Does Exercise Help You Lose Weight? The Surprising Truth

To lose weight, you need to burn more calories than you consume.
Exercise can help you achieve this by burning off some extra calories.
However, some people claim that exercise isn't effective for weight loss on its own.
This may be because exercise increases hunger in some people, making them eat more calories than they burned during the workout.
Is exercise really helpful for weight loss? This article takes a look at the evidence.

Exercise Has Powerful Health Benefits

Exercise is really great for your health.
It can lower your risk of many diseases, including heart disease, diabetes, obesity, osteoporosis and some cancers.
In fact, people who work out on a regular basis are thought to have up to a 50% lower risk of dying from many of these illnesses.
Exercise is also incredibly good for your mental health, and it can help you manage stress and unwind.
Keep this in mind when you consider the effects of exercise. Even if it isn't effective for weight loss, it still has other benefits that are just as important (if not more).

Think Fat Loss, Not Weight Loss

Exercise is often advised for weight loss, but people should really aim for fat loss.
If you simply reduce your calorie intake to lose weight, without exercising, you will probably lose muscle as well as fat.
In fact, it's been estimated that when people lose weight, about a quarter of the weight they lose is muscle.
When you cut back on calories, your body is forced to find other sources of fuel. Unfortunately, this means burning muscle protein along with your fat stores.
Including an exercise plan alongside your diet can reduce the amount of muscle you lose.
This is also important because muscle is more metabolically active than fat.
Preventing muscle loss can help counter the drop in metabolic rate that occurs when you lose weight, which makes it harder to lose weight and keep it off.
Additionally, most of the benefits of exercise seem to come from improvements in body composition, overall fitness and metabolic health, not just weight loss.
Even if you don't lose "weight," you may still be losing fat and building muscle instead.
For this reason, it can be helpful to measure your waist size and body fat percentage from time to time. The scale doesn't tell the whole story.

Cardio Helps You Burn Calories and Body Fat

One of the most popular types of exercise for weight loss is aerobic exercise, also known as cardio. Examples include walking, running, cycling and swimming.
Aerobic exercise doesn't have a major effect on your muscle mass, at least not compared to weight lifting. However, it is very effective at burning calories.
A recent 10-month study examined how cardio affected 141 obese or overweight people. They were split into three groups and not told to reduce calorie intake.
Group 1: Burn 400 calories doing cardio, 5 days a week
Group 2: Burn 600 calories doing cardio, 5 days a week
Group 3: No exercise
Group 1 participants lost 4.3% of their body weight, while those in group 2 lost a little more at 5.7%. The control group, which didn't exercise, actually gained 0.5%.
Other studies also show cardio can help you burn fat, especially the dangerous belly fat that increases your risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
Therefore, adding cardio to your lifestyle is likely to help you manage your weight and improve your metabolic health. Just don't compensate for the exercise by eating more calories instead.

Lifting Weights Helps You Burn More Calories Around the Clock

All physical activity can help you burn calories.
However, resistance training — such as weight lifting — has benefits that go beyond that.
Resistance training helps increase the strength, tone and amount of muscle you have.
This is important for long-term health, since inactive adults lose between 3–8% of their muscle mass per decade.
Higher amounts of muscle also increase your metabolism, helping you burn more calories around the clock — even at rest.
This also helps prevent the drop in metabolism that can occur alongside weight loss.
One study of 48 overweight women on a very-low-calorie diet found that those who followed a weight lifting program maintained their muscle mass, metabolic rate and strength, even though they lost weight.
Women who didn't lift weights lost weight too, but they also lost more muscle mass and experienced a drop in metabolism.
Because of this, doing some form of resistance training is really a crucial addition to an effective long-term weight loss plan. It makes it easier to keep the weight off, which is actually much harder than losing it in the first place.

People Who Exercise Sometimes Eat More

One of the main problems with exercise and weight loss is that exercise doesn't just affect the "calories out" side of the energy balance equation.
It can also affect appetite and hunger levels, which may cause you to eat more calories.
Exercise May Increase Hunger Levels
One of the main complaints about exercise is that it can make you hungry and cause you to eat more.
It's also been suggested that exercise may make you overestimate the number of calories you've burned and "reward" yourself with food. This can prevent weight loss and even lead to weight gain.
Although it doesn't apply to everyone, studies show that some people do eat more after working out, which can prevent them from losing weight.

Exercise May Affect Appetite-Regulating Hormones

Physical activity may influence the hormone ghrelin. Ghrelin is also known as "the hunger hormone" because of the way it drives your appetite.
Interestingly, studies show that appetite is suppressed after intense exercise. This is known as "exercise anorexia" and seems tied to a decrease in ghrelin.
However, ghrelin levels go back to normal after around half an hour.
So although there is a link between appetite and ghrelin, it doesn't seem to influence how much you actually eat.

Effects on Appetite May Vary by Individual

Studies on calorie intake after exercise are mixed. It's now recognized that both appetite and food intake after exercise can vary between people.
For example, women have been shown to be hungrier after working out than men, and leaner people may become less hungry than obese people.

Does Exercise Help You Lose Weight?

The effects of exercise on weight loss or gain varies from person to person.
Although most people who exercise will lose weight over the long term, some people find that their weight remains stable and a few people will even gain weight.
However, some of those who gain weight are actually gaining muscle, not fat.
All that being said, when comparing diet and exercise, changing your diet tends to be more effective for weight loss than exercise.
However, the most effective strategy involves both diet and exercise.

People Who Lose Weight and Keep It Off Tend to Exercise a Lot

Keeping weight off once you have lost it is hard.
In fact, some studies show that 85% of people who go on a weight loss diet are unable to keep the weight off.
Interestingly, studies have been done on people who have lost a lot of weight and kept it off for years. These people tend to exercise a lot, up to an hour per day.
It's best to find a type of physical activity you enjoy and that fits easily into your lifestyle. This way, you have a better chance of keeping it up.

A Healthy Diet Is Also Important

Exercise can improve your health and help you lose weight, but eating a healthy diet is absolutely crucial as well.
You can't outrun a bad diet.

The Top 10 Benefits of Regular Exercise

Exercise is defined as any movement that makes your muscles work and requires your body to burn calories.

There are many types of physical activity, including swimming, running, jogging, walking and dancing, to name a few.

Being active has been shown to have many health benefits, both physically and mentally. It may even help you live longer.

Here are the top 10 ways regular exercise benefits your body and brain.

1. It Can Make You Feel Happier

Exercise has been shown to improve your mood and decrease feelings of depression, anxiety and stress.

It produces changes in the parts of the brain that regulate stress and anxiety. It can also increase brain sensitivity for the hormones serotonin and norepinephrine, which relieve feelings of depression.

Additionally, exercise can increase the production of endorphins, which are known to help produce positive feelings and reduce the perception of pain.

Furthermore, exercise has been shown to reduce symptoms in people suffering from anxiety. It can also help them be more aware of their mental state and practice distraction from their fears.

Interestingly, it doesn't matter how intense your workout is. It seems that your mood can benefit from exercise no matter the intensity of the physical activity.

In fact, a study in 24 women who had been diagnosed with depression showed that exercise of any intensity significantly decreased feelings of depression.

The effects of exercise on mood are so powerful that choosing to exercise (or not) even makes a difference over short periods.

One study asked 26 healthy men and women who normally exercised regularly to either continue exercising or stop exercising for two weeks. Those who stopped exercising experienced increases in negative mood.

2. It Can Help With Weight Loss

Some studies have shown that inactivity is a major factor in weight gain and obesity.

To understand the effect of exercise on weight reduction, it is important to understand the relationship between exercise and energy expenditure.

Your body spends energy in three ways: digesting food, exercising and maintaining body functions like your heartbeat and breathing.

While dieting, a reduced calorie intake will lower your metabolic rate, which will delay weight loss. On the contrary, regular exercise has been shown to increase your metabolic rate, which will burn more calories and help you lose weight.

Additionally, studies have shown that combining aerobic exercise with resistance training can maximize fat loss and muscle mass maintenance, which is essential for keeping the weight off.

3. It Is Good for Your Muscles and Bones

Exercise plays a vital role in building and maintaining strong muscles and bones.

Physical activity like weight lifting can stimulate muscle building when paired with adequate protein intake.

This is because exercise helps release hormones that promote the ability of your muscles to absorb amino acids. This helps them grow and reduces their breakdown.

As people age, they tend to lose muscle mass and function, which can lead to injuries and disabilities. Practicing regular physical activity is essential to reducing muscle loss and maintaining strength as you age.

Also, exercise helps build bone density when you're younger, in addition to helping prevent osteoporosis later in life.

Interestingly, high-impact exercise, such as gymnastics or running, or odd-impact sports, such as soccer and basketball, have been shown to promote a higher bone density than non-impact sports like swimming and cycling.

4. It Can Increase Your Energy Levels

Exercise can be a real energy booster for healthy people, as well as those suffering from various medical conditions.

One study found that six weeks of regular exercise reduced feelings of fatigue for 36 healthy people who had reported persistent fatigue.

Furthermore, exercise can significantly increase energy levels for people suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and other serious illnesses.

In fact, exercise seems to be more effective at combating CFS than other treatments, including passive therapies like relaxation and stretching, or no treatment at all.

Additionally, exercise has been shown to increase energy levels in people suffering from progressive illnesses, such as cancer, HIV/AIDS and multiple sclerosis.

5. It Can Reduce Your Risk of Chronic Disease

Lack of regular physical activity is a primary cause of chronic disease.

Regular exercise has been shown to improve insulin sensitivity, cardiovascular fitness and body composition, yet decrease blood pressure and blood fat levels.

In contrast, a lack of regular exercise — even in the short term — can lead to significant increases in belly fat, which increases the risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease and early death.

Therefore, daily physical activity is recommended to reduce belly fat and decrease the risk of developing these diseases.

6. It Can Help Skin Health

Your skin can be affected by the amount of oxidative stress in your body.

Oxidative stress occurs when the body's antioxidant defenses cannot completely repair the damage that free radicals cause to cells. This can damage their internal structures and deteriorate your skin.

Even though intense and exhaustive physical activity can contribute to oxidative damage, regular moderate exercise can increase your body's production of natural antioxidants, which help protect cells.

In the same way, exercise can stimulate blood flow and induce skin cell adaptations that can help delay the appearance of skin aging.

7. It Can Help Your Brain Health and Memory

Exercise can improve brain function and protect memory and thinking skills.

To begin with, it increases your heart rate, which promotes the flow of blood and oxygen to your brain.

It can also stimulate the production of hormones that can enhance the growth of brain cells.

Moreover, the ability of exercise to prevent chronic disease can translate into benefits for your brain, since its function can be affected by these diseases.

Regular physical activity is especially important in older adults since aging — combined with oxidative stress and inflammation — promotes changes in brain structure and function.

Exercise has been shown to cause the hippocampus, a part of the brain that's vital for memory and learning, to grow in size. This serves to increase mental function in older adults.

Lastly, exercise has been shown to reduce changes in the brain that can cause Alzheimer's disease and schizophrenia.

8. It Can Help With Relaxation and Sleep Quality

Regular exercise can help you relax and sleep better.

In regards to sleep quality, the energy depletion that occurs during exercise stimulates recuperative processes during sleep.

Moreover, the increase in body temperature that occurs during exercise is thought to improve sleep quality by helping it drop during sleep.

Many studies on the effects of exercise on sleep have reached similar conclusions.

One study found that 150 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous activity per week can provide up to a 65% improvement in sleep quality.

Another showed that 16 weeks of physical activity increased sleep quality and helped 17 people with insomnia sleep longer and more deeply than the control group. It also helped them feel more energized during the day.

What's more, engaging in regular exercise seems to be beneficial for the elderly, who tend to be affected by sleep disorders.

You can be flexible with the kind of exercise you choose. It appears that either aerobic exercise alone or aerobic exercise combined with resistance training can equally help sleep quality.

9. It Can Reduce Pain

Chronic pain can be debilitating, but exercise can actually help reduce it.

In fact, for many years, the recommendation for treating chronic pain was rest and inactivity. However, recent studies show that exercise helps relieve chronic pain.

A review of several studies indicates that exercise helps participants with chronic pain reduce their pain and improve their quality of life.

Several studies show that exercise can help control pain that's associated with various health conditions, including chronic low back pain, fibromyalgia and chronic soft tissue shoulder disorder, to name a few.

Additionally, physical activity can also raise pain tolerance and decrease pain perception.

10. It Can Promote a Better Sex Life

Exercise has been proven to boost sex drive.

Engaging in regular exercise can strengthen the cardiovascular system, improve blood circulation, tone muscles and enhance flexibility, all of which can improve your sex life.

Physical activity can improve sexual performance and sexual pleasure, as well as increase the frequency of sexual activity.

A group of women in their 40s observed that they experienced orgasms more frequently when they incorporated more strenuous exercise, such as sprints, boot camps and weight training, into their lifestyles.

Also, among a group of 178 healthy men, the men that reported more exercise hours per week had higher sexual function scores.

One study found that a simple routine of a six-minute walk around the house helped 41 men reduce their erectile dysfunction symptoms by 71%.

Another study performed in 78 sedentary men revealed how 60 minutes of walking per day (three and a half days per week, on average) improved their sexual behavior, including frequency, adequate functioning and satisfaction.

What's more, a study demonstrated that women suffering from polycystic ovary syndrome, which can reduce sex drive, increased their sex drive with regular resistance training for 16 weeks.

The Bottom Line

Exercise offers incredible benefits that can improve nearly every aspect of your health from the inside out.

Regular physical activity can increase the production of hormones that make you feel happier and help you sleep better.

It can also improve your skin's appearance, help you lose weight and keep it off, lessen the risk of chronic disease and improve your sex life.

Whether you practice a specific sport or follow the guideline of 150 minutes of activity per week, you will inevitably improve your health in many ways.