Weekly Vlog: Why You Can’t “Burn Off” Calories
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- Опубликовано: 12 дек 2023
- *Applications for a Boot Camp 2.0 scholarship are now closed.
We don’t talk about exercise a lot on the vlog, because Bright Line Eating is mostly about what and how you eat. But many people think they need to be more active when they’re trying to lose weight. The science indicates otherwise.
Consider the phrase “calories in, calories out.” There are flaws to this idea: your body is not just a step counter that totals up your activities to determine weight loss. It’s a very responsive, intelligent machine, and it accommodates and morphs based on what you do.
There’s a whole body of research funded by large food corporations that says that it’s not the sugar or ultra-processed foods we’re eating that are making us gain weight, it’s the lack of movement. But exercise won’t make you thin.
There was a study where they took hundreds of sedentary, overweight women and separated them into groups: one stayed sedentary (that was the control group), and the other groups did varying levels of exercise, supervised by a trainer. At the end of this long study, everyone weighed the same, regardless of how much they exercised.
And let’s look at the research of a man named Herman Pontzer. He’s an evolutionary anthropologist at Duke University. He wondered about activity levels and caloric output in hunter-gatherer tribes vs. sedentary individuals in the Western world.
When Pontzer went to the Hadza people in northern Tanzania, one of the last true hunter-gatherer societies, he measured their metabolisms very accurately, at a molecular level, using so-called “heavy water.” What he found was that they weren’t expending any more calories than those sitting at desk jobs in the U.S.
What the body does when we’re extra active is that it compensates by burning less for the rest of the time. It shifts you into low gear so that you don’t burn more calories than you would if you were at a desk job. People around the world burn 2,000-3,000 calories a day, no matter what they do.
This makes sense. If you think about the times when food is most scarce, the body is trying to keep us alive, so it makes sense that it would downshift and steal calories from other systems to survive. So you might think you could exercise and add the number of calories burned to your baseline, but it doesn’t work that way.
This is built into Bright Line Eating. Our take on exercise is nuanced. The diet bashers think we’re against exercise. Tell that to my personal trainer! We’re not against exercise.
Here’s where we stand: The science is clear that exercise is one of the best ways to improve your longevity, your health, your cardiovascular fitness, your bone density, your sex drive, your self-esteem. It’s good for just about everything but losing weight.
We’ve learned from hard data that people who insist on exercising at the beginning of their Bright Line experience are the least successful. Exercise makes you hungrier, and causes a compensation effect where you justify eating more. And weight loss causes a dip in energy, making exercise at the beginning extra willpower depleting.
If you don’t have a standard exercise regimen, it’s not in your best interests to start one in the first few months of your Bright Transformation. Go easy on the exercise, and make sure you’ve got enough in your tank to get the food right. Getting the food right is what will ensure the success of your whole Bright transformation. Food is the driver, not exercise.
The beauty of divorcing exercise from food consumption is that when you get to maintenance, if your weight creeps up, your first thought isn’t to hit the gym, it’s to look at your food intake and see if you’re continuing to make Bright choices there.
Exercise is in a separate category altogether. You do it for your health, for joy, for flexibility, and for strength, and it’s not part of your weight management plan.
So if you have an exercise regimen, and it’s not addictive, keep it up. But easy does it for about the first four months or so of your Bright Line transformation. Once your food is truly automatic, if you still have weight to lose, or if you’ve already transitioned to maintenance, then start exercising.
You’ve got to handle your food first, then find out what brings you joy in terms of movement.
Before I sign off, I want to let you know that we have a scholarship opportunity for Boot Camp coming. As of today, December 13, 2023, scholarship applications are open, and they close on December 17. Then Boot Camp registration begins on December 31, and the Boot Camp begins on January 6, 2024. So if you’d like a scholarship, we have ten full ones available. Now’s the time to apply. [Applications are now closed.]
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Hi Susan, I just discovered your excellent channel a few days ago and have watched quite a lot of your content. There is so so much great information within and all presented so professionally. You do it all unscripted as well so you're doing one hell of a job there.
You have answered many of my own questions about diet and exercise, specifically the question of whether over-indulgence in the kitchen can be negated by over-exercising. This is a false belief that I have clung to with all my might over the years; running, then cycling, swimming and now walking. I've had my struggles with my weight, mostly during my late teens (anorexia) and early twenties but I've been the same healthy weight for my height now for the last 35 years. Walking is my mainstay now and I do that purely for my mental well-being.
As Dr. McDougall says, “ It’s the food!” I exercise 6/7 days a week to stay strong and flexible and to prevent falls since I’m turning 78 soon. Loved this vlog and love your books❣️
would love to know what kind of exercises help prevent falls
@@klaralevine1988 any and all exercise that focuses on balance and coordination!
@@klaralevine1988 all kinds that strengthen, like weights, and balance exercises.
I definitely saw an increase in appetite when i started running. The increased calories i consumed where in surplus of the calories i burned with running, so this makes complete sense. I now make small weightlifting sessions at home which help me to feel strong but do not increase my appetite. Thank you for bringing this to our attention, it makes absolute sense❤
Glad this topic was helpful for you! 😍😍
I really appreciated this Volg, It helped straighten out some of my 'stinkin' thinking' regarding weight loss and exercise. That thinking is a source of guilt producing for me and is the result of years of stalled weight loss programs.
Hi there, I’ve understood this exercise versus weight loss is absolute bunkum just because I went through a terrible emotional eating, grief trauma phase but I still swam, ran, jumped and the weight piled on despite the crazy moving. I know that managing food drops weight and the exercise just makes your body feel good. Interestingly for me the extreme eating and movement was just my way of coping with capital T multiple traumas crazy but that’s life, love the vlog.
Thanks for sharing your experience! We're glad you're here 💖
This is one of my favorite vlogs! So good - thank you.
So awesome to hear! Thanks for letting us know 😃🧡
I do know of this research, having read about it when it was first released. The piece that I question is whether the tribe was living under restrictive caloric intake on a daily basis in combination with the high activity level. And if they were not in a consistent calorie deficit would the same lowering of daily activity calorie usage have been found. It would be insightful if a comparable study was done with a hypothetical tribe that had a higher consistent intake level. Would the same metabolic adjustments have occurred. Interesting question.
i was thinking the same thing. These people were obviously completely adapted to their situation. I also wonder about intense resistance training. Lean mass is still mass but its way healthier than fat.
Good call. When I ran marathons eating a high carb diet, stuffing myself with as much food as I wanted, I got real thin.
Excellent vlog. I found this to be very true. It can very defeating when you exercise and get the opposite of what you're seeking.
My sweet spot for exercise about 30 minutes. Less than that and I don't get the big mood benefits that feed my desire to exercise. Longer than that, and I feel an increase in appetite that's counterproductive for weight loss. This is true even though part of me loves a long 45-60 minute session mood-wise.
I'm so glad you added some more depth of knowledge to Bright Line Eating system in this blog. In the face of a storm of podcasters saying that increasing strength training and increasing protein intake is way more important for general health and longevity than just losing excess weight, that we are getting the obesity epidemic wrong and that focusing on strength and muscle percentage in our body rather than just trying to lose fat would move your body to craving less food and losing fat and gaining muscle. I used to think you SPT didn't encourage exercise, and recommended primarily (exclusively if exercise was not part of one's routine before embarking on BLE) focusing on breaking the addiction on sugar - instead on this blog your position was clarified and explained the stages at which adding exercise to the mix is not a good idea and that it is overall a good idea, Basically, that BLE gives a solution to break addiction to sugar and to help addicts, everyone can lose weight on the BLE plan, but it is especially helpful to sugar and processed foods addicts.
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That’s what I thought. Working out more than twice a week just increases my appetite, I think. (Walking not included in that) I square dance a couple of times a week as well and that’s fun!!
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This vlog is AMAZING! I am just starting to learn your process! I have started your book! It is eye opening!! Thank you!!!
We're so glad you're enjoying it! 🧡🧡🧡
Brilliant as always🙂
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Excellent vlog!
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Is it possible to provide a link to the interview referenced?
Hi there, here's the link to the Jillian Michael's podcast episode that Susan was on: open.spotify.com/episode/0AFp7sD0hTSgGg4rHgxHFx?si=9HLS2NUoSWKl6TlokSPK7g&nd=1&dlsi=2111042abd9447d9
Hope this helps!😃
Great vlog Susan! I read that book "Burn" and it definitely blew my mind! It annoys me to no end in weight loss transformation videos when all they show is the person working out. Totally misleading and untrue! As we know, it's all about the food!
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Then how was their weight loss successful? Wouldn’t their story be contradicting what Susan is claiming here?
Their weight loss was successful because they HAD to change their eating habits. It was all the food, not the exercise.
I would have a question for BLE followers - i saw that if you use nuts as a protein source in your meal you can eat 2oz while as a fat source its 0.5 oz. When i use the nuts as the protein part can you still add a fat source? Thank you in advance❤
Yes you can!
People in the US are actually no less active than they were in the 1970's, when Americans were much thinner.
The foods people eat have been engineered to be addictive, and people have been brainwashed through advertising to think unless they have snacks all the time, something bad will happen.