Can Exercising Alone Lead to Weight Loss?

Health and fitness industry promotes exercise for weight loss and tells that weight loss is healthy and positive. Is it correct? Such information certainly makes us feel that we are not enough and need to spend money to feel better about ourselves. 

Health and fitness industry is getting bigger and bigger. Many go to fitness classes, drink healthy smoothies or use personal trainers who make us work hard to achieve perfect bodies. 

We count the number of calories going out after exercising, which encourage us to eat an extra piece of cake or pizza afterwards. 

So can exercising alone make you lose weight?

Exercise is excellent for keeping healthy. It is associated with a reduction of high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, mental health, cognitive impairment, cancer risk and others. 

It's hard, however, to create a significant calorie deficit through exercise. When we exercise, we can get tired, which results in needing to rest and sleep more. Our appetite also increases after exercising. I have certainly noticed both of these in myself.

Exercise also accounts for a small portion of daily calorie burn. Since using my Garmin watch, I noticed the energy expenditure throughout the day with exercise making up only 20-25% of the total amount.

The real trouble is overeating which leads to obesity. If you do not overeat, you will not put on more weight than you should. Eating ultra-processed food will also lead to increased calorie intake in comparison to eating raw or whole food. Anthropologist Herman Ponzer went to Tanzania to investigate calorie expenditure of a hunter-gatherer tribe. He found that they expend more calories in a day compared to us in the Western world.

So exercise on its own will not help you lose weight, but rather maintain it at a good level. Other measures like below should be put in place to help with losing weight.  

What works for weight loss:

• Exercise regularly.

• Get enough sleep each night.

• Do not overeat.

• Watch calorie intake. For example, the National Weight Control Registry, US (NWCR) suggest controlling food portions and suggest eating less calorie-dense foods.

• Identify your barriers and motivations. The NWCR says that people who record their weight loss journey with what works and what doesn't are among successful at losing weight.

• Avoid weight-loss medications or "metabolism-boosting" supplements which are not effective with losing weight.

• Don't put pressure on yourself. There is no such thing as the best diet out there. Different diets suit different people. According to multiple studies, they all lead to similar weight loss anyway. Unfortunately, though, diets often fail because of unreasonable expectations which cannot be sustained for long periods of time. 

Any weight loss is better than none. People who diet often set themselves for failure by expecting results instantly or choosing a diet which does not suit their lifestyle or is impossible to maintain.  

"You don't need to be a saint; you need to be a smart sinner," said Dr Lawrence Cheskin, director of the Johns Hopkins Weight Management Center. 

Katherine Zeratsky, a registered dietician at the Mayo Clinic, also said unreasonable expectations make weight loss difficult. "When people try and fail, their confidence is so low, and they just lose the confidence to believe they can really sustain even a more reasonable change, or they don't think the reasonable change is going to do much."