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 helped me. I didn't change my diet, still ate chocolate everyday, but just worked out more. I lost a stone in 4 months. I was 39 at the time, so not a youngster.

Genuine Q. Do you wonder what you could have lost not just sitting on your arse, or how much healthier your whole body would be if you had added in weight bearing and cardiovascular type exercising?

This. As soon as I started running and weight training the weight fell off me- it was noticeable to others too and I was actually eating more of the exact same diet as before because I was more hungry.

It may benefit you to believe it's not true but it is whether you want to believe it or not.

No. What you say isn't really correct. A sedentary lifestyle will cause a lot of people to put on weight over a period of time. Exercise alone don't take weight off if you don't adjust your diet. But getting no exercise isn't good.

I totally agree OP, I've been reading 'Burn' (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Burn-Misunderstood-Metabolism-Herman-Pontzer-ebook/dp/B08DQWBCNG/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.D3NxnFQ7unlopzn_RF6DDlOKgUsaOHnNt7A0gnPCkYr8OPKMVQJNDC6WhfxL0r3CpgeZQnvp-o7SN0pISZ5gg50BQ1ZaqrLeZpnp5aMmodEAATY1CJzz0FjdpehptVOMayqh4v_eu6uAT3NdehAicKkdc0Duq-IcAX_opOYdhH-xcybcBobLbKR3jHKI5yRz183eG8UlHAPlkfLZvbd1TvD6zVW-f9Z-973qSSaQQBA.ZToWpWQsC1TJajZKGld7I2HmQCCwQZ__CRjC8ArGP6c&qid=1719067554&sr=8-3) which explains how it all works and it's a lot less straightforward than people think! Exercise (although I do do it, and it does make me feel better) generally also makes me hungry!

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.

But who is trying to lose weight without being concerned about their general physical and mental health too?

I get that you're saying the calories burned through exercise shouldn't be counted as calories you can eat back, and that set point theory exists, etc.

But since humans are complex organisms where all of our systems (physical, psychological, endocrine, etc) constantly interact, it's overly simplistic to state that exercise doesn't affect one's weight at all.

Sure, it might not affect it directly in the way some people might choose to view it, but since we're dealing with humans and not robots, it's typical that our bodies react in complex ways to all sorts of stimuli.

I don’t change my diet at all. When I’m injured and unable to do my normal exercise I put on weight. When I exercise more than normal I lose weight. End of.

I think only people who dislike exercise believe this!

That defies the laws of physics.

If that was true athletes wouldn’t have to eat 5000 calories a day. Also if exercising more made you burn fewer calories then that would be world hunger solved, you could tell starving people to go for a run.

The less you weigh the fewer calories you need to maintain your weight, so if you have lost weight through a calorie deficit from exercise then yes your BMR will reduce. That’s because it requires less energy to move 60kg around than it does for 100kg.

I have been preaching this almost my whole adulthood.
Not overweight.
Hate any kind of "forced" exercise.
🙂

Indeed!

Surely most people don’t want to lose weight as an objective in and of itself? They want to lose weight to improve health markers of lots of different types - some will be linked exclusively to weight, others will be linked to overall health in more complicated ways (heart health, endurance, flexibility, blood pressure, functional movements, preventing the onset of osteoporosis etc etc etc)

Yes, exercise is not a sole weight loss tool, it’s part of a range of things you need to do to improve physical and often mental health. Saying it’s not useful is to be weirdly blinkered to what it means to be healthy.

I wish it would fall off me! I'm running 3 days a week getting further each week, lifting 3 days a week getting heavier every time I complete a set not to mention my job on my feet and all the miles I rack up when I do the school run on foot.

I've just run a 10K and am stressing about eating at maintenance today.

I must be some kind of biological anomaly then

I started walking 10k steps a day and I've lost a stone without changing my diet?

I’m no expert but all I know is that when I’ve been going for my runs ever week I’ve lost weight! I haven’t done it for around 4 weeks and I’m putting weight on.
my diet is good, no changes.

But exercise makes you more hungry so your potentially eating more calories so it would balance out. The only way to lose weight is to to figure out your calorie maintenance and eat less then that. However exercise is important for health and fitness. But spending hours at the gym or running a 10k will be for nothing weight wise if you eat a mcdonalds straight after. Balance is best but food intake is far more important then exercise when it comes to weightloss

no, I run marathons

This is just not true.

of course there are nuances. Some studies suggest we compensate for hard exercise use by moving less the rest of the day for example. Or our hunger is driven up.

but in a strict calorie controlled and movement controlled environment, people exercising and moving more would lose more weight.

I used to be a teacher. I was on my feet 90% of the day, and on SLT so spent a lot of time walking corridors to go to classrooms to support colleagues with children in crisis (special school).

I left and went to work in the LA which meant 8 hours a day sitting in a chair in meetings. In the first year of doing that, I put on a stone. Nothing else changed - if anything, my diet got healthier, as I’d previously been a regular consumer of staffroom donuts and big school dinners, and swapped these for salads and sandwiches.

I know anecdote does not equal data, but in my experience stopping the natural exercise my job gave me caused me to put on weight. I had to take up running to counteract it which previously I’d not had to do.

What are your qualifications to enable you to correctly interpret scientific research and make such definitive statements?

It is possible to find research to back up pretty much all theories on exercise, food, diet etc.

Conversely, when I weight train I get fat. I've stopped And then started again 3 times in my life, long periods in between each time. As soon as I start, the fat piles on. I then realise and hammer the low carb to lose it.

When I worked in London I walked and later rode a bike from Euston to legal London and v/v - 25 mins walk or 10+ on the bike. Never gained weight.

Working locally 5 mins walk car park to office and I started to pile on pounds.

Eating much the same either way.

I missed the bit where you set out your medical or scientific qualifications.

Absolutely agree. I have gained, lost, gained, lost weight in my life. One stone is the difference between a fat level of 27% and 33%.

This has in no way ever been correlated with the level of exercise I've done in my life or the type. Every time I've gained and lost, it's been directly associated with how much food I eat.