Real Forking Truth: You can't exercise your way to weight loss.

For years we’ve been told to eat less and burn more to lose weight. But it’s clear this has not been working. While gym memberships went up, so did the rates of overweight and obesity. We’ve been working so hard counting our calories and then trying to sweat them away on the treadmill! It just doesn’t make sense and it has left us frustrated and hopeless.

So how could that have happened?

The answer is kind of shocking: Coca-Cola trademarked “exercise is the best medicine” based on research they conducted—or funded—supporting the idea that we can eat or drink whatever we want, we just have to move more to burn it off. The “calories in, calories out” model came out of this research and most diet plans took it on. Check out the below video talking about it by the author of Ultra-Processed People. If you want a more in-depth explanation, his book explains the many conflicts of interest in these studies, and how they have impacted our misunderstanding about weight loss and exercise.   

So here’s the deal: the excess fat we have on our bodies, and why we gain the weight in the first place, is mostly a result of the kinds of calories we consume instead of how many. Coca-Cola doesn’t want us to know this essential truth so they can continue selling us their sugary drinks.

An evolutionary anthropologist at Duke University named Herman Pontzer compared caloric output of hunter-gatherer tribes to sedentary people in the Western world. He measured their metabolism and found that the hunter-gatherers weren’t expending any more calories than people sitting at desk jobs. No matter what we do, humans around the world burn 2,000-3,000 calories a day.

What’s happening is that our miraculous bodies balance our energy needs when we are active. We burn less in systems and organs that don’t need fuel at the same time, and we burn less during the times we aren’t as active.

So, instead of calorie counting, we need to focus on eating Real Forking Food with plenty of nutrients to support our health goals. Ultra-processed or high sugar/flour foods (refined carbohydrates), affect the reward system of our brains leading to overconsumption, which in high doses causes our bodies harm. It's really hard not to eat that stuff in high doses since they are designed to be addictive—they even say it in the advertising with "you can't eat just one!"

We do need a deficit to lose excess weight, but that won't come from exercise. It comes from the food. Once we change how and what we eat, our bodies find balance and our brains find peace.

This is not to say that you don’t have to exercise. You HAVE to exercise… no free passes here! We know that exercise benefits our mental health, keeps our cardiovascular system functioning properly, builds muscle to protect our joints and combats sarcopenia (muscle loss) and osteoporosis. Since many of us have gone to food to cope, exercise can become a great tool for emotional regulation. Use it for mental health, but not to lose weight.

So to finally land and then live in YOUR right-size body, focus on the food (and drinks!). 

And if you want help to figure all this out for yourself, set up a free 30-minute discovery call. Together we can find your Real Forking Change.

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