Does exercise really not help with weight loss?

[GorgeousLadyofWrestling]

Surely, it must?

I have always adhered to “you can’t out train a bad diet” but surely, lots of exercise must help a bit?

For context, I’m quite overweight, would like to lose about 20kg, and steadily losing about .5kg a week. Which is fine because I have lost it all quickly before and then immediately put it all back on. So I am focusing on low calories using MFP. I have around 1400 a day.

During the first lockdown and all last summer, I got into cycling. I bought a road bike and started cycling to work. It’s about a 30 mile round trip. So I can’t wait to be doing that two-three times a week when go back in the office, because for me - cycling is pure joy.

In December, I started c25k and now manage a 5k, three times a week. I am very slow and I find it quite gruelling and hard. But I don’t plan on stopping because this is a huge achievement - I never ever ever ran before and I don’t plan on losing the gains I’ve made.

In addition I also use weights at least 3 times a week. I don’t “eat back” any calories burnt - I just try to stick to my limit, with or without exercise because I think it’s easy to over estimate calories burned and easy to under estimate calories consumed.

But surely...surely doing something every day that whilst not extremely strenuous but still, moderately strenuous would contribute to weight loss??

[Zig4zag]

@MiddlesexGirl

I love how we're all eating bread and butter though. For me it's because it's the only snack left in the house (apart from dark chocolate which is obviously medicinal) 🤔

Yeah. Daft isn't it.
Not many people I know have bread every day never mind just bread and butter.
I do have it as a an occasional indulgence with soup.

[MsTSwift]

Well I do an hours turbo every morning and my gadget tells me I burn about 500 calories. That coupled with intermittent fasting I’ve lost 2 stone and kept it off

[TheHoundsofLove]

I don't think anyone is trying to say that it's not basically calories in v. calories out. Just that it's perfectly possible to reduce your calories through exercise rather than diet.

[Zig4zag]

The thing is when I look up activities on the old Google it says you can burn XXXX. When I do it I burn less than half. Think adverts exaggerate the burn by basing it on a 16stone rugby playing male.

[Zig4zag]

@MsTSwift

Well I do an hours turbo every morning and my gadget tells me I burn about 500 calories. That coupled with intermittent fasting I’ve lost 2 stone and kept it off

Congratulations

[BogRollBOGOF]

The NEAT bit is really interesting. I've tended to call it incidental / informal exercise. I'm fortunate to live near the core of community facilities and prior to March 2020, I'd walk up and down the road about 16 times per week between school and activities. At a typical 500m, it's not a lot in its own right, but added up to about 8k/ 5mi per week... actually roughly 500 calories. And with my rubbish time keeping, those frequent bursts are brisk!

With the various restrictions this year, I'm down to it being 5k/ 3mi, 300 cals. When school has been off and that burst of movement lost, I've gained weight, partly in itself, partly more time sitting on my arse refaining from bashing my head into the table from the frustration of home learning and spending hours in the same room as the food cupboards with ravenous reluctant learners
That 5 miles lost is a fairly significant burst of exercise. Most people shuffle up the scales year after year on those small calorie surpluses, and frequent exercise/ bursts of movement are good for managing that without resorting to some form of dietary abstainence. I have generally kept up the running in this time, but without cross-training classes or full access to the osteopath, it's far harder to replace that lost NEAT with formal exercise.

It's tricky to use exercise to create enough deficit to out-run diet as our appetites adjust. While my appetite is dented on the day I do a long, hard run, my body is keen to eat much of the energy back the next day.

For dramatic, motivating weight loss, it is about diet. Exercise can interfere with complictions such as water retention as muscles recover. The density of muscles compared to fat make it more condusive to seeing results by the tape measure rathee than scales. But diet alone can reduce muscle density and cause a lower TDEE long term at the maintainence stage and making it harder to avoid regaining the loss. Toned bodies are stronger and attractive and have a higher metabolic rate.
While substantial weight loss needs to come from diet, it is always better long term to build exercise into a healthy lifestyle.

I used to joke that running allowed me to eat the nice stuff (as a shortie, my sedentary TDEE looks depressingly like a permanent low calorie diet of 1400 per day) but the last year has proved that to be true.

[LostFrog]

www.today.com/health/exercise-weight-loss-why-diet-more-important-lose-weight-t212045

This research suggests that it doesn’t matter how much you exercise, you basically burn the same amount of calories. Your body just ends up burning less on other things. I don’t know if it’s true, but I heard the guy on the radio the other week and it really depressed me!

[bluebluezoo]

The thing with studies like that is measuring metabolism is ridiculously complicated. I’d like to know how they measured the calorie burn of these hunter gatherer tribes

Basic observation would say different. Professional athletes aren’t fat. Marathon runners aren’t fat. People who exercise are generally slimmer than people who sit on their arses.

[bluebluezoo]

Out of interest I’ve had a quick look for H Pontzner’s academic papers:

This one seems to contradict the claims in his book:

Results: Tsimane have higher RMR and TEE than people in sedentary industrialized populations. Tsimane RMR is 18 to 47% (women) and 22 to 40% (men) higher than expected using six standard prediction equations. Tsimane mass-corrected TEE is similarly elevated compared to Westerners.

So resting metabolic rates are higher in this amazonian foraging population than sedentary westerners.

[Stronghold]

Yeah I definitely don't agree with that. I can eat much more on days when I exercise hard without putting any weight on (one of the reasons I do!)

[lljkk]

Re bread & butter...

I don't know anyone sane who would only have one of those dinky butter pats. You can barely taste the butter if only 1 pat. If you want to taste the butter, you need 2 pats.

Apparently the avg UK person has 3 slices of bread/day.

It's funny how bread & butter went out of fashion. it was the default snack food when I was a kid, especially for hungry teenagers. I thought MN was teeming with low carb people would just have 500 kcal of butter, forget the bread.

ps: DH does not eat 7000 kcal every day. Or even most days. Only on the days he does things like cycle 200 miles. Because his calorie needs vary with activity levels.

[Poppercot]

Maybe exercise can’t totally out train a bad diet but if someone is doing cardio a few times a week, plus getting their steps in everyday and also being generally quite active, walking lots and running round after kids etc, then I would think their diet would have to be extremely bad to be putting weight on.

Ideally weight loss would be slow and steady and most importantly sustainable. So many people seem to lose loads on slimming world but a year or two later most has crept back on. A small calorie deficit, created using a combination of an exercise you enjoy, plus small changes to diet and ultimately sticking with it consistently will see you lose weight and hopefully keep it off.