I’m just coming off a week of holidays of rest, relaxation and intermittent binge eating. In case you are unfamiliar, this is the devil on the opposite shoulder of the intermittent fasting angel. And to pile it on higher my alcohol consumption experienced a steep surge as well. So, it’s not very surprising that I’m carrying a little extra unnecessary weight around my midsection. I have no regrets on taking a short break from some of my usual habits and routines, however I do have the urge to shed that weight asap.

So back from holidays I fire up a plan to exercise more. Burn more energy than I consume, it’s a simple formula, right?

Well recent research has shed some light on why that theoretical energy balance formula is not quite so simple.

Researchers have known for several years now that when they measure increased exercise expenditure in subjects the predicted weight loss is only 30-40% of what is expected from a negative energy balance. Essentially if you ramp up your exercise (and change nothing else in your life) and try and “burn” the weight off you’ll get less than half the potential results. This is called weight compensation. We simply aren’t losing as much weight as we should be from exercise alone…but why??

A nice study hot off the press published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition delivered some insights to why we often become our own worst weight loss enemy when we exercise more. The conclusion is quite simple really, most of us don’t lose the weight because we eat more when we exercise more.

The researchers randomized 170 sedentary people to three groups: a no exercise group, a low exercise group and a higher exercise group. Subjects were able to exercise on a treadmill or a bike. The low exercise group burned 8 calories for every kilogram of their body weight (about 700 calories on average) a week and the high exercise group burned 20 calories for every kilogram of their body weight (about 1760 calories) a week for 6 months. The subjects were measured and tracked for their weight, aerobic fitness, energy intake, overall total physical activity, resting metabolic rate, and asked a series of survey questions.

58% in the low exercise group lost weight and 77% of people in the higher exercise group lost weight, so the good news is yes exercise can give you some results. However the majority (76% in the low exercise group and 90% in the higher exercise group) did not lose as much as would have been predicted based on their increased exercise alone.

The problem?. While exercise increased, so too did the subjects energy intake. And the increase is subtle, approximately 5% more calories were consumed over the 6 month period while exercising during the study. That’s around 100 calories a day on average, less than 4 bites of most food as stated by one of the authors. So in the real world, as you’re exercising more you probably don’t even realize you’re eating more. No point in hopping on that scale everyday cause the energy balance game you thought you were playing is rigged.

Researchers make note that it appears to not be the primary meals that were the main culprit, but instead snacking and calorie-containing beverages between meals that might be more to blame. Beware of those sneaky sports and energy drinks.

And to further complicate the matter, there seems to be high individual variability in this weight compensation phenomenon. Higher compensators, those who lost the least weight, reported increased appetite ratings, craved more sweets, had poorer sleep and worsened bodily pain.

In addition, those who lost the least weight (compared to what was expected) believed that healthy behaviours can make up for the unhealthy choices. Essentially it’s the “I deserve that doughnut idea” according to one of the authors.

Now we could have a lengthy discussion about some of the potential inadequacies of this research, namely that all calories are not alike: 150 calories from a half of an avocado for instance is different that 150 calories in approximately a cup and a half of cheerios or in half of a Big Mac McDonald’s burger. Subjects in this study were free to choose what they ate. Obviously this is a problem.

And we could also be critical of the exercise choice in this study, steady state aerobic cardio on a treadmill or bike. As we have discussed in previous blogs, this is a poor use of your exercise time if weight loss is your goal.

However the take home message is still valuable. Go ahead and ramp up your exercise, you will likely lose some weight. If you are one of the lucky ones it might just be enough for you to lose what you want. But if you are part of the majority, struggling with the mismatch between the amount of work you are putting in and the amount of weight you are losing, don’t let your own body fool you…your problem is not in the gym, it’s in the kitchen.

As we have said before: Eat real food, NOT TOO MUCH, mostly plants. (And buy organic and non GMO). Because you can’t out run a bad diet.