More physical activity ≠ weight loss - follow up on Dr Feigenbaum's IG

Hello,

I’ve recently came across one of Jordan’s IG story where a guy was asking about adding more cardio to his training pattern in order to lose weight while he had healthy BMI and waist circumference. To which our Barbell Medicine resident responded something like “adding more physical activity won’t help you if you’re fit enough”. First of all, correct me if I misunderstood anything.
Then, i’d need a little confirmation : does that mean the only way to lose the remaining fat is to lower calories intake, no matter what ? I assume it won’t be such a rigid rule but i’m still interested in the facts. Always thought calorie balance was the only thing that matter, so either do more or eat less. This would point out to eating less being the better answer here.

Thanks for the help !

I definitely did not say “adding more physical activity won’t help you if you’re fit enough”, but rather I said adding more physical activity is unlikely to help you lose more weight if you’re already exercising.

Yes, the way to lose weight is by reducing energy intake. Adding more physical activity doesn’t increase energy expenditure greatly (or at all, in the majority of cases), hence the advice to reduce energy intake via dietary manipulation.

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A couple thoughts:

A claim I’ve often heard is that when elite athletes retire, they are less physically active but “are used” to their caloric intake prior, so they eat the same but are burning less. And then the claim extends to try to explain why many retired athletes seem to gain fat overtime. Do you think this is accurate?

Some responses I’d imagine being levied is that 1.) this is more about just general aging processes regarding fat gain/muscle loss, and 2.) by not exercising athlete’s muscle mass/LBM will decrease, which does decrease energy expenditure, meaning a previous maintenance becomes a surplus causing fat gain (due to little stimulus for muscle growth)

I’d probably assume #1 to be accurate, but I’ve seen mixed ideas regarding the role of muscle mass in energy expenditure. Not to say it is not more a “energetically expensive” tissue than fat mass, but compared to things like the heart, kidney’s, liver, etc. that increased muscle mass doesn’t really increase energy expenditure much (outside of increase in total body mass)

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I don’t really think so, though people are eating more than is necessary when gaining weight, by definition.

  1. Aging doesn’t decrease metabolism until much later in life.
  2. If we’re talking about lots of LBM, that would probably have an effect…but this seems unlikely without bedrest.

I agree.

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Hi Jordan, one related question on exercise and TDEE: If I understood your recent IG posts correctly, NEAT and EAT do not greatly influence TDEE.

I just came across Layne Norton’s latest IGTV post about a study comparing alternate day fasting and continuous restriction, where the total calory restriction between the two groups was equal. However, the continuous restriction group inter alia had greater weight loss results, and it was found that TDEE in the alternate day fasting group was significantly lower, which was attributed to a (subconscious) decrease of NEAT.

While NEAT may mostly be a subconscious variable, wouldn’t the same principle apply to physical activity in general, i.e. that TDEE is increased by physical activity after all?

They are components of TDEE and thus influence it, but changes in NEAT/EAT from day-to-day seem to result in a relatively stable TDEE.

NEAT is variable from person to person in how they respond to dietary and activity changes. Additionally, NEAT isn’t always measured directly, but decreases in NEAT do tend to be directly correlated to weight loss. In other words, NEAT goes down as people lose more weight as TDEE tends to track with BW.

Would it be safe to say that if you are in a caloric surplus you are either feeding muscle gain (primarily) or fat gain? Obviously not dichotomous, but sufficient training plays the role of allocating what energy is doing (in essence)?

It would be safe to say that if you’re in an energy surplus you are gaining weight and in that context, resistance training likely helps partition more of that to muscle than one would otherwise get. That said, I don’t think the vast majority of people will gain significant amounts of muscle without significant amounts of fat. Probably closer to 50/50 on average.

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