Why Exercise Is Overrated For Weight Loss
You may have heard that before…
…or maybe not since I just made that saying up.
But whatever.
The lesson behind the maxim I just coined is that move around as much as you want, it’s not going to do anything if you’re not exercising the same amount of energy into controlling what you put into your mouth.
Science is often late to the party when it comes to shit that’s commonly known within the gym community. So it’s no surprise that there’s a growing body of academic literature giving credence to the truth of my maxim.
What’s the latest addition to the “No Shit, Sherlock” files?
What has the lab coat set discovered?
Nothing except that exercise is overrated.
You see, physical activity accounts for very little of the calories we burn on a daily basis. And because exercise is a subset of physical activity, that by extension means that it has little impact on weight loss.
Wha-WHUT?!?!, you ask as you scramble to pick your jaw up off the floor.
Prepare to be astounded…
For starters, around 5 to 10 percent of daily calorie burn is the breaking down of the macronutrients you eat into immediate or future energy for the other operations below that make up total energy expenditure. This process is what’s known as food digestion.1It’s also known as specific dynamic action a/k/a the thermic effect of food a/k/a dietary induced thermogenesis a/k/a the shit that has more alternate names than some rappers do. I know, right? That’s a shit bunch of things to call food digestion!!! But that’s science for you…making the world simpler with complexity. Ahhhhhh, science!
As we see, food digestion burns a low amount of calories.
What accounts for the lion’s share of daily calorie burn, 60-80 percent of it, is our basal metabolic rate (BMR). BMR is what’s referred to as the “metabolism”, which is the energy used by the heart, brain, liver, and other vital organs that keep you alive to spend another day of your existence working at a job you hate and making someone else rich.
If you can do the math, that means that roughly 10 to 30 percent of daily calorie burn comes from you getting off your ass and moving around, whether it’s in the form of intentional exercise by you lifting weights after work or via what’s known as non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT).2NEAT is exactly what its name implies. It’s the energy expended for all everyday movement that isn’t exercise related (also excluded are the calories burned when eating and sleeping). Examples include walking to and from the coffee machine at work to waste time; flipping the bird back at that motorist who you cut off on your way to work; or cowering under the covers before work with thoughts of how much you hate your job before literally rolling out of bed because you value the income that keeps you away from homelessness for at least another week.
With food making up 100 percent of the energy that goes into our body, movement is clearly responsible for burning only a teeny-tiny portion of those calories. This is why exercise by itself is useless, because it doesn’t produce enough of a caloric deficit to lose weight.
On the other hand, because we can control the amount of energy that’s burned by simply taking in less of it, this is why study after study has found that the most effective weight loss strategy is keeping what doesn’t belong in your mouth out of it.
¡Si, eso es correcto!
Depending on exercise for weight loss without doing anything to address what you put in your mouth is kind of…
…hmmmmm…
What’s the scientific word for it…
…hmmmmm…
Oh yeah, moronic as fuck!
SHOCKER!!!
Exercise is overrated.
It’s useless for weight loss by itself. Instead of relying on it solely, as most people do, one should use it in conjunction with a low-calorie diet.
But hey, more power to you if you want to drown your sorrows in alcohol and junk food at the end of every workday and can find the time that you don’t have to do the hours and hours of exercise needed just to burn those calories off before you even get around to burning off the calories needed to make a dent in your body fat percentage.
Yeah, more power to you!
But you’re smarter than that.3I think.
Now, with us having come to agreement on how overrated exercise is, I know what you’re thinking (after all, I am omniscient): Why even work out in the first place if it has such a marginal effect on energy balance?
Sure, you can draw the conclusion that you should move all your eggs from the exercise basket to the dieting basket and not worry so much about trying to live an active lifestyle. That can only free up more time for you to watch Youtube cat videos and be an internet gangsta on the message boards you frequent at work as you make life hell for some middle schooler living in the middle of Buttfuck, Iowa.4They live in IOWA, for God’s sake. Isn’t that torture enough?!?!
Sorry, sugarplum, but hold off on dousing your gym membership in kerosene for just a bit longer.
Ya see, it’s true that you can lose weight by watching your diet and doing nothing else.
But physical activity in the form of weight training is necessary to help keep that weight off, as demonstrated by the oodles of folk who lose weight with fad diets but gain back all the weight — and even MORE!!! — when they return to their normal lifestyle. The explanation for this is simple. What they lost wasn’t fat weight. What they lost was calorie-burning muscle they did nothing to maintain or develop!
So while weight training has no real impact on you as you’re in the middle of losing weight, the reason why you perform it is to build muscle, or lean tissue. This is of importance because lean tissue is much more active and needs much more energy than adipose to maintain. This means that the more muscle mass you have, the faster your basal metabolic rate becomes. And the faster your BMR, the higher the number of calories you burn at rest. All together, by building precious muscle you can keep the fat off even if you’re not as mindful of what you eat because your food choices won’t be as less forgiving on your new body. That’s one reason to weight train while losing weight. Another reason is to develop the habit of going to the gym and working out so it becomes part of your daily routine.
Knowing that now, and with you being the ever so brilliant person you are, you wouldn’t dare do such a thing as burn your gym membership!
Now would ya?!
Well, unless you go to a Planet Fitness.
In that case…
Glossary: active lifestyle, adipose, caloric deficit, calories, diet, exercise, gym, gym membership, metabolism, muscle, work out
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