The correct exercise is critical for many people to lose weight. Why?
Weight lifting and some HIIT exercises help you build lean body mass, which will raise your metabolic rate. Many people have "poor metabolisms" because they have less lean body mass than expected. Weight lifting in particular will also help you protect your muscle mass as you lose weight.
If you do not lift weights when you lose weight, you will lose a lot of muscle, which will tank your metabolic rate. When people talk about losing weight, they really mean losing fat. If your goal is to lose fat, you need to weight lift.
Beyond that, exercise can help with leptin. Many overweight people have leptin issues, which causes them to overeat, which makes them even heavier, which makes their leptin ever worse. It could either be too little leptin or a lack of sensitivity to leptin. Regardless, leptin is the hormone that signals satiety, and if this hormone is out of whack, you will overeat.
Either way, this is not a good situation.
Recent research says that exercising 300 minutes a week can help people reverse this leptin issue. I have been doing this myself, and it has been a key way that I have been able to get my hunger levels under control and help me lose more than 50 lbs.
You should not exercise with the mindset of burning calories. You should exercise with the mindset of building lean tissue, with increasing your cardiovascular fitness, with increasing your mobility, and with helping to get your hormones into a good place.
But please exercise. If you do the right exercises with the right mindset, it can help you lose weight and keep it off.
Yes, you can't outrun a bad diet. But you also will struggle to beat poor leptin levels too.
Five hours a week is no small investment. Focusing on calories/kJ in < out is much easier as it can be done incrementally, such as by not eating past a certain time of day, leaving out especially high sugar snacks, etc. There is no getting around obesity being a dietary issue.
That said, it's definitely not an either/or situation.
GPs point is that exercise can help with those things: if you feel less hungry (because of leptin), you fill eat less calories or fewer snacks (or healthier ones).
The correct exercise is critical for many people to lose weight. Why?
Weight lifting and some HIIT exercises help you build lean body mass, which will raise your metabolic rate. Many people have "poor metabolisms" because they have less lean body mass than expected. Weight lifting in particular will also help you protect your muscle mass as you lose weight.
If you do not lift weights when you lose weight, you will lose a lot of muscle, which will tank your metabolic rate. When people talk about losing weight, they really mean losing fat. If your goal is to lose fat, you need to weight lift.
Beyond that, exercise can help with leptin. Many overweight people have leptin issues, which causes them to overeat, which makes them even heavier, which makes their leptin ever worse. It could either be too little leptin or a lack of sensitivity to leptin. Regardless, leptin is the hormone that signals satiety, and if this hormone is out of whack, you will overeat.
Either way, this is not a good situation.
Recent research says that exercising 300 minutes a week can help people reverse this leptin issue. I have been doing this myself, and it has been a key way that I have been able to get my hunger levels under control and help me lose more than 50 lbs.
Here is a write up about the study: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/09/well/move/to-lose-weight-...
You should not exercise with the mindset of burning calories. You should exercise with the mindset of building lean tissue, with increasing your cardiovascular fitness, with increasing your mobility, and with helping to get your hormones into a good place.
But please exercise. If you do the right exercises with the right mindset, it can help you lose weight and keep it off.
Yes, you can't outrun a bad diet. But you also will struggle to beat poor leptin levels too.