Explaining the "Exercise Paradox"

Typically, when we think to ourselves, “What do I need to do to get back into shape?”, we automatically default to “move more, eat less”. This isn’t wrong, per say, and will get you initial results, but it’s too simple. What if I told you manually burning calories through exercise is actually a poor primary strategy for weight loss?

Here’s why: An interesting study called, “The Exercise Paradox”, takes a look at the energy expenditure of a hunter-gatherer tribe called the Hadza in Tanzania and your average sedentary American. The members of the Hadza tribe spend their days hunting and foraging, traveling many miles over the course of the day, often with heavy loads being carried on their back. Through this work they found that,”...contrary to received wisdom, humans tend to burn the same number of calories regardless of how physically active they are.” (Pontzer). This goes against all of the conventional wisdom we have been taught about exercise and losing weight. Therefore, primarily focusing on manually burning calories through exercise is actually not the best strategy for weight loss. Although, researchers still don’t know exactly why this is the case. They hypothesize that it could be that people who are more active change their other behaviors in different ways to save calories. It could also be that the body uses less of its calories allotment on underlying activities such as the, “..housekeeping work that our cells and our organs do to keep us alive.” (Pontzer). Even though the exact cause is not known for sure, the fact remains, you’ll burn a similar amount of calories whether you are a member of the Hadza tribe, out either hunting or foraging all day, or if you’re an average American with a work from home job that has you spending the majority of your day sitting in front of a computer. That is why you must prioritize proper diet and eating habits if weight is something you want to manage.

With all of this said, exercise is still of vital importance for health and longevity. It will also be much harder to lose weight if you do not exercise regularly because you will in turn have less than ideal health. The main takeaway here is not, “you don’t need to exercise to lose weight”, it is more so that we shouldn’t be relying on our activity tracking app to tell us how many calories we’ve burned as a primary measure of success. We also shouldn’t be consistently seeking out opportunities to manually burn calories every chance we get. This is all likely wasted effort. Instead, we should exercise regularly via resistance training, as well as getting adequate daily activity through walking/cardio. Resistance training is one form of exercise that actually can indirectly, positively improve your metabolism. This is because through resistance training you can build muscle tissue, which requires calories to build and to maintain, increasing your basal metabolic rate. What this means is, in order to continue to supply this muscle tissue that you built, you would actually require more calories than you would otherwise; even at rest. That’s the ideal scenario, burn more calories when you’re doing absolutely nothing. This is even more applicable if you’re already doing cardiovascular exercise on a regular basis. Seeking out more isn’t always better. All of that extra time/effort you may be committing to extra cardio/activity to reach your weight loss goals, could instead be allotted to focusing on getting your nutrition in check and starting a regular resistance training routine.