We have heard it so many times that it sounds like a weight-loss fact: eat less, move more as if both are equal and required. But that is not a fact, as people who are bedridden and cannot move more could not lose weight. Another problem with this fact is that it is self-reinforcing because our own experience tells us that eat less, move more has resulted in weight-loss for us.
So what is really going on here? Let's flip this on its head.
- We cannot diet our body strong. Physical activity makes our body strong.
- We cannot outexercise our food intake (at least, not unless we're extreme about it). Order that dessert in a restaurant. It takes 5 minutes to eat 750 kcal, about 7½ miles worth of running food (and that's 45 minutes if you run like me, probably 30 if you're good). No, losing weight is mostly managed by decreasing our incoming calories rather than exercising them off.
Thinking of those two things in the negative helps us make this clear:
- Physical activity is primarily for managing our fitness. Lift for strength. Walk/run for endurance. (Lot of options in the areas of exercises, sports, physical jobs, hobbies, and lifestyle patterns.)
- Eating right is for managing our body's weight. More for more, less for less.
Breaking them out into these two separate fields, instead of together, helps us see which tools belong to which job.
You might observe that these do have some overlap, but in that overlap there is both the complementary and the confounding. Exercise burns calories but also makes us actually hungrier and psychologically feel needy and deserving of more food. For this overall reason, we can make this statement:
Managing our food is required for weight loss. Exercise, mainly for fitness, and if the food is managed, it can secondarily help in weight loss.
That way we're clear. We prioritize better. Rather than run to lose weight, we run for endurance and conditioning. Running to lose weight is the wrong tool for the job. If we understand that, we won't quickly answer a failure to lose weight (a long plateau) with even more running. We'll still run if we enjoy it or need that training -- it's healthy and good for our fitness. If not running, we must do something else to be fit and healthy. Next to quitting smoking and losing weight, exercise is just about the best thing you can do for your health.
To lose weight, focus on the diet and primarily the diet. And since we don't just want to lose weight but to become and stay a right weight forever, let's not "go on a diet" temporarily but forever fix what's wrong with our eating and make it right. We do this with smaller adjustments to our regular normal food and our normal eating patterns, and not on mostly "weight loss" food or weird schemes.
Then, to that working change to our lifestyle's forever diet, the exercise that we do can also be assistive (but not primary) in weight loss.
I cross-posted this from another instance because it's a good story, but also read a separate but related story here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/06/27/ultra-processed-foods-predigested-health-risks/
The predigested angle is new to me, but explains a few things. Kevin Hall mentioned in the article does great research on weight and nutrition at NIH.