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.

If nothing else, time spent exercising is time not spent eating. This way they are eating less calories during the day, even if they aren't burning off much during the actual exercise.

The calories involved in a gym session are a tiny fraction of the BMR, and much smaller than the normal calories used up from general living

The more of your replies I read, the more impressed I am that you managed to read a whole book. But you really need to read another one.

This thread is the clearest example of a desperate need for fitness & health education in schools that I have EVER seen.

This is all straightforward. Exercise (cardio and strength) regularly, take vits and minerals, keep alcohol intake low, have treats but not often, eat healthily. That approach has a 100% success rate if adhered to. Good old basics. Boeing but true. Consistency is pure gold. There is no other secret.

Sure it's hard to stick to but not nearly as hard as you might think if you start approaching it the right way.

I've lost a stone since leaving work, getting a LOT more exercise and not snacking on treats.
So it may not work for everyone, but to say it works for no-one is equally untrue.

Unless I have misread this, OP is basing her “science” on a book a bariatric surgeon wrote that is based on a study about a prisoner population and some tribe. And some rats?

Prisoners - they get canteen, swap food, take spice, not the ideal population. Tribe - not the same as comparing people in the UK sitting on sofas and working in offices. Rats - not people.

I bet you're a funsponge at parties.

No this is what I am trying to explain, because so many people misunderstand this. Say you go to the gym some days, then this is what happens.

On a non gym day

Say your BMR uses up 70% of the calories used up in a day

Then just life uses up 30 % of the rest - sitting up, standing up, walking to the bus stop, pulling a door open, lifting the kettle, turning on the tap, opening the cupboard to find the tea bags, and so on and so on, just normal movements on top of lying in bed doing nothing

Then on a gym day, maybe you use up an extra 2% of calories in the gym, all that happens is your BMR drops to only using 68% of calories on that day

so the exercise is tiny compared to BMR and normal movements anyway, but also, it just changes you BMR, nothing else in terms of calories

( many OTHER benefits, but not weight loss)

'Are you sure you haven't confused the percentages The percentage has dropped in the example given, so do you think the BMR has stretched to cover the extra calorie burn?When in actuality more data has been added to the group which naturally moves the percentages. So like if I read a chapter of a book a day, 100% of my hobby time is reading. If I read and go for a walk, it wud b 50%, the amount hasn’t reduced, just more data added. So therefore the percentages of an amount change.'

Your hunger hormones just let you know that you're hungry/give you or take away cravings

But let me tell you, that soon comes back, around 18 months after surgery. Its a lifelong thing to try to control. You still have to eat to the right amount for your body not to put on weight!

Im not a very good example of how it works because although Im eating very little, I lose weight very slowly, thats due to untreated underactive thyroid and my age, but nevertheless, you just continue to lose weight. But you'll put it back on if you eat in excess of your calories. Its not magic.

I’d like to know:-

• what is OP? A nutritionist, doctor, personal trainer, dietician or other. Because unless she’s any of these and in fact even if she was I wouldn’t take advice off her. It all comes off just a tad preachy.

And yes back in the olden days pre menopause I kinda thought if you ate too much and gained weight it was because you were greedy, well not to that extreme but ya know. I know better now! Seeing as menopause has whipped my arse diet wise and I’ve two friends with health issues then I’ve realised lots of factors go into weight loss.

Oh and by the way OP one of these women was a stroke survivor size 18. She got to a size 14 over lockdown, probably diet but because she did a weekly 30 min walk, Body Groove classes and Pilates (daily).

The factor there was that yes she as did we all, ate out less. We also couldn’t snack as easily on eg chocolate or bakery treats as it was hard to get these (like contraband), but our intake of gin increased!

Weight isn't the be all and end all of a healthy, toned body. How much (or more properly, how little) you consume is the most important factor in weight loss but exercising can be an important buttress to that.

I am a healthy weight and my diet is equally healthy and fairly consistent but I know that when I'm physically very active I look slimmer. Muscle tone is super important. I recently travelled a lot over 6 weeks and although I walked a lot I wasn't doing yoga or strength work and I looked much flabbier towards the end. My clothes still fitted so presumably my measurements hadn't changed but everything looked looser and droopier.

Anyhow - lesson learned. I'm back at the gym and it's all pulling in again and I'm trying to develop a habit of doing at least 5 minutes of resistance work every day even when I'm away to keep things taut in the future.

What we eat is certainly more important but of course activity matters.

The weight dropped off when I started doing my 10000 steps a day, every day.

Surely you learnt that correlation doesn not equal causation?

Oh my. This is one of the worst examples of stupidity I’ve seen on MN.

This would be true if I did not lose 2 stone from eating the same but walking for about 1.5 - 2 hours every day. That was literally the only change.

@localnotail how do you fit that in?

Bollock. Burn more calories than you take in and over the long run, you lose weight. Fact!

Yep, this.

A half hour on the running machine uses about 300 calories. It's about 15% of 2000. Not that tiny.

What are you doing in the gym to only use 40 calories?

No, he has collated all the up to date scientific knowledge about this area from the last few decades.

And yes, prisoners who volunteer ARE the ideal population for this sort of study, as they are in a very controlled environment for long periods, and all food and exercise can be monitored.

And yes animal studies are relevant and informative, alongside human studies. Many animals have metabolisms similar to humans.

so what? your BMR just adjusts to compensate.

no, it is not a fact, that is why I started this thread, because this is so misunderstood.

To lose weight you need to lower your weight set point, that your body will always revert to, by adjusting your metabolism to compensate for dieting and exercise.

All reliable studies on exercise show you don't lose weight by exercising. We are talking about normal life, with a normal diet available, exercising has no effect what so ever. (on weight)

I don't think this is true. There are quite a few studies showing that exercise leads to weight loss, generally it seems to be around 60 minutes per day is required. Not an excessive amount.

From personal experience I disagree. Any half intelligent adult doesn't need an expensive book to inform them how to lose weight.