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 can't only compensate to a point. Your body still needs energy to function and no amount of "starvation mode" will change that.
If I somehow exercised away 2000 calories per day it's absolute nonsense to suggest that my body would adjust not to need those calories.

@scotscorner I wonder if these studies are too focused on immediate weight loss rather than the long term maintenance of a healthy weight? I am sure that a low calorie diet is the best thing for weight loss in the short term. Problem is that when it is stopped rapid weight gain often ensues. Muscle mass is lost and when the person reverts to their former diet they actually become fatter than before.

Back to the anecdotes. My work place is filled with super sporty slim fit people who are always doing triathlons and going to the gym and cycling to work and being in sports teams. Every time I go to the kitchen they seem to be happily tucking into cake whilst I need to grab an apple and run away before temptation can take hold!

He gives a lot of tips in his second book; my main interpretation was to lower your weight set-point requires a gradual permanent change. The general theory of adjusting diet for weight and exercise for shape applies but you need to slowly improve your diet to something that you can continue forever. Following a stereotypical diet book works temporarily but the sudden loss in weight causes problems and the body convinces the brain you need more calories so inevitably put it back on.

But the fact is that doesn't inevitably happen.

It's true that losing weight through diet and exercise and then putting it back on again is a common problem, and maybe it's good that someone's exploring the reasons why that happens. But the process by which that happens is no different from the process by which you lost weight in the first place: for whatever combination of psychological or lifestyle reasons, you've simply moved from expending more calories than you consume back to the opposite.

The fact is, when people do manage the psychology and lifestyle issues properly, and carry on burning as much as they consume, they stay at the lower weight.

Gradual weight loss seems to be the key, and that's about changing the way you eat every single day, not for a week or a month or a year. It's taken me a year to lose 10lbs and each month that goes by I bake in a new, better food habit.

Exercise is brilliant for many things, it does help weight loss but I agree that food is key. If exercise helps your mood, so does good food. Not sugary UPF "treats" and not the wine o'clock glass of pinot. They're dopamine hits with the inevitable crash afterwards.

Thanks OP, appreciate your replies.

Can you explain why as a woman in my fifties who took up weightlifting several years ago, I have to eat much more than I used to?

no, this is where you are totally wrong, and this is why I started the thread. People believe this. But this is absolutely against what all science shows. This is because people get a fixed idea in their head that the human body works something like an electric motor, or similar, when in fact we are totally different.

Mr Monkey is early 50s and eats a lot - tbf mainly decent home cooked food but he is a bit of a carb monster. He is also very slim and a regular runner (at least 50km a week and at least 2 marathons and 10 half marathons a year). I would suggest if he ate at the same level but stopped all running activity he would not remain slim for long.

But I've done it. As have lots of other people.

Are you actually claiming that no human has ever managed to reduce their weight and keep it that way, other than by following the specific dietary guidelines in this book?

Have you reviewed all the “science” to be able to make this statement?

or just read one man’s book?

pp is not “totally wrong” or as they pointed out, no one would ever lose weight unless they specifically followed this book.

again, what are your qualifications to be telling other people they are not correct?

bottom line is it’s basic maths. You cannot break the laws of science and generate energy from nothing. So if you eat less you will generate energy from fat stores. If you eat more you will store energy.

yes everyone is an individual. What works for one may not work for others. It’s about what works for you in a sustainable way.

I was wondering why OP feels strongly about this. I think it might be because if someone is obese exercise is very very hard and it could have a negative psychological impact on the individual which might lead to them quitting all attempts to lose weight. I can see that being a problem.

People believe this.
Because they've experienced it and observed it in others. That's a solid basis for belief.
I wonder how many obese endurance athletes the author has treated?

Jenkinson’s case studies are his bariatric patients. So they’re at extreme levels of obesity with multiple health conditions looking at a shortened life span.

Thanks OP, appreciate your replies.

Whereas the OP isn't responding to my two requests for answers having got me very worried about my now unexplained weight loss (I thought it was due to exercise)

Please don’t worry and don’t take advice from any random on the internet.

The OP has no bona fides except read a book. She’s unable to explain the ‘science’. There’s so much misinformation around.

There’s plenty of ppl on this thread who have lost weight over time when they have increased their activity levels. Energy balance.

Any unexplained weight loss needs to be addressed by properly qualified professionals so you need to see your GP who can carry out appropriate investigations if necessary.

OP if you want people to believe you, link the actual studies you are referring to. You have not pointed us towards any peer-reviewed evidence except for saying “this is a fact”. That’s not how scientific inquiry works and you come across as having very little understanding of the subject you are talking about.

You seem to be saying that a person in a coma (so at their BMR) needs the same amount of energy as a competitive athlete, because the BMR of the competitive athlete adjusts down to compensate for the exercise. Logically this would mean that you can have a negative BMR which defines the laws of physics.
Logically this would also mean that it’s impossible to die of starvation because our bodies seem to be able to adjust the amount of energy spent on basic metabolic processes infinitely.

It not easy for a person who has no training in this to read and interpret a peer-reviewed scientific paper, but there are plenty of popular science sources based on historical data about millions of people who died of starvation in the 20th century alone. Many of them in forced labour camps so they’d had plenty of exercise that would have, according to OP, got their BMR down.

OP may also want to read about REDS, it’s also quite a new area of research so something to potential get excited about. It especially affects females who exercise a lot.

@OMGitsnotgood any unexplained weight loss should trigger a trip to doc. I have lost weight this past year and have as ever have been doing a bit of this and a bit of that to control my weight. I also am doing hrt and taking various supplements but I am thinking of going to doc cos you never know. I probably swim more than I used to but I have not consciously reduced what I eat although I do try and avoid crap.

It’s very tempting to want to believe that there are cheat codes to good health, and it’s therefore very lucrative to write books claiming you’ve found one.

Yes, biology is complex, but it’s also abundantly true that exercise will benefit and assist the weight loss efforts of everyone to does it, alongside changes to diet. If someone is eating to excess as well as exercise of course they won’t lose.

Weird that when I started exercising during lockdown, kept my diet roughly the same, I ended up about 10 kg lighter. Also, fat has quite a similar calorific density to petrol, so the model of a car engine isn’t a million miles off.

And very lucrative to convince people that diet and exercise aren't enough and that you need to resort to bariatric surgery or drugs like Ozempic.

I haven’t dieted in years, and normally weigh just under 60kg. I walk lots and do other exercise as I enjoy it.
Recent temporary medical issues have forced me into three weeks of far more sedentary life. I haven’t eaten more than usual (and I know this because my shopping has been curtailed) but I’ve gained 3lb - exactly what I’d predict from the messages my phone sends me about my decreasing calorie expenditure.

Exercise might not work for everyone, but it works for me.

Very little focus is given to psychological aspect of obesity. Why you can turn to food (often crap food) in times of stress or depression. I think that's where exercise can help a lot. And even fairly gentle exercise like walking. It's not just about using up calories. After a swim I feel extraordinarily calm and relaxed and that impacts how I eat and what I eat. Doc told me recently not to swim for a week (infection) and I feel it in my mood.

It’s also very lucrative to write books claiming if you follow this diet you will lose weight. Cheat codes, as pp put it.

it’s the latest fad to come up with “scientific” theories that eating this way or that magically changes your metabolism how you process food so you can carry on over eating and still lose weight.

if you look closely, the reason you lose weight on these diets is because you eat less. Fasting reduce the time spent eating, it’s more to do with eating less than sugar spikes. Low carb cuts out an entire food group, so you eat less. It’s no magic fix where you can bypass storing excess food as fat.

but there’s a lot of profit in writing books that sound plausible to the untrained.

Exactly @Jewel1968. I was proud of myself that I was losing weight through regular exercise ie explained weight loss. If OP is correct, then it's not the exercise and definitely not what I'm eating so it becomes unexplained and worrying. But I can't imagine GPs considering weight loss due to exercise unexplained to be honest.

also the “science” behind why “exercise” doesn’t assist weight loss isn’t complicated.

one hour a day in the gym- roughly 300 calories. Couple of slices of toast. If you spend all day in front of a computer screen, do your hour, then sit in front of the tv, then diet is still more important as that will not send you into a calorie deficit enough to increase your calorie allowance.

Increasingly it appears that the “exercise” that makes a big difference is movement throughout the day. We don’t move much any more as everything is delivered to our desktop or house.

it’s been shown that “naturally” skinny people who don’t diet or exercise tend to move more. They’re your fidgeters whose legs are always bouncing, who can’t sit still, are up and down doing stuff constantly. Pp’s relative who “defies science” by being thin despite no exercise or diet probably fits this category.

Exercise is brilliant for many things, it does help weight loss but I agree that food is key. If exercise helps your mood, so does good food. Not sugary UPF "treats" and not the wine o'clock glass of pinot. They're dopamine hits with the inevitable crash afterwards.

I agree. Many people overcomplicate weight control. Eating healthily and exercising go hand in hand - one feeds off the other.

I generally work out an hour to 75 minutes a day. I'm not obsessive about restricting food but I try to avoid excessive carbs, UPF and 'crap that isn't good for me'.

Yesterday was fairly typical.
An hour doing stretches, weights, planks, abs, glutes.
Food intake: an omelet plus salad, flatbread with feta cheese and a Persion cucumber, vegetable stirfry with prawns, a bowl of raspberries.

Most days are similar......... "eat food, not too much, mostly plants". But because I do a fair amount of resistance training (aka dumbbells + Caroline Girvan...), I make sure I get a fair bit of protein as well. Though I don't obsess - 2 eggs plus about 150g of chicken/fish/seafood seems to work for me.

What would happen if I didn't exercise? I have no idea if the work I do significantly impacts my weight, but I absolutely do know that it fundamentally affects my outlook, my mood and my commitment to living a healthy life.

I'm 70, slim, strong, really fit and generally in good shape. Do what works for you but the basics of what I'm doing seem to work for many fit and healthy folks.