There were some newspaper headlines a few of weeks ago saying “exercise doesn't work for weight loss”.
Partly true, but quite irresponsible journalism if you ask me. How many people see the headline and think “oh well I may as well not bother then”. Not good for the health of the nation.
Here's my take on the story. If you only look at weight loss then simply adding exercise (without changing anything else) is not a very effective tool. In fact you may well put on weight because you will increase the amount of muscle in your body.
People expect that by burning more calories by exercising that they will automatically lose weight but the thing is it takes a long time: chocolate bar = roughly 30 mins moderate exercise.
Whereas a few simple changes to your diet can have the same effect in a few mouthfuls, or sips.
Also people often subconsciously compensate when they start to exercise by eating more than they would normally. Or “I've been for a run today so I can have a pudding/beer [insert your favourite]”.
Of course there's a bit more to it than that - exercise is a great tool for helping the process and changing the shape of your body and improving your physical and mental health. At Motus Training we take many other things into account: hormonal balance, lifestyle choices, likes and dislikes, the type of body shape you would like achieve, injuries, existing health conditions, motivation etc.
Also the calories in vs calories out model has a few limitations too - we'll talk about that another time.
So what does this tell us? Does exercise work for weight loss? If you want to lose weight (or body fat, or “tone up”, or just feel better about how you look), then you must address your nutrition - this is the most influential part of lifestyle when it comes to weight.
However for optimal results in both changing your body shape and improving your health we need to change both exercise and nutrition as part of a wider view of your overall lifestyle - together they're more that the sum of their parts.
