Will you lose weight if you exercise a lot? Long-term weight loss

I wonder if you have had such experience? After you make up your mind to exercise and lose weight, the numbers on the scale start to go down, but over time, with the same amount of exercise, the rate of weight loss slows down? Even after a few months, your weight creeps back in?

This result may not be your illusion. According to the latest research from City University of New York published in Current Biology, if you rely solely on exercise to lose weight, the effect may be greatly reduced after a long time. The authors recruited 332 subjects from five different countries and recorded their daily energy expenditure. Their physical activity was also measured using accelerometry.

The experimental results found that the total energy expenditure of the subjects was positively correlated with the amount of physical activity, and the correlation between the two was significantly stronger in the range of lower physical activity; for those subjects with higher physical activity, their total energy expenditure tended to be flat, and after the activity exceeded a certain critical value, excess exercise would not help the subjects consume calories.

The authors suggest that there may be an optimum amount of physical activity – too little may not keep the body healthy, while too much may cause dramatic metabolic adjustments in the body, allowing the body to adapt to such an amount of activity, thereby limiting the individual's total energy expenditure.

This article is from ELSEVIER Global Pharmaceutical News