The Key to Weight Control Is Exercise, Right? Wrong.
We are programmed into thinking that if we exercise, over time we are able to maintain or lose weight—that the two are directly correlated. However, exercise might not have much to do with weight control in the grand scheme of things
It seems like we put a lot of focus on telling people they need to be more active during the day and that if they increase their energy expenditure, they will lose weight. It might be wishful thinking, as that isn’t necessarily true. New research is also showing a lack of correlation between exercise and weight control. In fact, Loyola University Chicago completed a study where the lead researcher mentioned, “Our study results indicate that physical activity may not protect you from gaining weight.” That might have just busted the bubble of the people currently on a treadmill reading this article.
What’s the Key to Weight Control?
There are people out there who haven’t exercised a day in their life. Yet, they look healthy and aren’t carrying around excess body fat. How can this be? Well, either they are genetically blessed or they can control their nutrition and eating habits. Where many people go awry is with their nutrition. They believe they are eating healthy food choices when they really aren’t, as well as not paying attention to serving sizes that can completely ruin their calories for the day if they aren’t paying attention.
So, how does exercise tie (or not tie) into all of this? It’s a known fact that when you exercise you are burning calories. Many of you are nodding your head with a “duh Matt” expression on your face. However, what many people don’t think about is when you exercise, it generally increases your appetite. But let’s also not fool ourselves into thinking that people are not exactly honest with how much physical activity they get each day. Many people grossly exaggerate how much time they spend engaging in physical activity. They either don’t track it properly or they blatantly lie because they don’t want it to appear that they do hardly any physical activity or simply don’t do any at all.
Here’s where I’m tying this all in. Let’s take an individual for example who started an exercise program, but has no idea how to hone in on their nutrition to make it work for them and help them towards their weight loss goals. They finish up a workout and know they burned a whole bunch of calories. Their metabolism is revving well after finishing their workouts. However, because their appetite is increased, they end up eating more calories than they should throughout the day regardless if the food choices are good or bad. Blowing your intake through the roof with healthy foods can still have you put on weight. Using a simple tool such as MyFitnessPal could have prevented this, had someone shown this person how to use the free app and track their daily caloric intake and macronutrients.
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