Exercise Is Terrible For Fat Loss | E22

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Hello, and welcome back to the Train Like a Girl podcast. My name is Abby, and I am an online health and fitness coach. And today I bring you a potentially controversial topic, although it shouldn't be. And it's all about the eat less, move more equation or advice or statement, and particularly why the move more part of that equation is terrible weight loss advice. If you've ever tried to lose weight, you've almost definitely been told some version of this quote: eat less, move more. And today we're going to focus on the move more part because whilst exercise is absolutely incredible for so many things: health, strength, fitness, cardio, mental health, bone density, so many things, it is actually a pretty dated, in my opinion, and flawed tool for losing body fat and just losing general weight in the way that most people think. And I say that as somebody that trains and lifts and programs exercise for a living. So it's by no means me trying to give some, you know, create some reaction. I wish it was as simple as let's do a bit more exercise and we'll magically lose all of the weight we want, but sadly it doesn't work like that. So let's talk about it. I'm gonna give some specific number examples just to make this really clear and concise. So, for the sake of argument, most people will would do quite well if they were in a calorie deficit of 500 calories. So, you know, obviously that will differ person to person. If you're short, shorter, taller, whatever, you might need all of our calorie needs are different. But generally speaking, a 500 calorie deficit is going to be a good way to lose fat. Um, 500 calories less per day. So you might then wonder, okay, if I eat 500 calories less, I will lose weight. But you all also might think if I burn 500 calories more, surely that has the same impact. Surely if I burn 500 calories more, I'll also lose weight. And on paper, that makes complete sense because energy balance is a very real thing. I'm not disputing that. But, and here's where it gets tricky. In practice, those two things do not behave in the same way. So eating 500 calories less and burning 500 calories more are typically, usually not going to end up in the same result. And that I think is where so much misunderstanding comes from. And I know that this might be true for you as well. I've worked with so many people that have come to me saying, Oh, I'm exercising so much more, but I'm not losing weight. Or they'll say something like, Oh, I've burnt X amount of calories on my run today, so I'm gonna eat more. Or, you know, so many people ask me, Oh, on my fitness pal, do I it's saying that I can eat more calories because I've like exercised this, I've burnt this many off. And this is where we run into problems. We're gonna chat about why eating 500 calories less is actually much more effective in in practice. If you reduce your food intake by 500 calories, that deficit is relatively clean, right? You're not, you're just simply not consuming that energy anymore. So you're in a 500-calorie deficit. And of course, we could go on a tangent about how there could be errors in tracking and appetite changes and eating more around your menstrual cycle and like, you know, barriers to eating and sticking to that 500-calorie deficit, which is all of the things that I would I would, you know, help my clients with one-to-one. But um, for the sake of argument today, let's just imagine you eat 500 calories less less every single day. You are gonna be in a very clear 500-calorie deficit. But if we compare that to trying to burn 500 calories through exercise, this is this is where things aren't so clean. And this, in my opinion, is where that move more part of the equation starts to fall apart a bit because so many of us want to rely on that. We want to be like, oh, you know what? I'm just gonna add in an extra session. I don't want to eat less. I don't wanna, or they add in the extra work and they think they can eat more. I can't tell you how many times people have said to me, Oh, it's no wonder you're small, you exercise so much, or it's no wonder you can stay in shape, you exercise so much. And I'm like, no, literally no, because if we think about we'll we'll get to it later, but if we think about energy balance in the body, exercise takes up such a small amount of our weekly, daily energy burn. Um, but I'll push that science lesson on to later. For now, I want to chat about why burning 500 calories through exercise is not the same thing and will will have a different effect than eating 500 calories less. So let's practically think about uh imagine you do a big workout and your Fitbit tells you 500 calories burned. Amazing. Great, you feel flipping fantastic. And this isn't me saying that that wasn't a successful achievement, but this is me saying, and well, you know, I'll I'll the whole topic here, really, this this whole podcast is gonna be about why I would not focus on the calories burned through exercise, and I would in fact focus on different metrics. But sticking to the plan here, 500 calories burned on your Fitbit, you've done an amazing workout, great. But a few things then usually happen. And some of these things won't happen for everyone, but generally speaking, if you've done a 500 calorie burn on the treadmill or whatever, you will get hungrier. And a lot of people, a lot of people will unconsciously eat more after exercising. And it's not always junk food either. It's not always noticeable. It might just be a little extra snack, it might be a slightly bigger portion for your evening meal, a drink, whatever. And so suddenly your 500-calorie deficit is now more like a 300-calorie deficit or a 200-calorie deficit, or in fact, you might have even gone over on your calories. I know if I take myself as an example, when I was training for my marathon a few years ago, that was probably the biggest output of calories I had ever experienced. So my 16-week training plan or whatever, I was running four or five times a week. My energy output was massive, and yet I was almost the heaviest I'd ever been. I gained a lot of weight, and this is true for so many marathoners, because our hunger skyrockets. And it's different for every person. We all get a different um biological response, but so many people experience spiked levels of hunger, and quite often, especially if the exercise output is really large, we experience hunger that goes above and beyond the actual hunger that the actual amount of food that we need. In other words, we'll eat even more than we think we need. And often, as I said, that is an unconscious amount of calories added into our into our diet. The second part of what the second thing that usually happens is, and this is really, really common, we move less for the rest of the day. So let's say we do a big run in the morning, for example, 500 calories burn on your Garmin or whatever. The rest of the day, we move less without realizing. And I'm not talking about like we physically just don't go out for the extra walk. It's unconscious movement, and it's called neat. So this is where we get a bit science-y. So neat is our non-exercise activity, so that is things like fidgeting, um twiddling our thumbs, just like general movement, moving our body, talking with our hands. It's not even necessarily walking, although walking would be included in non-exercise activity as well in some instances. But unconsciously, this non-this our neat levels reduce after our big workout. And this is massive because our neat level, our non-exercise activity, makes a massive portion of our energy output on a daily basis. In fact, it takes up a bigger percentage of our energy output than actual exercise, like a run or a workout or whatever. So if it lowers, we unconsciously will be burning less calories for the rest of the day. So, although you might have burnt 500 calories in your epic gym session or gym class or spin or whatever, you for the rest of the day might accidentally burn one, two, or three hundred fewer calories for the rest of the day. So again, your net deficit shrinks, right? We suddenly go from we've burnt 500 calories, but then we get a reduction for the rest of the day. So our calorie burn is overall reduced. A third thing that happens, and this is I mean, this is huge, exercise calories are very often overestimated. So, like, not just your wearables, not just your Fitbit or your garment, but if you're on a treadmill, machines and wearables, those estimates are never accurate. So, you know, when you're when it pops up on your My Fitness palette, like, oh, you burnt 500 calories, in reality, that might be 150 calories, 200 calories. And then if we go back to we might eat more, our exercise for the rest of the day might might reduce, we see suddenly how this move more part of the equation isn't as accurate as if we just reduced our food intake. Our food intake in a nutshell is far more controllable, right? Exercise output, yes, might marginally support a bit more energy burn, but actually, for a lot of people, when we consider hunger levels spiking and neat levels reducing, and crucially that our wearable might not actually be telling us an accurate calorie burn, we we then understand, okay, I maybe I haven't burnt as many calories as I thought. So even if the maths look identical on paper, in real life, eating 500 calories less is very unlikely to have the same effect. Is is actually I should say that the other way around, really, shouldn't I? Burning 500 calories through exercise is very, very unlikely to have the same effect as eating 500 calories less. Because exercise doesn't just add burn, it changes so many things, it changes appetite, it changes movement for the rest of the day. There's also a deeper layer to this. Um, there is a um there's a researcher that proposed something called the constrained energy expenditure model, and put simply, your body is not a simple equation. It's not like, oh, add exercise, add calories burned. Instead, it compensates. So when you increase structured exercise, your body might subtly reduce energy spent elsewhere. So that's just me really confirming the physiologic physiological response behind it. This has actually been researched heavily. It's not just my opinion. Um, and it's not perfect, it's not in everyone, but often enough that energy spent elsewhere is reduced for lots of people, which means that that 500 calories that's burnt from exercise is not always a true 500 calorie deficit. And in fact, I'd argue that it almost never is. Now I want to move into exercise because I don't want this to become if you want to lose fat, don't exercise. I would actually argue against that. I I really want you to exercise. But we need to talk about the difference we need to talk about kind of the mentality shift that we need to have really around exercise. Because I think I think, especially for women, we've been told for so many years that the benefit of exercise is weight loss. And obviously, with weight loss being such a sought-after goal, which is a topic for another time, but with that being such a hot goal, we we just want it to be true, don't we? We we just want we we want to do more and more and more exercise. And and, you know, there's so many problems within that because then we treat, if we're treating exercise as a calorie-burning tool, it becomes a slog, it becomes a punishment tool, it can become quite toxic, it can become quite like, you know, I've known people to be like, oh my god, I need to burn off, I've just eaten a cookie today, I need to burn it off, or you know, like earning their food, which is obviously extremely problematic. That's not what today's podcast is about, but I it seems relevant to add that in here. But let's talk specifically about, we'll talk about resistance training and we'll talk about cardio. Because a lot of people might sort of say, oh, well, I want to lose weight, so I'm gonna increase my cardio. Um, so I want to just break break these things down. So let's start with resistance training, and this is where people get confused. Because as you'll hear almost everywhere, hopefully, increasingly, we're getting the message out there, resistance training is arguably actually, I don't even think it's arguably, I think it's fact, it is the best form of exercise you can do. And I'm not talking about for aesthetics, I'm talking about so many other benefits. But although it is the best exercise you can do, it is a rubbish, really rubbish calorie burning tool. A lifting session, it depends on your output, your effort, how much, you know, if it's a leg day or whatever, but a lifting session might burn, I don't know, as little as 100 calories, like the same effect as if you'd just stayed in the house maybe for that hour. So obviously, if we're going to the gym and resistance training and constantly checking our watch for how many calories we've burned, we're gonna be sorely disappointed, which is shit, because we're missing out on what it actually is doing for us. So this is where we need to shift our focus. Resistance training might be useful for fat useless for fat loss, but what it's doing for us is uh building our muscle, or crucially, if you're dieting, preserving your muscle, improving your body composition, increasing your strength, improving insulin sensitivity, making your physique look better at the same body weight. Um, and beyond that, obviously, if we're going into long-term health like bone density, um, you know, we we lose muscle as we age, and the only thing to mitigate that is by resistance training. So, yes, it might be use useless for fat loss, and it doesn't create a you know, it's not a good fat loss calorie burning tool, but it does give us insane results in other areas, and that's where we need to shift our focus. Resistance training should not be used as a fat loss tool, a calorie deficit should be, but crucially, if you are in a calorie deficit, it is vital that you like more than ever, it is vital that you strength train whilst dieting. Because if you don't, what happens when we lose weight is we can't decide just to lose fat. Unfortunately, we will also lose muscle. But we can stop that from happening if we're resistance training. So this is why, you know, there's this people have asked me in the past, like, oh, yeah, resistance training, great, strength training, blah, blah, blah. But if I'm dieting, like, surely I should, should I change my training? Should I do hits sessions now? Should I do more cardio now? And I'm like, no, more than ever, we need to be resistance training because we're at high risk when we're dieting of losing muscle at an even faster rate than we already are by simply aging. So we need to be resistance training, but it's not for fat loss, it's for retaining muscle. And ironically, the people that do this, the people that lose fat and try to hold on to muscle, they actually get a better aesthetic result. If we're just purely looking at like physical how we look, it will actually create a better result because if you're holding on to muscle, you're gonna get that more toned appearance, right? So, you know, if you need an insert a physical incentive, that is it. Um, as for cardio, moving on to cardio, obviously cardio has its benefits as well. And cardio does burn more calories. There's no question about it. Cardio typically will burn more calories than resistance training. If you're gonna go out on a run, it's very likely that you're gonna burn more calories during that than if you were to go to the gym resistance training. But but it still runs into the same issues that we talked about earlier. People run, and you know, like I gave my marathon example earlier, people run and then they eat more after unconsciously. People run and they move less later, not just running, any form of cardio. They overestimate the calorie burn. So even though it can in it running or cardio generally might contribute more than lifting in terms of energy expenditure, it still doesn't scale cleanly. It still doesn't work as clear and as clean as as people think it does. So, what do we need to take from all of this, guys? If your goal is purely fat loss, diet is simply gonna be way more efficient. If we're removing 500 calories from food, this is gonna be far more predictable, controllable, um, less compensatory, so we get less of that kind of potentially. Obviously, everyone differs with calorie tracking and that kind of thing, but if we are monitoring our calories through our food rather than trying to sort of out-exercise it, this typically we're gonna keep a good relationship with exercise, then, right? Because we're shifting our focus into what does exercise add to my life rather than using it as purely as a calorie-burning tool, a a sort of inaccurate calorie-burning tool. So I guess we'll wrap this up by saying that this is by no means an anti-exercise argument. It's actually the opposite. It's just that exercise is being used for the wrong job, which is why I think to cut loop back to it, this eat less, move more statement is a little bit flawed. And, you know, we could go into step count and and um movement generally. Obviously, if you're somebody that is sat at a desk all day and you've got quite a sedentary lifestyle, yes, moving more is going to benefit you. And yes, moving more is going to be advisable if you want to lose weight or just get simply fitter and healthier. But as far as specific exercise, if you're going into the gym resistance training, and you're using that resistance training to track how many calories you're burning, you are not utilizing that session correctly. You're using that as the it's like using a it's like trying to eat soup with a fork. You're using it for the wrong job. If you use exercise for fat loss alone, it's gonna, it's not gonna meet your expectations. But if you use it for all of the good it brings, cardio health, maybe, you know, heart health if you're doing cardio and that kind of thing and endurance and stuff, but resistance training specifically, we're thinking muscle retention, bone mineral density, and actually, as we said earlier, potentially a better physical outcome as far as looking toned or whatever. So if we switch the focus to that, what can exercise add to my life? It becomes so much more fulfilling, so much more enriching, and so much more healthy, both physically and mentally. And this is why I am pushing the message of lifting weights. Honestly, it is crucial. So the real message here isn't to stop, to stop moving more, but it's more stop relying on movement as your main fat loss driver because fat loss is mostly a nutrition problem. And exercise makes the outcome better, but you're not gonna create a decent, accurate deficit with exercise alone. I think that's everything. If you find this episode helpful, please send it on to a friend. I am loving doing these podcasts, so I would love nothing more than to continue with them. And if you want help, creating a calorie deficit, finding your calories for yourself, creating a great relationship with exercise and uh building a plan that works for you in your life around your kids or um studying or your job or whatever, that is exactly what I do with my one-to-one clients. I take out all the guesswork, and so if you are interested in that, I'm currently running a bit of a deal. Coaching is typically £150 per month, but at the moment it is £120 a month. So if you just reach out to me on Instagram and let me know that you've heard this, I will honour that discount. But if you um want to apply directly, I will leave some details in the show notes. That application doesn't mean that you're tied in, it just means it just flags me to send you a bit more information. So if you want that, please hit the link and I will speak to you again next week.