Is exercise good for weight loss?

Weight loss. That, and maintaining one’s weight, are common reasons why people exercise. Even the Mayo Clinic lists weight control as the number one benefit of doing it. And with the global rise in obesity, nearly 1 out of 2 adults are trying to lose weight. Whether it’s for health or appearance, exercise is usually at the top of the list for people wanting to shed extra pounds. But is exercise good for weight loss?

Is it weight or fat?

When people talk about weight loss, they really mean fat loss. Excess weight per se isn’t a concern, it’s excess fat. Besides fat, your weight also includes muscle and bone. These two components make up most of your body weight. Changes in any of these will change your weight. However, as an adult, when your weight fluctuates, it’s mainly due to changes in fat.

Having excess body fat increases your risk for a number of conditions such as certain cancers, heart disease and diabetes, not to mention the negative stigma many in society project towards those with excess body fat. But you can greatly decrease your risk for these diseases with even small amounts of weight loss. A 5% decrease in weight can improve insulin metabolism and lower your risk for type 2 diabetes.

But losing weight is hard. Extremely hard. At the same time society views people with excess body fat as lazy, that’s not the case. We live in a world that supports eating more food than we need and not being physically active. Some people have termed this as the obesogenic environment, and it works against people trying to eat healthy and be active.

Does exercise work for weight loss?

Even in spite of the environment we live in, if we exercise, we should be able to lose weight, right? Well, yes and no. Any type of activity, whether exercise or just walking down the stairs to the kitchen burns calories. This is important as the amount of fat we have on our body is related to the calories we take in (through food) and burn off (through our metabolism and activity). However, it’s not quite as simple as it sounds.

For many adults, they need somewhere between 1500 and 2000 calories to stay alive. These calories are used to keep your heart beating, your lungs breathing and your body working. This is your basal metabolic rate. So even if you were inactive all day, you would still need to eat. Let’s say you add to that 30 minutes of walking each day. That’s 100-150 calories, or <10% of the daily calories you burn. That’s about a medium apple or banana’s worth of calories per day, while a pound of fat is 3500 calories. Done consistently, this can lead to small amounts of weight loss.

To get greater amounts of weight loss, it’s recommended exercising for an hour or more of moderate to vigorous activity per day. This would be roughly be 400-600 calories per session and has been shown to result in meaningful weight loss over several months.

Why Weight Loss can be Hard

But even with that amount of activity, it can be hard to lose the same amount of weight we see in controlled studies. One thing that can make it hard for losing weight is compensation. This can be in two types; compensating for your exercise by being less active the rest of the day, or compensating by eating more that day. In some instances, people may ‘reward’ themselves with food for their exercise, and counteract any calories burned by eating more.

Anyone who has lost weight, will tell you it’s hard to keep losing. There are many reasons for this and when it comes to activity, it essentially comes down to less bang for the buck. As you lose weight it now means you’re actually burning less calories during that activity than before. If a person’s regular exercise consists of a two-mile walking route and they lose five pounds, essentially, that person weighs less. As a result of weighing less, walking that same two miles at the same speed will be less effort and therefore require less calories. To counteract that, the person will need to walk further, faster or carry additional weight.

But Exercise Should be Part of a Weight Loss Program

So even though exercise itself is not very effective in losing weight, exercise still has a very important role within a weight loss regimen. While the cornerstone for weight loss is alterations in diet, when people lose weight by diet alone, this commonly includes a loss of muscle mass as well as fat. This loss in muscle mass is detrimental to your health. The addition of exercise to a weight-loss diet is that it helps to prevent any loss in muscle mass and ensures that whatever weight that you lose comes from body fat.

Overall, the best way to lose body fat is through a combination of both diet and exercise. And remember, even without any loss in weight, exercising and being active has so many other benefits to reduce your risk for diabetes, cancer, heart disease, osteoporosis, stress and improve your mental well-being.

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