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.

Exercise has helped tone my body, feel good about myself and reduce severe anxiety. I don't know if I weigh any less because I haven't been obsessively weighing myself or starving myself on fad diets.

I feel better about my body in a long time because I am ensuring that I am moving more, my diet can always be better but I don't restrict myself so much anymore and I'm happy in my body and myself.

In my experience most people have not experienced or know what proper exercise is. And by 'proper', I mean prolonged periods of elevated heart rate, be it through aerobic exercise or resistance training. I see it down my gym all the time with people with no programme just mooching between equipment doing a few reps before moving on to something else or sitting on the bike watching tv while slowly turning the pedals while chatting to their mate next door.

I coach down my rowing club, we get a bunch of new recruits every season and teach them how to do the sport. We are not an elite club so take on all shapes and sizes. One thing is consistant, they all loose weight over the 12 week course. If they stick around afterwards they are completely different people 12 months later. 4 days a week of proper coach led training on land and water does wonders to the body. The senior squads are training 6 days a week, not a single overweight person there. I was out in my eight this morning for over an hour and dropped over 900 calories, I will do the same tomorrow and a couple of times midweek. It's bollocks to suggest that exercise does not assist in a major way to weight loss and weight maintenance if done 'properly'.

Yeah there’s actually science backing this, those little bits of movement you do during the day - taking the bin out, walking to your colleague at the other end of the office, taking the stairs - is called NEAT and helps boost your metabolism.

Working out for an hour then being super sedentary for the rest of the day definitely has it’s limitations.

ETA : https://www.womenshealthmag.com/uk/fitness/fat-loss/a36287384/neat-exercise/

Op seems invested in this guy who wrote a book

He's a bariatric surgeon?

Of course exercise aids weight loss!

Yes, fitness tests repeatedly put me in the top1% for my age and gender, which if true means an awful lot of people are only playing at it. I exercise most days, but I'm not doing hours on end or much high intensity stuff.

I think its objective fact that exercising more equals weightloss - as long as your diet stays the same. Most people do both though, they focus on diet while introducing a decent exercise regime.

What I think is more important for particularly overweight women to know, is that exercise with lots of additional weight can be devastating for joints and bones. I jumped straight into exercising more after having my fourth child and the impact on my joints has rendered me a part time wheelchair user at 39.

What I should have been doing and supported to do, is to eat well and cut out calories as much as possible. Unfortunately if you speak to any NHS doctor in this country about being overweight they recommend exercise first and foremost and ignore markers for other issues, including ME and so on.

Even when I started showing signs of ME and joint issues I was advised to keep exercising by my GP's which has proven disasterous and now I need to lose more weight than I've ever had to before, whilst not being able to walk properly let alone any other form of exercise.

I am swimming regularly but the age old mantra of 'move more' is something the NHS really needs to work on. Its not a one-size-fits-all system and we should be looking holistically at what we need to do better.

I agree op. When I exercise say by running 5k several times a week, my appetite increases. When I just eat healthily and keep active daily (job and chores plus a dog walk) my appetite is stable and so is my weight.

Purely regarding weight, I notice that our grandparents generation (in my case young in the 1940s), were not overweight because they didn't eat much, didn't snack, no UPF and a lot of moderate activity. In this day and age unless you're bloody strict with your diet and literally do clean eating only, you will bulge out a bit. I do loads of exercise and try to eat healthily, and am much stronger than in my 20s, but I now weigh 62 kg and when young weighed 52 kg, had no muscles and was like a stick. When you see much older people who are slim and have always stayed active, but not done weights etc, I feel like their joints and muscles are frail, and I want to avoid that by actively weight training. Another part of me thinks, we are so careful to be healthy and keep our bodies healthy, but I worry it might mean living much much longer with dementia or whatever, sometimes I think it might be better to live big and pop off earlier.

Exercise increases my metabolism beyond the calories expended during the activity. I can only lose weight when I exercise. It also allows you to eat more. I don't know how people can lose weight without exercising. The amount you can eat is miniscule and it's miserable eating that little.

But that still counts as exercise.

I don’t know how long you walk your dog for but my friend who has a dog she walks daily and a young kid she takes to school, burns about 10K steps by lunchtime alone. Then another few thousands steps in the afternoon running about doing chores.

As mentioned upthread, my grandparents didn’t do one hour of organised exercise. They just walked everywhere ( lived in London) and chores were more physical. Money was tight so they ate 3 sensible meals a day, snacking didn’t really exist. They lived into their 80s. One even smoked! If you enjoy exercise that’s great and if it builds strength and mental health-that’s great too but it’s true that weight is more about healthy eating and portion control and not being sedentary than exercise as such.

@Sweetenuf yes it is but I think OP was getting at organised exercise( gym and classes etc)

I agree that exercise to lose weight isnt very effective but disagree that your metabolism changes in that way.

More likely overweight people are not burning much when exercising. And the calories burnt is overstated.
Plus overwight people may then use up the extra calories.
Maybe also get hungrier as more sensitive to those cues.

When you look at athletes they do eat hugely more and stay slim. The swimmer burning like 12k calories.
But a person just doing lengths isnt doing 30-50 in 30 mins etc.
Kids in pe lessons do almost no exercise. Its not properly competitive. My ds school did a but of running and for the first time the pe tops are sweaty.

But imagine a marathon runner they would have to eat extra to not lose weight. If training too.
At dc school one of the kids always scooting doing after school football has noticeably now getting quite fat legs 9-11yo. Hes obviously eating more than his extra exercise.

You can.
i eat nothing but processed foods/ bread, you wouldn’t believe the amount of doughnuts if i told you. No fruit or veg. Im 5’10” 53 male. Im 13 stone . But the thing i do do is walk about 25,000 steps a day. This is day in day out ,5 days a week in any weather , , uphill, downhill. at a brisk pace.

I have no health conditions ,no medications , low blood pressure , normal cholesterol. if i didn’t do the walking then i think i would be about 10 stone heavier and have serious health problems, unless I changed my diet.

In my case you definitely can out exercise a bad diet.

This. /End of thread.

When I ran half marathons I’d do maybe 20-40k a week (nowhere near 70k) and the weight dropped off me.

I agree with alot of what you’re saying but ultimately if you do loads of cardio and reduce your calorie intake you will loose weight.

I may be mistaken but I don’t think they are only talking about “organised exercise” @greengreyblue

The OP said this : This is what I started the thread to try and explain. Walking isn't going to make any difference. Not to your weight

For me the “walking everywhere” in London that you said your grandparents also did, was massively helpful in maintaining my 9 stone weight.

It doesn’t seem to me as if you and OP are saying the same thing.

Blimey, the amount of times I’ve seen this book mentioned on MN….
(and I lost weight doing fasted cardio, btw, didn’t have to change my eating one jot).

I've also ran marathons op.... I could show you my before/after photos

Training runs do tend to make you lose weight!

What job/qualifications do you have?

Why does a boxer like Anthony Joshua need to eat around 10,000kcals a day to maintain his weight, whilst Sharon who works in IT needs to only eat 1500kcals to maintain her weight.

Of course we all have different metabolisms but there is a general trend that those who are active need more calories to maintain their weight than people who are much less active.

How do you explain that?

Exercise absolutely helps me to either maintain or lose weight.
I'm guessing you probably eat far too much alongside your exercise, or you're trying to justify having an overweight child.

More likely overweight people are not burning much when exercising. And the calories burnt is overstated.

And most people massively underestimate their calorie intake. Those cheeky three or four ginger nut biscuits eaten throughout the course of a day is nearly 200 calories. That's 1000 calories over the course of a week just on snacking before you get to main meals.

Maybe not @Sweetenuf but it’s my experience that movement is important for maintaining weight. That movement can just be part of everyday life. My DH sits at a desk alll day so feels the need to go for a run or cycle . I don’t because I’m on my feet most of the day. I believe the late, great Michael Mosely talked about this in one of the JUst One Thing podcasts. Professor Lee concurred that exercise helps keep weight off but isn’t that effective for losing weight.

This is so completely and utterly not my experience. To the point I don’t believe it.