Does Exercise Make Us Svelte?

I think it is fair to say that almost everyone correlates weight loss - or at least weight maintenance, with the amount of exercise they do. In fact, I think it is probably the main reason people bother to get their bodies moving at all. Sure, there are other benefits too - you feel better, it relieves stress, gives you something to be proud of, but these are really just little perks for most of us. The big motivator is weight loss - which is why this article is so shocking.

Essentially, it asserts that despite popular belief, there is really no scientific evidence to support the notion that exercise leads to weight loss. No. Instead, it is apparently a simple case of biology. If your body wants you to be fat, you will be. If your body wants you to be thin, you will be.

The way this works is that if someone is programmed to be thin, their body will naturally want to exercise more to burn off the calories they consumed, and vice versa. Even if someone who is programmed to be fat exercises as much as a person programmed to be thin, they will never be as thin as the "naturally thin" person because their fat cells don't want to let go of their food.

Another component to this argument of the failure to lose weight through exercise, is that exercise makes us hungry, so we eat more when we exercise, and less when we don't. Considering that exercise really doesn't burn all that many calories (This site allows you to see how many calories you burn for different exercises), I can see how exercise might not be a miracle weight loss solution.

However, in my own experience, I've always been able to maintain my weight while eating a lot when I exercise. Every time, I've had a major injury and have been laid off for months, I've gained a little weight. Part of this might be that I think I was used to eating a lot with running, so even when I wasn't running, I would still want the same amount of food. I think it takes a while for your appetite to adjust to being sedentary, and a while to get into a new eating routine. Additionally, when I'm exercising regularly I'm more motivated to eat healthily as well. So I think it's probably true that your eating habits play a role in whether exercise works for you as a weight loss tool.

I understand the argument against exercise leading to weight loss, but I think despite the evidence, it can still be an effective weight loss/weight maintenance tool, if only for the fact that you can eat more, and eat a little crappier, without immediately putting on weight, because no matter how unsubstantial the calories burned through exercise are, there are still some calories burned.

So, while this article might be a little depressing, I wouldn't suddenly quit exercise as a weight loss tool. After all, it is still true that exercise revs up your metabolism at least some. And the more muscle you build through exercise, the leaner you will be. This other article goes into that a bit more.

So, I say find an exercise you enjoy, and as Nike says "just do it."