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.

Yes definitely very hard to loose weight with exercise alone if your diet is poor. But if you are not active, over the years, even eating a reasonably good diet will cause you to gain weight. More less like a saving accounts of fat. Every time you eat calories that you dont burn it ends up stored as fat.
That's what happened with me. As I grew older I was moving less and less and started putting on weight even though I don't tend to overeat.
I am trying to address that now by changing my routine to include exercise everyday.

Really, I have studied human Biology at degree level and this is a new 1 on me 😂. Metabolism dosent change according to the seasons, exersice increases metabolism, which helps you loose weight. Metabolism is affected by many things, sessions isnt 1 of them. Please dont believe everything you read

Doctor today told me to do cardio exercise to lose weight to manage diabetes and said walking was not enough

Glad to hear a dr recommending weight loss and excercise, when DH went with family history (death of father in his 50s) worryingly high BP and big pot belly on skim physique. Was given medication and told to cut salt. WTF isn’t he told to loose his gut. !! As a women slight iver healthy weight at well women check I am given a full lecture. I walk every day and two big walks a week, never smoked, healthy diet no UPF very little sugar, good BP, good cholesterol yet lectured at by a very nice nurse. I think NHS could do more to highlight diet etc. DH also had hernia OP on NHS, all others is waiting room Jen with pot bellies!! Preventative and more education aims at certain ages and dongroagusc would help and exercise must be part of it.

Typos. Men with pit bellies etc. 🤣

OP instead of uncritically lecturing people on what you have just read, you may be interested in looking into longitudinal studies into the so-called Blue Zones, places where people have exceptionally long health expectancy and life expectancy.

It’s not someone’s PhD paper done on 30 subjects but ongoing studies running over 25+ years.

TLDR: they all move a lot, have lean BMI and eat diets high in complex carbohydrates and low in saturated fat.

o for goodness sake! a whole thread explaining why this doesn't work on human bodies!

I have been a member of my gym for 15 years. I got to know in a friendly manner many people. We do the same classes every week. Weight class, aerobic classes, mixed of both.

I can honestly not think of one person whose shape has changed in any significant way, if at all during all that time. Overweight people are still overweight.

However, we are now all very fit whatever our body shapes and our health is better for it which is why we continue.

We see those who join in January every year, thinking that in 3 months time, they'll have lost a stone or more. It doesn't happen and they quit the gym, leaving the regulars, who accept that they are not going to shed weight but are happy with the huge benefits it brings to our health.

of course metabolism changes with seasons. For literally millions of years mammals in temporate climates have lived through cycles of changing temperatures, and changing resources.

If metabolism DIDN'T change with seasons, that would be impossible to explain.

Do you think a bear preparing for hibernation is going to have a metabolism functioning identically to a bear just emerged from hibernation? Not all temperate mammals mammals hibernate, but all, including us, have a metabolism that will respond and adjust to seasonal variations.

one of the things we have done, with our year round autumn feasts is tell our bodies to constantly be in preparation for the long cold coming winter. Except it never comes. We just carry on and on and on preparing for it.

You might have studied human biology at degree level (as have I) but I doubt you studied this area of it

Exactly - there are massive health benefits to exercise - it is just that weight loss isn't one of them

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

This makes no sense to me.

So your body uses 70% cals running its own systems, and then uses 30% on pottering about making tea.

So does use calories to fuel that.

How does our body differentiate between cupboard door opening and lifting a kettle bell? How does it know to reserve 30% for tea making and a sedentary life but shut down brain cell regen (or something) if we go dancing?

It’s like Shroedinger’s Calories.

I am not "uncritical" and you are only calling me "lecturing" because you don't like what I am saying. I am trying to help people be informed - nobody has to take my word for it, look it all up for yourself - just use reliable peer reviewed science and not charlatans.

The Blue Zones are areas where people eat a lot of fish and vegetable, no man-made polyunsaturated margarines and vegetable oils and little to no highly processed food, The diet that Andrew Jenkinson recommends is identical

There is no culture of excessive exercise regimes in the blue zones either, but normal moderate exercise - which has many many health benefits, just not weight loss

so I don't know why you are referring to studies on the blue zones to disprove what I am saying? The studies all confirm it

I refer to my earlier post way back that you did not respond to. Most people down the gym have no real idea what intense exercise is, what sustained gut busting gasping for breath exertion really is. They think they do. I see the classes underway in the various studios down my gym, and while a handful of folk are really getting stuck in, most are going through the motions and at best getting a mild sweat on. It's better then nothing but one or two classes a week will not effect your weight in a serious way. As mentioned already when I coach the novice rowers down my club, they are on the receiving end of four sessions a week of focused hard exercise (weights, ergs and on the water)of at least an hour long. They all, without fail have lost weight 3 months later.

You're right OP, but you'll not convince people. I listened to a fab episode of the Infinite Monkey Cage last year on this which really opened my eyes. www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001n8b6

She won’t convince people becaue they all have experience of weight loss, and losing weight more quickly when they exercise. In fact, you can lose fat, if not weight, just by exercise alone.

I'm using My Fitness Pal to lose a bit of weight. It literally adds on the calories you burn through exercise to increase your food allowance. And it seems to be working.

Agree. I do a lot of cardio exercise - running, swimming, cycling. When I've been injured (usually from one of the above!) I still go to my strength classes.
I enjoy them and I know they're good for my core and bones and all that, but it is not the same as a proper run or hard bike ride.
My appetite responds in kind. The day after a long run or ride I eat more. If I didn't I would lose weight. I do not need to lose weight.

Giggling madly here at the thought of the homeostatic organs getting into a huddle, ‘Righty, let’s put it to the vote, what weight should she be this time? If we can’t agree we are drawing straws.

As I believe other people have stated the reason for weight gain (and in certain problems with weight loss) are multifactorial.
The decision is determined by many more things than a decision between your organs.
The paper also has a homeostatic theory of health.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5193276/

Actually, the people who told me saturated fats were bad were a cardiologist and cardiology team. And vLDL is a silent killer. There's no use being thin if you've lined your arteries to the point you die from a heart attack or stroke.

The real problem is we all eat far too much and do far too little exercise. When I eat properly and go for walks I lose weight. I think the difference you've failed to mention is losing weight at a rate of about a kg per month and those who try and lose 2-3kg a month. The first is likely to sustain the weight loss, the second likely to put it back on again with another Kilo for good measure.

Quite, on a typical Saturday morning I would eat two slices of toast with a thick spread of peanut butter. That would last me through my first on the water session (800-900 calories) by which time I'm starving again so will have a couple of bananas or a bowl of porridge before the second session (700-800 calories). We then as a squad head off for coffee and large brunch. Half my eating is literally fuelling my exercise.

No, there is an entire thread of misinformation and overcomplication.

Yes, it's more complex, yes a calorie is not just a calorie and yes, exercise, the type of diet you eat and environmental factors all have an effect on your metabolism but for 99.99% of people eating less calories than you expend will work. Its the only thing which will work and exercise and general movement uses calories.

It's how all diets work. Atkins reduces calories by limiting carbs, as does Paleo and the whole food diet you are championing reduces calories by limiting proccessed foods.

It's not magic. It's plain old science.

This is the trouble, people want a simple answer. The answer is not simple. Nature has not tailored itself according to the human preference for easy explanations.

Last year I got a young dog, started walking him 45/60 mins a day minimum in the countryside/up hills etc. Did nothing else differently.
I was fit and fairly slim to begin with, around 10 st, I lost 7lbs in 5 months.

Then why are you being so definitive in your simple explanation?

Recent research suggests to me they don't currently know definitively wtf is going on and it's asking many people to ignore their own experiences and senses.

My normal exercise is very anaerobic and is based on power endurance, it uses loads of calories but it doesn't make me ravenously hungry after, just a normal level of hunger, the same as if I haven't done it.

Currently I'm injured and can't do it so I'm cycling instead, which normally forms only a small part of my exercise and I'm constantly ravenous. I'm eating basically the same and I know I'm going to lose weight

so I'm cycling instead, which normally forms only a small part of my exercise and I'm constantly ravenous.

@OneTC, I suspect the hunger signals are linked with the intensity of your cycling. If you cycled slower over the same distance you might not get as hungry as that would give time enough for the fat burning systems to kick in. If you cycle fast once you've used up glycogen stores you might 'hit the wall', that is get a slump in energy. It's what I've found with my running and observed by Dr Maffetone in his research.