Go to the gym every day but still struggling to lose weight? A scientist reveals the 4 reasons why
- Liz is a typical 50-something woman, fit, 70kg (154lbs), 30 per cent body fat
- She goes to the gym daily, and runs for 35 minutes on the treadmill at 10km/h
- But, as she tells her Australian doctor so often, she struggles to lose any weight
- Tim Olds is a professor of health sciences at the University of South Australia
- He explains what is going on, and whether the universe is conspiring against Liz
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Liz is a typical 50-something woman, fit, 70kg (154lbs 5oz), 30 per cent body fat. She goes to the gym every day, and runs for 35 minutes on the treadmill at 10km/h.
But, as she tells me rather often, she can’t lose weight. So what’s going on here: is it Liz, or is it the universe conspiring against her?
Here, in a piece for The Conversation, Tim Olds, professor of health sciences at the University of South Australia, explains all…
There is some evidence people use food to reward themselves for exercising – hence why they don’t lose weight, despite exercising a lot
How do you actually ‘lose weight’?
Let’s start by considering the body as a store of energy. The body can be divided into two components.
One is fat mass, and the rest of the body is called fat-free mass. It’s mostly water, but there’s also bone and muscle protein. Fat contains much more energy (and thus requires more energy to burn).
Like most of the adult population, Liz wants to lose weight. To do this, she has to go into energy deficit: energy out must be greater than energy in. The amount of weight she loses will depend on whether she is losing fat or fat-free mass.
It takes a much bigger energy deficit to lose a kilogram of fat than a kilogram of fat-free mass. We also need a bigger energy deficit per kilogram of weight loss if we are fatter to start with.
For most people, it takes an energy deficit of about 27-32 kJ to lose a gram of body weight.
If Liz runs for 35 minutes at 10km/h on the treadmill, she has a deficit of about 1500kJ, so she will have lost only 50g (1lb 1oz) in a session. If she does this five times a week for a year, however, she will lose over 12kg (26lbs 7oz).
Except, of course, she doesn’t. After a year she’s still stuck on 70kg (154lbs 5oz). Why?
Eating more to compensate for exercise?
The first possibility is that Liz is eating more to compensate for the extra exercise. Her 35 minutes of treadmill running will be entirely undone by a glass and a half of merlot that evening.
There is some evidence people use food to reward themselves for exercising.
A recent analysis suggested women may be particularly prone to fuel up after exercise. So Liz may be unconsciously munching or drinking away that energy deficit.
DOES EXERCISE PREVENT DEMENTIA?
Aerobic exercise such as walking and running may halt dementia by preventing the brain from shrinking, research suggested in November 2017.
Being active several times a week maintains the size of the region of the brain associated with memory, a study found.
Known as the hippocampus, this region is often one of the first to deteriorate in Alzheimer’s patients.
Lead author Joseph Firth from the Western Sydney University, said: ‘When you exercise you produce a chemical called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), which may help to prevent age-related decline by reducing the deterioration of the brain.
‘In other words, exercise can be seen as a maintenance programme for the brain.’
The scientists, from the universities of Western Sydney and Manchester, analysed 14 studies with a total of 737 participants.
The participants were aged between 24 and 76, with an average age of 66.
They were made up of healthy individuals, Alzheimer’s patients and people with mental health problems, such as depression and schizophrenia.
Scans of the participants’ brains were investigated before and after completing exercise, such as walking or treadmill running.
The exercise programmes lasted between three months and two years, with participants completing two to five sessions a week.
Being less active elsewhere?
A second possibility is that Liz compensates for going to the gym by being less physically active elsewhere.
She may flop down in front of the TV rather than busying herself with chores. She may even fidget less.
This theory is known as the ‘activitystat’ hypothesis: the idea that we have a setpoint for energy expenditure like the setpoint on a thermostat.
If we increase physical activity in one domain, then there is an automatic compensation in another.
So is Liz undoing all the good work at the gym by couch-potatoing her way through the rest of the day? We tested this rather depressing theory.
Readers will be pleased to know we found no evidence for the activitystat when sedentary adults started an exercise program. They just cranked up the exercise, drawing time from sleep and TV.
A reduction in your resting metabolic rate?
One of the unfortunate side effects of losing weight is resting metabolic rate — the rate at which you use energy when you’re sitting doing nothing — starts to fall (meaning you burn less energy).
A recent study of contestants on The Biggest Loser found their resting metabolic rate was depressed six years after having lost and regained most of the weight.
So Liz could, in principle, be exercising and not have changed her diet or her activity pattern, and yet still not be losing weight because of her lower resting metabolic rate.
However, when weight is lost by exercising (as opposed to diet), resting metabolic rate is generally maintained.
Maybe you’re gaining muscle
A sunnier prospect may be that while she has not lost weight, she has lost body fat, and that body fat has been replaced by fat-free mass.
A kilogram of fat occupies more space (about 1.1 litres) than a kilogram of fat-free mass (about 0.9 litres), so Liz would not only be leaner, but smaller.
A sunnier prospect may be that while you may not have lost weight, you have lost body fat, and that body fat has been replaced by fat-free mass
We can calculate that if fat mass is entirely replaced by fat-free mass, after 12 weeks Liz will have lost 2.6kg (5lbs 11oz) of body fat, and gained 2.6kg (5lbs 11oz) of fat-free mass.
This sounds good, but does it really work like this? A reasonable rule of thumb is that about 75 per cent of the weight you lose will be fat, and the rest fat-free mass. But things may go better if weight training is involved.
One analysis of previous studies found strength training (using weights or your own body weight) increased fat-free mass by about 2kg (4lbs 6oz) in overweight men and about 1kg in women, even though weight remained unchanged.
A good test of whether you’re swapping fat mass for fat-free mass is just to measure your waist girth.
If it’s getting smaller while your weight is stable, then you’re probably losing fat and gaining fat-free mass.
So what’s happening with Liz?
Is it gluttony or sloth, or is she losing fat and replacing it with fat-free mass? Liz likes this last possibility, but I don’t know.
She certainly looks more toned, but the bottle of merlot is emptier than I thought.
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