Exercise Paradox
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
I tell people I know trying to lose weight to separate the ideas of exercise and diet, but few listen and most are quite resistant to the idea. To me, I think of exercise as maintaining a healthy heart, posture, etc. but keep it completely out of the picture for weight management.
The other side of this is motivation. If you don't see yourself losing weight from exercise, it demotivates you and that demotivation then carries into other areas like diet. So if you keep those separate, you won't make poor choices in your overall health as a result of feeling demotivated by the lack of results from exercise and you won't fall off the bandwagon so easily.
I've also accepted that changes in activity strongly influence your health, and changes in eating strongly influence your weight.
It is beneficial to both the exercise and food industries to perpetuate this myth. Exercise products are more attractive to people if they think it can make them look more attractive. Excessive calorie consumption is acceptable if you think you can "work it off later".
Thing is, I'm healthier now that I don't feel guilty about what I eat, and also don't feel like snacking / "cheating" nearly as much. A lot of people don't eat normal, they have no healthy baseline; they don't eat regularly, they eat reactively to "I am hungry" or "Oh shit I need to figure out something for dinner". This is especially an issue in the US where it seems that eating takeout is the norm (and what you have is decided on the spot instead of planned in advance), but please correct me if I'm wrong. This takeout culture is also growing in Europe, especially with apps and services that make it easier to just reach for it. For a good period we ended up having takeout once a week, often reactively / last minute, and it's nowhere near the healthiest choice (but a chips, cheese, kebab, sauce and salad lasagna is so good)
As more I learn about weight loss the more I harden in my belief that obesity is more like having a medical condition than it is a personality flaw. Maybe if we had more epidemiologists examining chemical/environmental/etc causal factors to the sharp uptick in obesity and less culture war/shame/"just have more discipline" about it we could've avoided a ton of medical expenditure on the medical needs of obese patients (not just diabetes but I mean larger beds/equipment, nurse injuries in moving obese patients, etc).
What I don't understand is: how does the exercise paradox exist but it's also super common for an athlete to put on tons of weight immediately after stopping their exercise due to an injury or similar?
Because exercising is actually burning calories. And if you exercise a lot, you will need to eat more and in a way that would make someone sedentary gain weight. People who exercise more, need to eat more and are spending more calories per day.
Otherwise said "you can't outrun a bad diet" is oversimplification, exercise paradox is something that happens in some conditions and is oversimplification. And likewise, calories in calories out is oversimplification.
It’s worse than that. If your metabolism is fucked your body could literally reduce critical functions to starvation levels before conceding and letting you burn more calories than you consume.
The Cochrane Collaboration found that exercising alone led to limited weight loss. In combination with diet, however, it resulted in a 1 kilogram weight loss over dieting alone. A 1.5 kilograms (3.3 pounds) loss was observed with a greater degree of exercise.[29] Even though exercise as carried out in the general population has only modest effects, a dose response curve is found and very intense exercise can lead to substantial weight loss. During 20 weeks of basic military training with no dietary restriction, obese military recruits lost 12.5 kg (28 lb).[30] High levels of physical activity seem to be necessary to maintain weight loss.[31] A pedometer appears useful for motivation. Over an average of 18-weeks of use, physical activity increased by 27% resulting in a 0.38 decrease in BMI.[32]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Management_of_obesity#Exercise
[29-32] endnotes in Wikipedia
Also interesting, a meta-analysis:
Effects of Different Exercises Combined with Different Dietary Interventions on Body Composition: A Systematic Review and Network Meta-Analysis
Yongchao Xie, Yu Gu, Zhen Li, Bingchen He, Lei Zhang
In other words, the so-called "paradox" is largely irrelevant, and avoiding exercise is ill-advised. A link in the same Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefits_of_physical_activity
In the context of weight management, the concept of "weight loss" should never be considered. This is because two people with same weight may have wildly different body compositions; this also applied to the same people but in different conditions.
A person may have different body compositions, but same weight, in two different periods of their life, which can very well be before and after starting a physical activity regime.
Regardless, I'm extremely skeptical. When one has a sedentary lifestyle, and turns to consistent sport activity, it's very typical to quickly lose fat and gain muscles for some time, which is in conflict with the research.
I have two thoughts on this. The first one is, I see more than a few chubby-or-more professional baseball players. Second, I see a TON of professional football players, specifically lineman, lose a hundred plus pounds because they're no longer trying to stay above a weight to remain competitive. The last one I read about just changed his diet. Had no desire to lift a weight or run a sprint ever again.
I don't track why people think weight loss is mostly exercise, where it is in fact almost entirely diet. This topic really makes people mad, I've never understood why. If you want to lose weight you can do so, safely, without ever exercising.
I've lived this experience. Exercise without diet will make you gain weight because muscles grow, and they're heavy, so your fat percent changes. This doesn't mean less fat, just a change in the ratio of muscle against fat.
Stored fat is a vast energy reserve, and exercise alone will not deplete it. Even if your metabolism increases because of your added muscle, it will eventually reach a new equilibrium. Exercise burns energy at a much, much lower rate than food can add it.
Weight loss should _never_ be considered? How does that follow? Lots of people definitely need to lose weight.
Most studies look at more than just weight, they minimally assess BMI and ideally estimate body fat percentage. Some go further, looking at relative risk of other endpoints such as heart attack, heart failure, stroke, diabetes, injury, hospitalization, death, etc.
They start going to the gym; after some time, they'll have (random numbers) (X-2)% body fat, and (Y+2)% muscles.
On a scale, their weight will be the same, but in reality, their body composition (and looks) will be considerably different.
This is a very important concept. Beside the obvious case where somebody just looks at the scale, and they don't realize their progress, body composition as opposed to weight is extremely important when doing diets, because an improper diet may lead to excessive muscle loss, which is accidentally perceived as a success (on the scale) rather than a failure (because the body composition hasn't changed as intended).
But, this is actually like bailing water out of a sinking cruise liner with a teaspoon. It is 1000x more effective to simply not consume the calories in the first place. The energy density of modern food is incomprehensible to our ancestry.
I focus about 80% of my willpower on the diet & meal prep aspects. The remainder is toward exercise. I find that when my diet slips, it is far more destructive than when I miss a few days on the rowing machine.
I think the researches are skewed; by the sound of it, the physical activity of the people researched is normal / average for them. But the people in the comments compare with athletes doing their athlete thing, going well beyond what is normal for them.
As you say, doing low to moderate intensity exercise for a long time -- like walking 20km a day for a week, which is double what the Hadza walk -- is enough to cause me to lose weight unless I'm eating more to make up for it.
This is pretty obvious if you have ever done strength training/tried to lose weight. Working out makes you really hungry. It is a lot easier to lose weight while not exercising just by only eating when you are hungry, and not eating garbage. I've heard it called "inuitive eating".
This is also why I personally don't believe in bulking. You should just hit your macros and try to progress naturally. If you do cycles of cutting and bulking you are really just making your progress inconsistent and fucking up your digestive tract. Controversial opinion I know.
Wasn't the advice "manage what you eat if you want to lose weight" until money was given to scientists say otherwise, e. G., https://archive.nytimes.com/well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/08/0...
And don't we also know that overcompensatoey eating is a well known problem for people who adopt an exercise program to lose weight?
Just like keeping one's house organized, the best thing is to reduce Junk In rather than trying to get Junk Out.
Obviously, this is not a wise attitude to have, exercise has a lot of other benefits and it is critical to maintain good health. But yeah, if it's just about loosing weight the cost (time, willpower, money, fatigue...) to benefit ratio is surprisingly low.
https://www.reddit.com/r/coolguides/comments/1c4pvnp/a_cool_...
On a day that I don't work out, I burn about 2000 calories. On days that I work out (weekly run), I burn 2800 calories, but I am so hungry that I have to eat huge meals and I have consumed the additional 800 I burned within 12 hours. Perhaps weekly runs are sufficiently infrequent for my body to not get "used to" the run, fitting it into the 2k calorie burn, thus I go way over on those days no matter what, but my body is getting those extra calories no matter what, to make up for it due to how significantly more hungry I am after.
Everyone I know who lost weight basically just starved themselves (net calorie loss).
Of course I noticed this, relied on it too much, and pushed past the limits of what it could handle. Oops.
The same authors publish regular research reviews on nutrition and health at https://massresearchreview.com/; the general conclusion remains that exercise is a poor intervention for the purpose of weight loss is true. But estimating the effects of exercise is incredibly difficult, it varies wildly and is subject to many confounders.
Having said that, the article itself doesn't mention how much physical activity the Hazda did. Walking is "physical activity", but not significant.
So for the men lots of walking, a fair bit of running, carrying dead animals back home. The men also gather honey from beehives high up in tall trees.
The women dig up roots and tubers and gather other plant food, and carry it back home. They also gather honey from beehives that are not high up in tall trees.
I've read that it amounts to about 75 minutes a day of MVPA (moderate to vigorous physical activity), but they are active for much more of the day.
Should i eat 1000kcal chocolate bar for some brief pleasure? Sure why not
Should i eat 1000kcal chocolate bat for some brief pleasure, more than undoing the hour of torture? Hell naw
I’m assuming the tribe in this study didn’t have access to junk food because in my experience it takes a lot of discipline to stick to a diet if you repeatedly work out to exhaustion
Consuming enough calories every day during peak training for a marathon is exhausting, disgusting, and you’re always hungry. Food loses all connection to enjoyment and you’re just shoveling calories in your face all day. You could stop but then good luck training the next day.
I have so far not gained any weight during these cycles. Usually I end up losing some. So the calories gotta be going somewhere.
There is enough genetic diversity that some individuals can out work their caloric intake (bmr + tdee). You see it all the time in enviroments where high level athletes train. You'll have groups that still need to manage intake to keep weight off, and you'll have groups that can eat everything in sight and still stay lean, or even be forced to go into surplus to maintain.
IMO (bro science) it seems to largely boil down to whatever factors that affect rate at which individuals shit. Most of the naturally skinny people I know, either eat not much, or eat normal amount but shit often. When the normal range of people pooping is 3x per day to 3x per range, it matters how inefficient your body absorbs/wastes the calories you put in. Some people's bowels are natrually bulimic, purges everything all the time and keeps weight down.
Maybe it's not useful to apply to genpop (abs built in kitchen etc), but I don't feel it's a paradox.
Forget calories, think utility.
Some types of calories are good for you, others may as well be poison - therefore, the dose is the poison. By consuming calories in accordance with their utility you will do a better job at staying (or getting) metabolically healthy than only counting calories.
TL;DR: Eat more fat and protein from natural, preferably animal, sources, and you will naturally be less inclined to consume junk calories from carbohydrates and you will quickly feel better for it.
Watch this video below to understand more, for why this is the case, and why colories in v's calories out is a very poor model.
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"Is a Calorie a Calorie? Processed Food, Experiment Gone Wrong"
- Improved mood, focus, calm, etc, make it easier and more pleasant to adhere to a better diet
- Can improve sleep quality. Low sleep quality is linked to overeating and obesity and other problems. In fact, poor diet, poor sleep, and poor exercise are all interlinked. So start anywhere and expect the others to get easier to deal with over time too.
- So what if weight doesn't change, but it's due to fat decreasing and muscle increasing? That's a good thing -- weight is an imperfect measure of obesity. Muscle, just by existing, burns more calories. And unlike abdominal fat, is not linked to organ problems.
- And on and on and on. Just do anything to get healthier. Every healthy action will synergestically reinforce every other healthy action. Don't be a narrow beancounter looking at just one component, because your body is not just a handful of components narrowly linked together via thin black box abstraction layers; it's a big spaghetti code system that cannot be seperated cleanly out into pieces. Not exercising is really, really unhealthy, contrary to modern customary belief, so you might as well, rather than fixating on fixing only some other component while keeping this important component broken.
- Moderate exercise seems to actually moderate appetite a little. And heavier exercise seems to make hunger less cravingy and more indiscriminate, making it easier to adhere to a diet (eg, a couch potato might really crave a specific candy or chips, but someone who just ran some miles will ecstatically and happily devour some beans and cabbage and oatmeal and whatever)
- Improves digestion quality and gut motility!
- Besides, isn't the goal of weight loss to get healthier in general, anyway? Focus on the overall goal and start anywhere, anywhere that is easiest. If getting better sleep is easier, do that. If cutting toxins like alcohol and nicotine is easier, start there. If improving diet is easier, start there. If improving positive human relationships and sense of purpose is easier, start there. If exercise is easier, start there. Start anywhere, and keep improving anywhere the wins are most easily found, and gradually everything else will become easier.
One more tip: It's easier to change what you eat than how much. Also, calories in calories out is bunk. It's true to some degree in that they are related, but ignores the fact that (1) how much your body is spending is highly variable, even somewhat independent of movement -- imagine how much energy your body has to spend to fight an infection for example (2) why would anyone imagine every calorie consumed will actually be absorbed? the gut is highly complex and depending on many factors calories could be absorbed or go right out the other end unused, and the gut flora interacts complexly with all this. Focus on eating healthy things first above healthy amounts. It's easier, and will have a positive impact all its own, creating another stepping stone towards other goals.
The human body is not that variant. Sure, during illness you may burn more calories from the illness and potential fever… but you’re also usually extremely low on movement since your body physically makes you exhausted. The rest of the time though? No way. Humans generally are not that variant in expenditure.
> (2) why would anyone imagine every calorie consumed will actually be absorbed? the gut is highly complex and depending on many factors calories could be absorbed or go right out the other end unused, and the gut flora interacts complexly with all this. Focus on eating healthy things first above healthy amounts. It's easier, and will have a positive impact all its own, creating another stepping stone towards other goals.
What evidence do you have to the contrary? The human body is extremely efficient at absorbing calories, and outside of extremes (eating 10kcal a day, or having some sort of deficiency such as celiacs that doesn’t let you digest certain things), I see no reason why you don’t absorb the vast, vast majority of all calories consumed.
But what's the point of giving you more specific examples? You seem to be eager to "no true scotsman" your way out of this by labelling every example of varying calorie consumption as an exception.
Even the top article referenced in this wikipedia article admits it's based on a study of bushmen who -- surprise surprise -- were in very healthy average weight and also did tremendous physical activity. What a coincidence. But sure, keep telling yourself exercise doesn't matter and it's all about Calories In Calories Out and that the body is as trivial and simple a machine as an internal combustion engine.
Most people’s diets do not consist of fully intact seeds, or at very least it is not a large proportion of their calories. And any processing of said seeds would give you all the calories in them. This is a trivial example to discard, since most people do not have undigested food bits consistently in their stool (unless you constantly eat corn, then maybe).
To be clear, I never said exercise is not capable of burning calories. It clearly does, however the impact is pretty muted compared to the relatively easy task of adjusting one’s intake. For people that have to do enormous physical activity or just walk a ton, they are going to burn quite a bit more calories. But your natural expenditure individually doesn’t vary that much unless you wildly change your behavior around exercise.
For improving health? Certainly I’d agree. You have to be quite overweight before the risk factors really catch up.
For tackling obesity? Absolutely disagree. You’re asking someone who is likely making poor choices with food and exercise to make multiple lifestyle changes. We want something that’s going to be able to adherent to the broader populous. Saying you need both exercise and dieting to lose weight is a setup for failure. The predominantly most important factor in losing weight is diet. Exercise helps you be more healthy, but doesn’t meaningfully help you lose weight.
In my opinion, "get healthy" is more a moral judgement than it is an objective assessment. I've definitely seen fat women be shamed even while they're exercising as "not being healthy" or "glorifying being unhealthy" [yes, just for exercising in public, an objectively healthy behavior, except they're doing it while fat].
But healthiness can be measured pretty objectively through health outcomes, and high BMI and low exercise are both independently highly correlated with bad ones across the whole spectrum of health aspects. It's not just common sense, it's mountains of evidence over decades across every aspect of medicine.
The fact that some (in your community, many) people twist this around and make it about something else entirely is sad, but in no way affects the objective truths:
- it is objectively healthier to be active than inactive, regardless of obesity
- it is objectively healthier to have average weight than obese, regardless of activity level
I've lived in a few different places and found the culture around exercise and diet to be very different in different places, so I'm not surprised experiences can vary so much. I am curious where you see this bizarre culture of shaming people for exercising.
I mean it's super common on any social media where a non-skinny woman is exercising with any real following tbh. It's gone all the way back to covertly photographing fat people in the gym or in public back in the reddit days of r/fatpeoplehate and 4chan. I mean there was that viral picture of a fat guy dancing off 4chan.
I would argue that for majority of the people who talk about it does not. The goal is aesthetic and moral.
BTW: The majority of people where? Where do you see this? The internet (which parts)? A middle class neighborhood in a small Midwestern town? An upper class neighborhood in a cosmopolitan European city? Culture varies tremendously so "where" matters if you make assertions like "the majority of people" think this or that.
Regardless of what you think people think, I'm telling you what they _should_ think which is more timeless and objective, since it's about medical facts that were true 2000 years ago as they are now.