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.

Are you a scientist OP? Because it sounds like you’ve read one book and took everything you read as verbatim without challenging it, checking it was adequately peer reviewed etc.

Many years ago I "discovered" that I was about 50 lbs overweight, just thru gaining 2 or 3 pounds a year for 20 years.

I started a campaign "50 lbs in 50 weeks". A pound is 3500 calories, and losing a pound a week works out to a nice even 500 calories a day. My plan was to exercise 250 calories, and eat 250 less calories. My exercise was walking, abut 3 miles a day, and I cut out most desserts.

It worked. And I've kept the weight off ever since. Still got my love handles though, I can't seem to lose those.

The science is very very clear on this. I have no idea why anyone is disputing it.

I think you need a good diet and exercise to loose weight. I have been a runner all my life (nearly 50), I have an underactive thyroid and have never been bigger than a size 8. I don't weigh myself or calorie count, but eat sensibly and exercise often. I very rarely see people who are overweight on the start line of my races.

I have always found that when I eat less I lose weight. My activity remains the same, we have a dog so walk daily. It’s so much cheaper than gym membership.

Actually it isn’t but gym membership doesn’t love you like the dog.

So our 'I've read a book' op has been shown to be WRONG!

The principle of what you are saying is correct you cannot exercise your way out of eating too many calories but the rest of what you say is pretty much bollox! As long as you are in a calorie deficit you will lose weight you could achieve this by eating only Mars Bars each day as long as you kept within calorie deficit. It may not be nutritious in terms of what your body needs long term vitamins/minerals etc but all this processed food, sugar makes you fat it a utter load of bollox. Simple maths! Exercise (especially weights) should be to make you look aesthetically more pleasing.

Nah. I lost 1.5 stone once I started running.

I exercise a lot. If I don't eat enough I lose weight.

BS, op. But well done on reading a book.

What even is the point of this thread, such a negative OP. 'I've solved it and I'm here to tell you all that you're doing it WRONG!'.

No this is what I am trying to explain, because so many people misunderstand this. Say you go to the gym some days, then this is what happens.

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

( many OTHER benefits, but not weight loss)

I should add obviously exercise brings it's own cardio vascular benefits as well as other health onese eg bone strength, however the average person won't exercise enough to eat willy nilly. Most massively over estimate the calories they burn at their 1 hour gym session anyway. A guy in manual labour job all day long probably can eat whatever he wants as he is burning a lot through NEAT.

Do you think your basal metabolic weight is linked to muscle mass?

These (and those who’ve had experience losing/gaining weight themselves) are the type of people I want to take advice from.

They haven’t read one book and watched a couple YouTube videos and now think they know better than anyone else.

They’re not trying to sell something or gain more followers for financial gain.

They’ve had actual experience of what works and what doesn’t work and they don’t get sucked into all of the new fads.

A good proportion of what you have written, OP, is scientifically inaccurate or not the whole picture.

Those people who are disagreeing with you simply haven't accessed the evidence on weight loss and exercise.

The evidence backs you up OP.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5556592/

"A systematic review of studies with a minimum of 1-year follow-up (4) suggested that subjects who used exercise alone for weight reduction experienced minimal weight loss."

All the anecdotes in the world won't change this.

I do feel like I need to exercise to be able to eat portions that feel satisfying. And it stops emotional eating. But yeah obviously you can always out eat exercise, it's quite easy.

PS everyone reading this thread probably including the OP needs to just ditch thinking about BMR etc and just do simple maths of tracking what they eat calorie wise each day. Most people overestimate gym sessions and massively underestimate the amount of calories they eat. Keep it simple peeps the BMR stuff is for body builders not your average Joe!!

You'll definitely lose weight if you go from no running to running 10k a day with no changes in diet.

So you’re saying that athletes need to eat fewer calories in order to maintain their weight?

😂 😂 😂

Can you link to the evidence you're referring to showing that exercise alone results in meaningful and sustained weight loss in overweight or obese individuals.

Because your comment is pretty emphatic - as an exercise professional you must have accessed this.

Read "Why we eat too much" by Andrew Jenkinson
Nah, I might benchpress it though

Are you trying to sell us this dodgy book you read op?