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Losing Weight: More Exercise or Eating Less?
We all know it: if you want to lose weight, you have to eat less. We often say that weight loss is disappointing when people decide to exercise more instead of eating less. New research contradicts that. More exercise can be enough, but then you have to exercise more than the usual guidelines.
Losing Weight and Eating Less
My daughter was in London with her school this spring and visited Wimbledon. After an hour-long explanation of the organization’s history, the group headed outside toward the tennis courts. It was only then that my daughter realized it was about tennis. “How can you not know that Wimbledon is about tennis?” was my reaction. “How hard is it to just say it’s about tennis?” was my daughter’s response. A whole discussion followed. I even used Ajax as an example: “During a tour of the Arena, you don’t need to be told it’s a football club, do you?” However, my daughter gave the same response: “‘Welcome to Ajax, a well-known football club,’ how hard is that?”
The point is: you can never start from the basics often enough. Also, never assume that people already have certain knowledge just because that knowledge is available.
So, back to basics: You achieve weight loss by creating an energy deficit. This can be done by taking in less energy than the amount of energy expended. So logically, you have two ways to achieve this or a combination of both: Ensure that less comes in, or ensure that expenditure increases.
Still, I will always expect more from a modified diet and not rely too much on results from just more exercise.
Why I Always Recommend Focusing on Your Diet First
- Activity is a relatively small part of your daily expenditure. Therefore, it may mean that you need to exercise 20 percent more to compensate for 4 percent more food intake.
- Understanding your actual nutritional needs prevents ‘finger in the air’ efforts and increases the chance of results.
- More (conscious) exercise is often (consciously or unconsciously) compensated by eating more or moving less at other times.
The first two points mainly concern knowledge. Often, people have no idea about things like their resting metabolism. Therefore, the effect of more exercise can be overestimated. Increasing exercise without knowing your nutritional needs (and comparing them to your actual diet) often leads to disappointment. You need to know first how much you need and how much actually comes in. Only then do you know the extent of the problem and can work on it effectively.
But even if you have calculated that, for example, you consume 300 calories too much per day and make sure to expend an extra 300 calories every day, you are likely to still gain weight. People are consciously and/or unconsciously quick to compensate for extra exercise by eating more or moving less at other times. The surplus was originally those 300 kcal, but because you ate more, you actually had a surplus of, for example, 450 kcal.
We are very good at compensating for good behavior.
“Just Exercise More”
New research shows that exercising more can indeed be enough to lose weight [1]. But then you need to exercise more than guidelines recommending half an hour of exercise per day. Even if you do an hour of cardio every day, you will compensate for this by eating more. However, the new research shows that you only partially compensate for this, allowing you to still see results.
Researchers from the University of Kentucky divided 36 overweight people into two groups. Both groups received an exercise schedule for 5 days a week, for 12 weeks (three different cardio exercises). The first group had to expend an extra 300 kcal daily. Most needed about half an hour of exercise for this. The people in the second group had to expend an extra 600 kcal and needed an average of an hour for this. Participants were allowed to eat as they wished but had to keep track of it. Daily activity was also measured with trackers.
The 300 kcal per day turned out not to be enough to lose weight. The amount of body fat remained the same. The 1500 kcal extra expended per week was largely compensated for by eating more, averaging 943 kcal per week. This varied from -164 to 2050 kcal of compensation. Some people ate a little less (“since we are already doing well”), while most ate more (“I’m already doing well”).
This compensation also occurred in the group expending 600 kcal per day, 3000 kcal per week, extra. However, the compensation was not twice as high as the expenditure itself. Only ‘just’ 1007 kcal were compensated for per week. Almost the same as in the 1500 kcal group, while an extra 3000 kcal was expended (ranging from 32 to 1982 kcal).
Unconscious Compensation
That half-hour of exercise per day will probably largely compensate for itself. Although that guideline may be enough to maintain weight, more is often needed for weight loss.
The researchers determined how much was compensated by comparing the extra expenditure with the eventual decrease in body fat. The research shows that resting metabolism did not change due to the extra exercise. The participants’ resting energy expenditure was therefore not reduced in response to the extra expenditure. The activity trackers showed that there was also no decrease in activity at other times of the day. The only compensation that occurred was an increase in food intake. However, the participants themselves claimed to be eating the same amount. According to the researchers, they simply didn’t realize they were eating more.
Eating Less Works Faster After All
Exercising more can lead to weight loss, but you have to do relatively much for it. You can choose to exercise an extra 3000 kcal to ultimately expend only 2000 kcal more energy due to compensation. Alternatively, you can simply eat 2000 kcal less per week. However, even there, compensation can occur because your body becomes more efficient with energy or because you have less energy to exercise.
Of course, I am in favor of adding more exercise alongside a good diet. However, I always advise first knowing what your needs are and keeping track of what you actually eat (for example, with our app). This provides insight into the extent of a possible surplus so that you know what your goal is.
You can still choose how to work towards this goal, but do so in a targeted manner. By really keeping track of your diet, you can both check if your diet is still on track and determine any compensation. Then you won’t be surprised if the treadmill leads to less results than expected.
Keeping Motivation: Tips
If you ask 10
people why they want to lose weight, chances are you’ll get 10 different answers. Losing weight is very personal. So is the motivation surrounding weight loss. Some want to lose weight because it makes their clothes fit better, while others want to work on their weight because it will lead to a healthier lifestyle.
Either way, whatever the reason, motivation ensures that you don’t give up and continue to achieve your target weight and consciously eat less. In this part of the article about eating less, we want to tell you more about motivation, what it is, and how you can determine for yourself what your motivation is. Additionally, we want to give you a few tips on how to lose weight when your motivation is at its lowest.
In the opening, we described how the reasons for losing weight can vary from person to person. So does the definition of the word motivation. To use the most common definition:
Motivation is what drives an individual to certain behavior. Motivation influences the initiation, direction, intensity, and persistence of human behavior.
This definition highlights a few things:
Motivation is Personal
It’s about what you want to achieve, what your individual reasons are for achieving your goals. Determine what your intrinsic, inner motivation is for why you want to lose weight and eat less?
Behavior Change
Motivation leads to specific behavior. Because you are not satisfied with your appearance, body weight, or body composition, you want to do something about it. This leads to action to make a change. If you lack motivation, there is also a lack of the behavior that results from it.
Concrete Goals
Now that you know what motivation entails, it’s time to determine for yourself what your motivation is. What are the things you want to change for yourself? And why? If you already know your motivation, you need to set goals for yourself. The goals you set when you want to lose weight, just like any other goals, need to be specific. You can make your goals concrete using the SMART method. SMART stands for:
Specific: How many kilos do you want to lose? How many centimeters do you want your waist circumference to decrease? How much percentage do you want your body fat to drop?
Measurable: How much less are you going to eat? And how will you measure this?
Acceptable: Losing 10kg in 1 week is not possible and certainly not acceptable. Is your goal acceptable?
Realistic: Is your goal realistic?
Time-bound: In which period do you want to achieve your goal?
When you use the SMART method to make your goals concrete, you have a guideline and set yourself a goal that is visualizable and achievable. If your goal is too big, set yourself interim goals. An interim goal can also be made SMART and can be steps towards the final goal.
Pro tip: track your diet with the FITsociety app so you always keep an eye on how much you eat.
General Motivation Reasons
If you have determined your motivation for yourself and made your goals SMART, you can get started. In addition to your own goals and your own motivation, both of which are very personal, we want to give you a few general reasons why you should lose weight. These are reasons that can affect overall health:
- Overweight can lead to heart disease and vascular diseases.
- You get an overcareful and poor skin.
- The risk of diabetes increases.
- You often feel gloomy and depressed.
Motivation with Clothing
Perhaps the best way to motivate yourself is through your clothing. This can be done in several ways: do you have a pair of pants that you have fit into for years but can’t fit into now? Set a goal for yourself to fit into those pants again over a specific period. It can also be done in another way, namely by using the large pants you had to buy because you gained weight. These pants can be quite confronting with your weight. It depends on which of the 2 ways suits you best to motivate yourself using clothing items. In any case, both variants can work as a reminder.
Keeping Motivation
In this article, we have explained what motivation is and how you can determine this for yourself when you want to lose weight. Because losing weight and motivation are both very personal, holding on to your motivation also depends very much on you as a person. You can continue to confront yourself with a photo on your iPhone with your weight. Every time you unlock your iPhone, you see your weight. Too confronting? Then use your goals as motivation. Have you worked really hard for the past 5 weeks and lost 3 kilos as a result? Keep this result in mind when you come to a period when your motivation decreases or you feel like giving up.
References
- Kyle D Flack*, Kelsey Elise Ufholz, LuAnn K Johnson, John S Fitzgerald, and James N Roemmich. Energy Compensation in Response to Aerobic Exercise Training in Overweight Adults. American Journal of Physiology
