Diet for weight loss may be more important than exercise for long-term weight management, new scientific evidence suggests. According to health expert and evolutionary anthropologist, Herman Pontzer, aresports exercisesmay not be effective enough for fat burning, especially in the long term. Here are some facts about this topic that you might find useful.
Good reasons for a healthy diet to lose weight
The professor claims that exercise is pointless when it comes to weight loss. Additionally, metabolism could compensate for calorie-burning exercise by reducing other activities. This could explain why exercise is good for health but bad for weight loss, according to the health expert. Contrary to decades of popular advice, exercise may not be an effective weight loss strategy, as Dr. Pontzer claims. His current research suggests that exercising more doesn't necessarily help you burn more calories because the body finds sneaky ways to adapt. It does this by reducing energy consumption elsewhere.
However, what makes exercise ineffective for weight loss may explain why it is so good for your health. According to Pontzer, exercise could divert excess energy from potentially harmful body processes such as inflammation and stress. Accordingly, exercise doesn't change how many calories you burn, but rather how you burn them. So diet for weight loss and exercise are two different tools for two different purposes. The former is more for weight loss, while the latter is the tool for everything else.
The science behind the theory
The new research suggests that people cannot exceed their metabolic budget. Training to lose weight is based on the assumption that you can burn calories at a constant rate. According to this theory, if walking a mile burns 50 calories, then walking 100 miles (about 161 kilometers) over the course of a month would burn 5,000 calories. In theory, this could help expend more energy, as well as prompt the body to dip into stored energy by burning fat. However, this theory falls apart in light of new data obtained from Pontzer's research. He studied a group of indigenous people in Tanzania called Hadza. As part of a traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyle, they typically walk miles every day.
The professor and his team were amazed to find that the subjects burned only slightly more calories each day than the average sedentary American adult. This is far less than expected given their very high activity levels. This observation suggests that the exercise-metabolism equation is more of a curve, meaning that the more you exercise, the more carefully your body allocates energy.
That's why energy consumption is very important, regardless of weight loss
According to Pontzer's data from Hadza and other groups, the body wants to stick to the same calorie budget whether you're training for a marathon or lying on the couch. This is what he calls “the constrained energy framework.” However, while this might inhibit fat burning, it may make it clear why exercise is so good for your health. After weeks or months of exercise, the body begins to redistribute calories from other activities to compensate, Pontzer's evidence suggests. He suspects this includes activities that do more harm than good.
For example, the immune system is important for keeping you alive, but can cause damage if it is overactive. This can lead to problems ranging from allergies to autoimmune diseases. The so-called restricted energy framework suggests that exercise helps the body use up excess energy to keep the immune system and stress responses more balanced. Pontzer argues that even most people's understanding of ideal calorie intake is wrong. “Nine-year-olds burn 2,000 calories per day, while adults burn closer to 3,000,” he writes. In its model of restricted daily energy expenditure, the body adjusts how it consumes the limited number of calories based on lifestyle.
A balanced diet can help you lose weight
Pontzer made a surprising realization: "You don't have control of your metabolism," he said. That's why the expert believes that the only way to lose weight effectively is through weight loss diet. The Hadza tribe's balanced, seasonal omnivorous menu includes carbohydrates from grains, starches from tubers and sugars from honey. This is a good example of such a diet. Herman Pontzer recommends eating meals rich in protein and fiber, which are filling and can keep you full for longer. The next step in his research is to test how this theory works. This is intended to show whether researchers can actually measure how exercise affects every system and cell in the body beyond fat and muscle.
If proven, the theory could also help explain why modern, sedentary lifestyles and processed foods are bad for health. In addition, this would help people take proper obesity countermeasures. Many people take it for granted that chronic illness is part of being human, but people in the Western world are actually pretty strange, says Pontzer. He thinks everyone could learn a lot more from other cultures about how the human body works.
