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 you walk 10,000 steps every day that is about 5 miles which is about 400 calories burnt which is about 4 pounds of fat a month burnt off. Exercise is crucial for well being and fitness but also burns calories which helps with weight loss.

As I understand it, when you hit a plateau with weight loss if you just keep up the good diet and movement your set point adjusts down to the new normal then you can lose again. It can take a long time at each plateau and not everyone has the patience/faith to keep at it so they return to their original set point.

it’s true that you can’t out-run a bad diet

But when I exercise I don’t have to watch calories/macros at all as long as I eat reasonably healthily

when I am sedentary I have to watch what I eat otherwise I’ll stack it on

exercise makes a huge difference now I’m in my 40s

I sort of agree with you in the short term.. a big uptick in exercise levels for 3-6 months might help you temporarily shift a few pounds, at best, but does not bring sustainable weight loss.

Long term lifestyle change is the only thing i think works really. You cannot just "go on a diet" for 6 months and lose some weight then stop. You have to accept you probably can't ever eat like that ever again.

You are wrong

It absolutely IS a Weightloss tool

Absolutely!!!💯

OP this doesn't make any sense. Of course exercise burns calories. Calories are just units of energy. You can't exercise (or in fact do anything) without available energy.

I guess there is such a thing where as you get fitter you burn less calories doing the same as what you were doing before. Same as your muscles get used to lifting the same weight and to push them to work harder you lift more.

That's not true though. You'd need to do an awful lot of exercise to lose much weight without changing your diet too, but it absolutely does help manage weight alongside a sensible diet.

I'm generally the weight I want to be, but if I've gained a bit, on holiday etc, a couple of weeks doing extra running miles soon deals with it.

Thank you.

In the transcript of the podcast I cited, the doctor also said this.

“That's a new term we're introducing today in the podcast. A set point that the brain has of where you ought to be. That gets back to that whole famine and starvation concept I talked about before. So the body doesn't forget. It's under the category of unfair. But the body, the brain doesn't quite forget where you started, and it works its way very slowly over one to probably five years to get you back to where you were. Now you can introduce change in your, diet. Again, reduce calories, and increase physical activity. Drive the body weight down again. But again, over time it's likely to go up. Will, we see this in animal studies all the time. We change the rat chow. We change how many times, they're on the treadmill and the rats go back to the weight that they started at.

And we are biological beings, and our bodies behave in very similar ways. There are only two interventions that I am aware of. That changed this set point of where the brain thinks you ought to be. One is medications. We're talking about that today. The other is bariatric surgery.”

OP, it's great that you've found a system that works for you. But why does it matter to you if some of us disagree and have our own thoughts? There's no overall consensus on this subject.

I agree with you OP. I’ve lost 42lbs since January mostly sitting on my arse. I count calories and do intermittent fasting.

my appetite reduces SO much when I exercise regularly. Also, the more muscly you are the more calories you burn overall.

So what you're saying is not true.

This is true. When I was in my 20s I could go for a quick jog around the block daily, and keep eating the same to lose a stone in a few months. Now I'm on my 40s, only restricted calories help. I exercise an hour a day six times a week. It's good for my mental health, but it doesn't help me lose weight at all.

This is what I am trying to explain, it doesn't. You wont have burnt of an extra 400 calories after walking 5 miles, you will just have compensated by having burnt off far fewer through your BMR, and the same overall.

This is what I started the thread to try and explain. Walking isn't going to make any difference. Not to your weight. To your muscles tone, circulation, physical and mental health, yes, it makes a difference, but not to your weight.

If you want to burn off enough calories to actually have any impact through exercise, you would need to do more than twice the distance, and run it, not walk it

"we see this in animal studies all the time. We change the rat chow. We change how many times, they're on the treadmill and the rats go back to the weight that they started at."

I'm sorry but the idea of rats running on actual treadmills really tickles me - I assumed they were using a hamster wheel but the idea that they have an actual gym with dumbells and everything is adorable.

I'm sure they don't use an actual treadmill, but I kind of hope they do.

I don’t think it’s right to say surgery will convince your body of anything. If the first part of that is right, then after surgery you would still just put it back. What I’ve heard (from people like the Medicinal Chef) is that once it knows it’s not a starvation issue and you are clearly well and healthy at the lower weight, your body accepts it. Far more logical than the Zoe thing.

This is good to know! I'll keep on at it (even though sometimes I really can't be bothered 😂)

Just to pick up his point about bariatric surgery, its not some magical thing in and of itself that loses weight, you still have to eat less in order to lose the weight. For many many months those of us that have had it are existing on calories of around 800 to 1000 a day. And the weight falls off

Someone could (theoretically) eat at that level without surgery and have the same outcome. This undermines any information he has to give in my opinion

But there is an overall consensus on the subject, all the science from the past few decades! This idea of losing weight through exercise comes from the 1980s and earlier, before as much was known and understood about metabolism. It isn't a matter of opinion, it is how human bodies work

Blimey it certainly isnt just from the 80s!!

Unless you mean the 1680s

How long do you think humans have been trying to manage their weight? Its not a 20th century phenomenon.

Well I'm interested in what you have to say as BMR, exercise, protein vs carbs burnt etc are a mystery to me.
My BMR is approx 1600Cals. I often walk say 14 miles to burn maybe 1000Cals thus (in my head) giving me 2600Cals burnt for the day. But you are saying in fact all that happens is my BMR changes to 600Cals burnt for the day so still 1600Cals overall?

Personally I think different things work for different people. I don’t agree it doesn’t help at all.

Obviously you can’t out run a good diet however much exercise you do but exercise is great for supplementing a good diet and losing the pounds.

For me I work out 5/6 times a week. I mostly watch what I eat but I’m not perfect and glad exercise helps keep me on track. It also helps me tone up, gives me strength and helps my mental health.

To me. Giving up exercise would be detrimental and I already know what I’m doing next week.

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

So before there was all of that no one was fat???

This very much reads as 'false authority syndrome' - you've written as though it's absolute fact, used some pertinent, authoritive sounding terms and given it an air of an academic nature...... but to say that exercise and physical output have no effect on a person's weight - that's patently untrue.

Having recently fucked up my hormones and functioning by believing this to be true and therefore not eating much extra, I would say it’s true based on the amount of exercise the average person does.

However there needs to be a very clear message to active women to watch out for signs of relative energy deficiency in sport (REDS) and to make sure they do eat more

Go to park run? You don’t need extra food. Run 20 miles? You do. Run 20 miles frequently? You definitely do.

disclaimer - I’m running 100 km in training a week at the moment. Personally I notice a difference in needing to increase my food intake when my mileage goes about 40k per week - and incrementally over that. Currently eating everything in sight and still shrinking (albeit not actually losing much weight just inches)