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.

You’ve succeeded by doing it in a sustainable way rather than going on a crash diet. The message I got from the book is that crash diets/going super low calorie/cutting out food groups result in eventually gaining weight because they’re not sustainable.

A gradual change over time where you maintain the new habits results in it staying off

So much of what you have written is not based on good evidence

I do exercise the equivalent to 10k every day and believe me it DOES make a difference

Ok not scientific but the online calculators say my BMR is 1415 calories per day. Then there is another calculation so say x by 1.2 for sedentary, x1.55 for exercise 3-5 times a week, which is what I do and it gives me around 2200 per day. I am 54 and female.

Is the OP inferring that instead of adding the extra 800 per day all my activities generally and otherwise would only keep my BMR at 1400 so I would actually gain weight at that level of calories?

2200 calories per day is a huge amount for a 54 year old woman I would've thought. I would gain weight eating that many per day and I am 15 years your junior. I weight train 4-5 times per week and have always been someone that can eat what I like and not gain weight (to a certain point obviously) and that would definitely make me gain weight. Try another calculator. I think you need to work out your intake needs because some calculators have given me 1500 a day and others 2300! (As a maintenance figure) so they vary wildly and I'd say both of those are inaccurate for me.

Exercise is not a linear calories burned = grams lost exercise, as bodies are complex things. But exercise definitely helps lose weight. And to be honest the times I’ve really tried to train up my biggest challenge is getting a bit skinny so my immune system drops and I get sick. I’ve never changed my diet except to eat more, although you do obviously drink less by default if early morning training or an evening run. Exercise is so good for you in so many ways, why would you try and push this message?

Exercise seems to regulate appetite. With plenty of exercise I just naturally eat what I need, not more. And I'm slightly less hungry than I would be after just sitting on the sofa or at a desk all day. So for me anyway, more exercise means I gradually lose weight.

That’s you. It doesn’t mean it’s incorrect for @Alainlechat BMR is not an exact science, it’s a good place to start. If you gain weight on that calorie allowance, reduce it until you don’t. If you are losing too much, increase it. It’s a balance depending on the individual.

@Alainlechat yes that’s exactly what o/p is saying. That exercise doesn’t matter and if you eat over your BMR you will gain, regardless of how much exercise you do.

does that calculation (roughly) work for you, out of interest?

Exercise matters and I think exercise is why I eat so much without too much weight trouble and lose weight when I shift up a gear ( short term effect )

But it's complicated
Especially if instead of maintaining you are trying to lose weight

Because your body will resist
It will lead you to eat a Mars bar as a reward for doing an apples worth of exercise
It will lead you to go slower, lift lighter so you burn fewer exercise calories then if you were in a stable state

@FluWorldOrder I wasn't really asking about my calorie intake just questioning I had understood the OP.

Anyway I tried my fitness pal and it gave me BMR of 1356, and I have the settings to lose a pound a week and it gives me a calorie intake of 1670 per day. And added back in 446 calories for my exercise this morning.

I'm not eating up to those calories anyway just logging to check macros and keep myself accountable.

It's just not true. Years ago after I had my children I was overweight for a couple of years. I bought the Jane Fonda workout videos and did it every single day because I knew I couldn't diet. I ended up losing two stone after about a year. I got back to my pre baby weight. I didn't change my diet at all.

I mean it's nuanced isn't it.

There will be people here who will have lost weight only through exercise and little change in their diet, but that's probably because they weren't eating enormous amounts over their maintenance anyway.
Same in reverse - I gained a stone not because I was eating more, but because I couldn't exercise as I was injured. So I wasn't burning that 300 ish calories 5 times per week anymore, I didn't offset it by eating less, so the weight crept on slowly.

If you're eating 1000 calories above maintenance there's no way to exercise it away unless, like you say, you long distance run every day. For the vast majority it's calories in vs calories out, and you can't outrun your fork!

So, the studies that show that everyone basically burns the same amount of calories whether they walk 10 miles a day or sit watching TV are true.

BUT. This doesn’t mean exercise is useless! However, it does mean that seeing exercise as a way of “getting rid” of calories is not really correct. What will happen is your body will slow down and reduce other functions in order to keep that calorie use level the same. However, these functions are things like inflammation, stress responses, anxiety…all stuff that it’s very good to reduce!

In addition, weight-bearing exercise that helps you gain muscle means you raise the base amount of calories that you burn. So even though I now do less cardio that I used to, and mostly do dumbbell exercises which in themselves don’t burn much in the way of calories, I can still eat more without gaining weight. For smaller, older women facing the prospect of living on 1400 calories a day, weights are really the dream ticket to being able to eat a more satisfying diet. Trying to run off the calories will work to some extent but it makes you hungrier and your body ends up adapting, so it’s time-consuming and inefficient, even though on paper running is “better” as it burns more calories.

So it’s sort of complicated but also not. Exercise isn’t the key to losing weight but it’s a very very important part. It’s not a simple calories in - calories out equation but you can make your body into a more efficient machine by building muscle.

Can you link to these studies?

i’d like to see the evidence that shows people burn the same amount of calories regardless of activity.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-exercise-paradox/#:~:text=When%20the%20analyses%20came%20back,in%20the%20U.S.%20or%20Europe. This is a good article by the people who did a study of the Hadza tribe and were surprised by their findings.

Can you link to these studies?

Here is a link to an article about the study done on the Hadza tribe and subsequent tests that were then done on other traditional rural communities. All came up with the same results - humans basically burn the same amount of calories whatever they are doing, because the body compensates. They've done studies on animals in captivity vs animals in the wild and found exactly the same thing.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-exercise-paradox/#:~:text=Our%20data%20indicate%20that%2C%20contrary,how%20physically%20active%20they%20are.

Cross-posted!

Herman Pontzer has a whole book on this and there’s lots of podcasts too such as this - https://open.spotify.com/episode/62m9gmYeaLp8KTqgnYwjzF?si=B60AdltRQCK141-2Uso1mA

Me too. Links would be great.

I find it difficult to comprehend how 2 people, one 60kg and one 120kg, burn the same calories with the same activity levels. Especially given that bigger bodies need more energy to run at rest.

The only people who claim that calories in/calories out isn’t “true” (despite the vast scientific data supporting this) are the same ones looking for some cheat code/excuse/really complex and nuanced reason why they’ve not lost fat or kept it off (usually because they’re still in a positive energy balance). A kind of exceptionalism-seeking behaviour that gets them off the hook.

Behaviour change is hard.

It’s like listening to Flat Earthers

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03014460.2024.2310724

Another (scientific journal) article.

Basically this is after studying people who lived a rural lifestyle in Kenya, and finding that their total energy expenditure was a) the same as other tribes and b) the same as Western sedentary population, thus supporting the idea that as activity rises, the body reduces other functions that use energy to compensate, and also that as energy use falls, the body increases other things to use the energy.

Those reports are still saying women need 1900 calories and men need 2600 in those tribes, the same as in the West. They are not saying you have to eat at your BMR.

I'm on 1400 calories now and losing about 1lb or slightly more per week, so looking like 1900 would be maintenance for me.

That is with 2x CrossFit sessions per week and 3x runs up to 10k now + around 8k steps with dog walks etc.

What’s the comparison between a sedentary member of the tribe and an active one?

as that seems a fairer comparison that between a tribe member and a western person.

only skimmed but it seems as though the hadza have adapted long term to an active lifestyle. It does not show that if that sedentary western person got of his arse he wouldn’t burn more calories. It doesn’t show that if a had a suddenly started sitting on his arse he wouldn’t get fat.

Are there any corroborating studies or is it just this one isolated one?

Am I missing something? I looked up the actual study that the SA article references and the abstract says this :

“After adjusting for body size and composition, total energy expenditure was positively correlated with physical activity, but the relationship was markedly stronger over the lower range of physical activity. For subjects in the upper range of physical activity, total energy expenditure plateaued, supporting a Constrained total energy expenditure model. “

so yeah. If you go from very little exercise to doing a lot you burn more calories. If you go from doing a lot of exercise to a little more this effect diminishes. Which doesn’t support what the op is saying at all and to me is common sense?