, it's fine if they inform themselves how to get a balanced diet overall from other sources, and these are easier to obtain in easier to cook ways now that more people are eschewing or reducing their gluten or wheat intake. However, if it's part of a faddy weight loss scheme it might not be the best for them, and they are expensive if you are not cooking completely from scratch, so that is another consideration for families where money is short, time is short, and the gluten free diet isn't needed.

I do remember the 'no potatoes' fad, and a bunch of other fads, I'm quite old.

I think it's different for men.

@allmyown This is deeply depressing. So what is the answer? Calorie reduction?