(HealthNewsDigest.com) – More and more evidence suggests that despite all the great things exercise does for your body, losing weight isn’t necessarily one of them.
The number of calories you burn isn’t determined by your daily activity level, and burning more energy doesn’t protect against gaining weight—writes Herman Pontzer in his new book, “Burn: New Research Blows the Lid Off How We Really Burn Calories, Lose Weight, and Stay Healthy.”
“Your brain is very, very, very good at matching how many calories you eat and how many calories you burn,” Pontzer, an associate professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke University, told TODAY.
“The person who has a sedentary lifestyle and the person who has an active lifestyle will burn the same number of calories.”
Ponzter says that the thought process of thinking that the more you move, the more energy you burn, and that helps with weight loss is the wrong view of the human body’s flexible metabolic engine.
Say a person begins a Peloton program. They exercise rigorously and, at first, burn a lot of calories, but over a couple of months, their body will adjust and start to spend less energy on its other tasks—like stress reaction and inflammation—until things have returned to their former settings, Ponzter notes.
Ponzter studied the Hadza people of Tanzania, hunter-gatherers who walk for miles every day for food. The Hadza are extremely physically active and move more in one day than most Americans do in a whole week.
Pontzer and his colleagues were certain they’d be burning through a ton of calories, but, when the researchers measured how much energy the Hadza burned, the results showed the same amount of calories being burned as in people in the West.
Ponzter was surprised by this outcome. He noted that the results show our metabolic engines constantly adjust to make room for increased activity. Ultimately, he notes, that daily energy expenditure is kept within a narrow window, regardless of whether you walk a lot or barely do anything.
Ponzter states that to lose weight, people are better off eating less than trying to be more active. “Really the only strategy that seems to work well is to focus on your diet,” he said. “We’ve known for decades that exercise is a really poor tool for weight loss.”
Deborah Riebe, professor of exercise science and associate dean of the college of health sciences at the University of Rhode Island, noted that programs that combine exercise and diet see a 20% greater weight loss compared to just dieting.
Riebe recommends that people get an adequate amount of exercise and eat less to maximize weight loss in people who are already obese or overweight. Riebe also said that physical activity appears to be a critical component to prevent weight regain.
Vitamin deficiencies and other health problems can also cause weight gain, and prevent weight loss. Which is one of the reasons why b12 HCG shots are growing popular in the market. If your weight loss efforts are yielding no results, it’s wise to talk to a doctor in order to make sure your health isn’t the issue.
Pontzer cited a worry that people who are mainly motivated only by weight loss could stop working out, which would be a determent to their goal. He notes that exercise is critical in making the body stronger and fitter—and avoiding disease—it’s important to stay active, he stated.