From Gym and Fitness experts to family and friends, the best advice that comes for losing weight is to exercise. How many people have made it a New Year’s resolution to join the gym on January 1st? But in reality, while exercise might be great for maintaining good health, there hasn’t been a single study which shows that exercise loses weight. Which is why it is important to understand that when an individual wants to lose weight, other factors like metabolism rate, diet, calorie intake plays a much important role in weight loss than the exercise itself. Here’s a conclusion of some important research and studies which shows why Exercise alone won’t cut the weight.
Doing exercise all day won’t help
While many people will suggest that if you burn more calories than you eat, you can lose weight, which is an absolute myth. It’s because our body uses our energy for different purposes. Our metabolism rate takes about 60-80% of the total energy intake, which isn’t really in our hands. Digestion of food takes up to 10% which leaves about 10-30% for physical activities. Out of which a small portion accounts for exercise. Hence while the food intake provides 100% energy intake, only 10-30% can be burnt with exercise. It’s a big discrepancy which is important to understand, rather than to listen to those advertisements saying “loose up to 10kg in 5 days”.
Exercise might even cause you to put up weight
How much we eat depends on how much we move. If we do any work with a lot of physical strain we might feel hungrier later. According to a study people who started to exercise, started eating more because they felt like they burned a lot of calories or they felt hungrier after exercise. This sudden rise in food intake can actually cause you to put up calories more than you are burning.
Not only this but the people who tend to exercise later use less energy in other works because they had worked out. They will move less or take rest because they feel tired or take an elevator instead of stairs. These confined non-gym activities also can undermine your weight loss.
Too much exercise causes Inflammation
Many people ask why they can’t lose weight even after exercising. The main reason why this happens is while burning tons of calories through exercise, your body can cause inflammation. When a person exercises too hard on a daily basis the Inflammation can cause your body to fight the fires from inside, without getting a break. This is also a big reason why while you exercise hard in the gym, instead of losing calories you can put up more due to compounding inflammation.
Here’s what happens: Essentially, inflammation drains your metabolism because your body is focused on healing. “Chronic cardio,” (as it is referred to), can also increase your body’s production of cortisol—your stress hormone—setting you up for weight gain by raising blood sugar levels and triggering the release of insulin, your fat-storing hormone.
Hence instead of listening to those peddlers of a gym membership or going to those fitness programs try understanding the science behind weight loss and why exercise alone won’t cut it.