Keep on moving

Nature (plus or minus nurture) has not made me an exercise junkie. I don’t belong to a gym (paying all that money seems pointless since I don’t go), and most of my exercise at the moment comes from bursts of walking, pushing my son in his pram. (In case you think this is a wimpy form of exercise, I should add that my son weighs more than 10kg- it’s no picnic to push him up a hill). But I should add that this is not an everyday thing. Sure I push the pram around when we do errands, but what I consider real ‘exercise’ (specifically walking for say 40 minutes to an hour as aerobic exercise) is not my idea of fun. I easily avoid it. After all, I’m a busy full-time mum. Who has time to exercise?

Since I’m going to the extent of quitting sugar in the quest to lose weight, I may as well be thorough about this and work out the exercise question. I need to know whether I have to say, join a gym (and actually go), or make sure I’m out pounding the pavement pushing the pram every day, or something else in order to lose weight.

Well to start with, research has pretty consistently shown little or no effect of exercise alone on weight. That’s exercise like going to the gym, jogging, power-walking, cycling, or playing sports. These reviews (here and here) showed that on average, people who exercised didn’t lose weight when compared to those who did nothing. Plus, those who dieted AND exercised only lost (on average) a tiny amount more than those who just modified their diet. This seems a bit unfair. Surely exercise, as horrid as it is, should be rewarded? Why doesn't it work?

Turns out we burn very little energy through exercise. 40 minutes of moderate intensity aerobic exercise might feel like hard work (unless it is Zumba, then it will feel like a party!), but after all that sweating you have only burned the equivalent of one piece of chocolate cake, or 3 scoops of vanilla icecream, or a single piece of apple pie. Damn. And then there is the possibility that you will want to eat that pie more, because you went to the gym. Studies like this one show that some people compensate for the energy they lose by eating more. Oops.  These researchers showed that adolescents who increased their physical exercise also increased their energy intake by 100 calories more than they burned in the exercise (on average). And the more intense the exercise, the greater the compensation may be, according to this research. 

There is also research to show that when we do intensive exercise we may reduce our movement throughout the rest of the day to compensate. These UK researchers compared the overall physical movement of kids from a private school who had nearly 2 hours of PE per day to kids at schools with PE for about 2 hours per week. The children wore ActiGraphs which measured the amount and intensity of their movement. Guess what- the children in all three schools moved about the same amount and at about the same intensity. The organised PE did nothing to increase overall activity of the kids because those children simply moved less at other times. I knew there was a good reason that I didn’t like PE.

It seems exercise is not for everyone, because, to quote these guys, ‘some individuals do not experience the beneficial effects of exercise on body weight’. Some of us compensate (unconsciously, by the way), and this negates all the benefits in terms of energy loss. Well, well. Yep, that’s me. 

Of course our great-grandparents didn’t go to Curves. They may have pushed babies in prams but they didn’t do it for ‘exercise’. They did it as part of everyday movement. They moved more than we did and perhaps this simple ‘moving more’ is the answer to managing weight without accidentally tripping the switch that tells our bodies to compensate with more food or more rest. This great article in Time Magazine summarises some of the latest thinking in relation to exercise and weight loss and points out that many of the benefits from exercise like improved cognitive abilities and overall health are shown based on low-level, everyday movement (like hanging out the laundry, taking the stairs instead of the lift and carrying the groceries to the car) and not on vigorous or even moderately vigorous exercise.

So...it seems it is ok to say that going to the gym or even pushing myself to power walk with the pram for ‘exercise’ will not help me lose weight. Hurray! It’s really a freeing thought. I may one day find a sport or physical activity that I love, and if I do it for fun, health and maybe fitness, then I'll be fine. I probably shouldn't do it for weight loss though.  

For now, I think I need to concentrate on moving more in my daily life. This will (hopefully) help my body burn energy without triggering the need for compensation. It will also be healthier than couch-potato-ness. So, I’m going to try to increase the amount that I move around and to build this into daily life. Rather than trying to convince myself to exercise, rather than planning (and then avoiding) exercise, I’m just going to move. 

I'll keep you updated on how this goes!