Anyone who wants to lose body fat by exercising more and searches the internet for how to do that will quickly find the sobering wisdom that it hardly helps. That exercise really only works in combination with eating less.
But that wisdom wavers. New research shows that gentle exercise, such as walking or jogging for a while, can be a good way to lose fat. Without a special diet, but over a long period of time – months.
The results are best for those who last three years or more. People who regularly exercise light to moderately intensively still lose 10 kilos after three years. While people who followed other diet and exercise methods in the studies have long since regained their initially lost weight. The magic words are: digest fat better.
But it is not magical, the method of moving slowly is based on new knowledge. With light to moderately intensive exercise, the body learns to digest relatively more fat, in relation to carbohydrates, that other important source of energy. The appetite for food decreases over time and the subjects in the studies that followed the method also felt more satisfied when they ate something.
Nonsense advice
In the meantime, the calorie calculations continue to apply. The wisdom is based on these sums that losing weight through exercise hardly helps. Just count. Someone weighing 80 kilos who walks for half an hour every day at a speed of five kilometers per hour, consumes barely 150 kilocalories more than when sitting still. The first kilo is gone after two months. Even with a mild weight loss diet of 300 kilocalories less than the 2,000 to 2,500 your body needs every day, you will lose more weight. The first kilo will be gone in a month.
Until now, losing weight through exercise has been seen merely as such a calorie issue. Then the following applies: the more intensively you move, the more calories disappear in an hour. Intensive exercise is therefore encouraged on the internet. The advice varies from factual to commercial to nonsensical (such as: put more vinegar in your food). Gym enthusiasts like to recommend ‘high intensity interval training’ (HIIT) – to get a muscular lean body. That means exercising for one to a few minutes at a high heart rate (above 80 percent of the maximum) and then moving slowly for a few minutes. And repeat that.
Also read: Every day executioners in the gym, then you are really successful
And the sober and authoritative Nutrition Center advises to lose weight “at least 60 minutes of moderately intensive exercise every day. Preferably on all days of the week. (…) The more intensively you move, the more energy you use.”
The disadvantage of more intensive exercise is that it makes you so hungry. Especially if there is a stock of sweet snacks at home. Or if the gym sells high-calorie sports drinks. Sports drink has been developed for top athletes who are looking for that one percent extra power that is needed to win. That is of no use to an ordinary mortal. Eating extra is the major threat to losing weight through exercise.
But exercise involves more than just consuming energy, researchers now know. For example, people who are a bit overweight often complain that they lose their fat so badly. That they have to be extremely hungry to lose a few pounds. Many people accept this because it ‘runs in the family’. It’s their genes. That is only partially true, has now been demonstrated.
In many people who are slightly to considerably overweight, the metabolism has become somewhat disrupted. As a result, fat digestion is at a lower level and the body mainly uses the carbohydrate stock. And when that is gone, an irresistible appetite arises.
It has now been discovered that fat digestion can return to normal by exercising at an intensity that maximizes fat digestion. Most people digest fat maximum when they exercise lightly, or possibly moderately.
This is because the fat consumption has an irregular course with increasing physical exertion. When you sit still, you use about the same amount of energy from fats as from carbohydrates. With increasing effort, the consumption of both energy suppliers rises continuously for a while. But at a certain point, the fat consumption reaches a maximum, with light to moderately intensive exercise. With higher effort, fat consumption decreases. More and more calories are consumed, but they come from carbohydrates. During high-intensity exercise (sprinting), all energy comes from carbohydrates.
feeling of hunger
This distribution is largely regulated by substances that are secreted by working muscles and that end up in the whole body via the blood. In the past, many of these substances were regarded as waste products from the working muscle. Modern research shows that more and more of these substances have a signaling function – throughout the body. They work when we move, but also for a while afterwards. They provide energy, muscle recovery, a better mood and they change the metabolism.
Anyone who moves with an intensity that burns a lot of fat stimulates the body to properly use those fat stores again. Even if it has been disrupted by being overweight. The feeling of hunger decreases, making it easier to eat normal, healthy amounts. Without snacks, for example.
The disadvantage of more intensive exercise is that it makes you so hungry, especially if there is a stock of sweet snacks at home
This adjustment to digest slightly more fat mainly occurs when fat digestion is at its maximum. That point varies per individual and per time of day. It depends on your body condition and also what you have eaten in the previous hours. But usually the LIPOXmax, the FATOXmax or the FATmax (all words for about the same thing, from different ‘inventors’) is an effort where the heart rate is at 50 to 70 percent of the maximum.
Those who want to know exactly can have it measured with a special exercise test. But as a do-it-yourselfer, you might as well calculate what is 50 to 70 percent of your maximum heart rate (rule of thumb: the maximum is 220 minus your age). A 40-year-old should then look for a movement rhythm in which the heart beats between 90 and 125 beats per minute, but you can probably stay on the low side. Or you let your fitness watch calculate.
A summary of 350 scientific papers on the topic of “maximum fat digestion” appeared in the journal in April this year nutrients; the data in this piece mainly comes from there. In a number of studies of training on LIPOXmax, the subjects who lasted a few months almost all lost a few kilos of weight, increased their fat digestion and had less appetite. Usually no special diet was followed, but often the participants were given an explanation about what healthy eating is.
Running after animals
What exactly happens in the body during such a LIPOXmax training has not yet been fully elucidated. The knowledge about these messenger molecules is still new. But it sounds logical: those who train at the intensity at which the fat digestion is maximum can change that. After all, that’s what training is for. During intensive and high-intensity training, at a heart rate above 80 percent of the maximum, fat digestion comes to a standstill. It is knowledge that has been gathered step by step over the past decades by researchers from many countries. And which can now have a practical application.
For example, training on LIPOXmax fits in well with what diabetes doctors already knew: that exercise can reverse the onset of diabetes caused by being overweight and sitting still. This is due to a change in the metabolism. This metabolic knowledge also fits perfectly with what other researchers know today about the lifestyles of hunter-gatherer peoples — the Paleo-humans from whom we all descend. Those people hunted by quietly chasing animals for hours that are in principle much faster, but after a few hours of hunting exhausted and can then be caught. We still have the genes of those ancestors. Our bodies function optimally with prolonged quiet movement. No wonder that we digest fat optimally during that lightly intensive effort, because you can continue for hours on your fat stock.
Also read: To tackle fast food you first have to know what it is
The studies show that the effect is already visible with quiet exercise for 45 minutes three times a week. But more often and longer is better. More intensive doesn’t help here. It is optimal to make it a habit for many years.
Meanwhile, Western governments and the World Health Organization advise for your health to exercise for half an hour of moderate intensity at least five times a week and to do strength training twice a week. The more intensive the better. What does that mean? These recommendations are mainly intended to keep the heart, blood vessels and lungs healthy. To delay or prevent dementia. It remains a healthy recommendation, but it seems that you can digest fat better and lose weight through exercise.