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.

Hi Andrew.

I think you are looking at things too literally OP. The best way to lose weight is a combination of diet and exercise. It worked for me, and when I dropped my (not too arduous, but regular) regime due to very stressful family circumstances I put weight back on.

Of course exercise will burn off extra calories, although not as many as many people believe, and if you build muscle that increases the calories you burn even resting. As PPs it also helps by boosting energy, helping better sleep and burning off stress all of which make you feel better.

No one has to go mad with the exercise they do, and suddenly take up triathlon or run a marathon, but I'm at a loss why you think basically telling overweight people that it's pointless to exercise is at all helpful.

You don't need to tell anyone OP. We all know this. Exercise does help with toning and although it does not impact weight, it does impact physique.

For me, I have an allotment and go for walks in the summer, and my weight falls off. I've lost a stone since Christmas. I'll put it back on as usual when the allotment season finishes!

I understand the science behind what you are saying, OP (genuinely - I have read so much about how diet and exercise interact). You are right in the sense that it's very difficult to burn off enough calories to lose weight as a sort of technical written down sum of calories in/calories out. But my experience is that when I am trying to eat healthily and exercising I lose much, much more weight than if I just try to eat healthily. I don't even really get off the starting blocks without exercise.

Also, exercise is probably the best thing we can do for ourselves to improve and maintain our health (as opposed to just our weight) whatever size we are.

So for me exercise absolutely does affect my weight, regardless of whether it technically produces a calorie deficit.

I understand what you are saying and why, but I think it is massively counterproductive to say that exercise is not a weight loss tool. It's highly motivating, it makes you feel great about your body, it reinforces the idea of weight loss as part of general health rather than the only measure, it means you have another way of measuring improvement of health (heart rate, stamina, strength), it introduces the idea of your body as a thing that achieves wonderful things rather than working against you by remaining heavy, it is likely to get you out into social spaces and/or open air. All of these things make people more motivated to do other healthy things including eating healthily and joyfully rather than mindlessly and poorly. How is it not a weight loss tool?

Err....

I don't even know where to start with this. 😂

"You don't burn more calories because you are exercising more"

😂

I mean thanks to my daily cardio I’m size 6 with 2500kcal to play with. I’ll take it 😎

no, I run marathons

Have you ever been obese, OP?

Exactly. Like many pps I struggle to believe exercise doesn’t impact weight loss. I stayed at 9 stone for years while in London walking 10-15K steps every day on my commute alone, while eating a lot of cakes,cookies in the office, sugary hot drinks for breakfast and large portions for dinner on a regular basis. I’d also go to the gym off and on, when I was “on” at the gym I’d go 3 times a week and do a lot of cardio.

I left my job and went back to my hometown for 3 months where I barely left my house or moved much at home and the weight piled on.

I was eating less if anything - not more. The only thing that changed was my activity level.

Currently listening to Ultra processed people On audible and the author makes a similar claim about exercise not having much effect on weight, but i noticed his argument for that wasn’t as detailed, well-evidenced or cogent as the rest of the claims in the book. I remain unconvinced. I’m no expert in the science of this but Myself and too many others have lived experience of exercise having an effect on weight.

You can’t look at weight in isolation. Muscle
mass is a huge factor and you lose it as you age if you don’t do anything about it. That’s what people should focus on, not a number on a scale. I used to run 50k a week on 1200 calories a day. Now I lift weights, eat 2250 calories a day and weigh 2 stone less. My body fat % is way lower and my muscle mass far higher. Diet is key in terms of not overeating but exercise does matter as long as it’s the right exercise.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8365736/

I have read a lot of what you say before but most studies point to exercise leading to weight loss.

The above is a pretty big and reputable meta analysis.

In general I eat exactly the same type of thing / calorie intake every day.

The weeks I go fell walking and maintain the same diet ( or add a couple of flapjacks at lunch) I lose weight.

In lockdown I lost weight with walking. Quite a lot.

Is there something wrong with my homeostatic system?

It feels like this is way over complicating it.
When I walk every day, I lose more weight than when I don’t

Since having a dog, I have come down two dress sizes from 14 to a 10 {Body mass index of 21}

I don't know...
I did loose my extra weight when I started to train for a 8 day long distance hike. My aim wasn't to lose it, just to get fit. I didn't change my diet massively either... in fact I ended up eating more & sometimes giving in to that sugar hit.
I have stopped training now but haven't really put on the extra weight from before I set myself the goal to get fit. I still do regular exercise, but not as frequent or high impact as before.

So who knows, I am a firm believer of whatever works for an individual is fine.

Great. You seem unable to understand basic maths though.

My DBro, who eats a low carb very healthy diet always knows when he hasn't been out walking (he does around 7 miles four times a week) that he will have put weight on. Maybe it's not actually "fat", it could be something to do with water retention etc, but with same diet and no exercise his weight creeps up.

In my old life I was a biochemist studying metabolism of glucose and imo these things are a lot more complicated and interwoven than people wanting to sell their diet books try to tell us it is.

So why does my Fitbit (which I wear round the clock, every day) record so many more calories burned on a day when I exercise, than a day when I don’t?

As a bonus point, why is is that on the days I exercise, the increase in calories burned is far greater than the actual calorie burn from the exercise itself?

I.e. I burn 300 calories going for a run, but my overall calorie burn for the day is about 500 more than a day when I don’t exercise? (I have a very sedentary job, so the exercise is the only real movement I do all day)

People who sit around eating junk tend to be fat. People who run or walk miles every day tend to be thin.

I don’t get why it has to be an either or thing? Anyone with weight to lose is going to benefit from exercising more to build strength and muscles etc. I don’t think anyone is saying exercise alone can do it if you’re still eating loads of crap?

You seem to be arguing though that exercise makes NO difference to weight (which generally we have to stop going on about weight and consider fat loss as this is what people are usually aiming to lose not their muscles weight) but then mention ruining longer distances vs a shorter walk - so surely you are saying perhaps people overestimate how much impact exercise will make?

Or are you saying if you kept eating as you do normally and stopped all your marathon running you don’t believe you’d gain any fat?

You can’t outrun your fork but exercise absolutely helps with weight loss, weight maintenance and shape change.

Anecdotally, I find frequent movement throughout the day is even more beneficial than an hour in the gym after work e.g park in the furthest spot from the shop entrance, taking the stairs rather than the lift, trying to your 10k steps in. The two together are 👍

Whenever I've not exercised due to injury, I've put on weight. I like my food so make sure I am very active and play sports 3-4 times a week and walk a lot so I can still eat my usual diet. Surely it's calories in -v- calories out ? If you take in more calories than you expend you will put on weight?

I've lost 8 stone through a combination of diet and exercise (running, gym & swimming). Obviously wouldn't have lost the weight through exercise alone, but I wouldn't have managed it (or kept it off) without. I think people hope exercise will be the magic bullet on its own - I used to - and it isn't, but it's not true to say that exercise has no impact on weight or obesity.

Are you a registered dietician o/p? Or some sort or expert in the weight loss field?

if not, keep your lecture and “recommendations” for reading materials.

like many pp, I disagree with you, but can’t be arsed to engage yet again.

getting bored of lectures from people who read a fad diet book and now think they know so much they can “educate” everyone else.

Exercise is very important to me, but the science for weight loss is largely on your side.

This has been scientifically observed, most notably with the Hadza tribe who live an incredibly active lifestyle yet were found to burn the same number of calories as relatively sedentary office workers in America. The body adjusts. It is known as the exercise paradox https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-exercise-paradox/

However exercise IS proven to help most body systems stay healthy, plus there is emerging evidence that exercise might help reduce inflammation which can, amongst other things, help weight loss - just not in the way most of us would assume.