Diet may be more important than exercise for long-term weight control, evidence suggests
Diet may be more important than exercise for long-term weight control, evidence suggests
Dr. Herman Pontzer, an evolutionary biologist, says his research suggests that exercise is not so effective for weight loss but it's key for health.
I mean yeah? Look at how many calories an intense workout burns and a single soda negates it.
I've always heard that being fit is 10% gym and 90% kitchen.
Same. "You can't outrun a bad diet" is something that gets repeated ad nauseum in weight loss communities
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Pontzer's research suggests that exercising more doesn't necessarily help you burn more calories, as the body finds sneaky ways to adapt by cutting energy use elsewhere.
But what makes exercise ineffective for weight loss might explain why it's so good for our health — working out could divert excess energy from potentially harmful bodily processes like inflammation and stress, according to Pontzer.
That theory falls apart in the face of new data Pontzer obtained from working with the Hadza, a group of indigenous inhabitants of Tanzania, who walk miles each day as part of a traditional hunter gatherer lifestyle.
Pontzer and his team were stunned to find that they burn only slightly more calories each day than the average sedentary American adult, far fewer than expected given their very high activity levels.
According to Pontzer's data from the Hadza and other groups, your body wants to stick to the same calorie budget whether you're training for a marathon or chilling on the couch — what he calls "the constrained energy framework."
Your immune system, for instance, is important for keeping you alive, but can cause damage if it's overactive, leading to issues from allergies to autoimmune disorders.
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AI: Evolutionary anthropologist Dr. Hermann Pontzer argues that exercise may not be an effective way to lose weight because the body adapts and reduces energy use in other areas. However, exercise can have health benefits because it diverts excess energy from potentially harmful processes in the body, such as inflammation and stress. Research shows that a person cannot exceed their metabolic budget, and exercise changes the way energy is used, not how much energy is used. Additionally, research from the Hadza group shows that even vigorous movement does not significantly increase calorie burning. This may be because the body strives to maintain the same frame of limited energy, which includes various activities such as immunity and stress response. Thus, exercise can be beneficial to health because it allows the body to expend excess energy, keeping the immune system and stress responses in balance.