Exercise Doesn't Equal Weight Loss- Find Out Why

Huh. Think about this, and I have, and now it makes me wonder myself, bear with me... You exercise every single day, say, jogging every morning, and you always maintain the exact same weight. I thought about it, and the reality is, I have been walking my dog an average of at least an hour a day 5 days a week (today was 2) and I have never actually lost weight. Have you? I have maintained my weight and never gotten larger, but I thought exercise made you lose weight...how come I am not any smaller than I was 9 years ago?

Because exercise, in reality, doesn't make you lose weight. In fact, several studies have suggested that exercise actually makes a person gain weight instead. Why? It's called compensation- as human beings, we are entitled to what we earn (at least in our minds) so when we feel we earned a whole sleeve of Oreos because we jogged for an hour, guess what? We nosh. And we lose, well, nada. And gain? Yes, we do.

A study done on 4 groups of women (by the Public Library of Science) found out this- of the women who worked out 72 minutes a week, 194 minutes a week, 136 minutes a week, and however often they wanted (lucky group) for 6 months, and none of them were ordered to change their diets (they simply had to jot down their daily consumption), all of them lost or gained weight equally. The study found that the more the women worked out a week, the more they ate and remained more sedentary in their downtime. However, the women who were allowed to just go about their business reported less food consumption overall, and lost the same average of weight as the other participants in exercise groups.

Why? The study suggests that people consume less food when they have their actual consumption written down, and don't eat as much due to knowledgeable lack of activity. The others who were exercising? They rewarded their workouts with lounge time and snacks, which made them either lose less weight, or made them actually gain weight overall.

So what does make you lose weight? Burning more calories than you consume. Whether it be by eating smaller meals, exercising them off and then eating healthier meals, or both, what really triggers weight loss is the same tried-and-true theory- the less calories you take in, the less calories you have to burn off. And if you can burn off more calories than you can take in, then guess what? You finally lose weight!

Source:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1914974-1,00.html