How exercise can make you pile on the pounds: Are you keeping fit but still not getting any slimmer? Here are the surprising reasons why

Ever spent hours pounding away on a treadmill, then coming to the end of the week and finding your weight hasn’t shifted at all? Or how about eating cake in the knowledge you’d been for a long cycle ride, yet somehow piling on the pounds? You’re not alone — or going mad. You’ve simply fallen foul of something scientists are increasingly recognising: exercise often doesn’t help you lose weight. 

And worse yet, there’s increasing evidence that it could even make you fatter. Just last month, in an article for the British Journal Of Sports Medicine, doctors said we have wrongly emphasised that physical activity can prevent people becoming very overweight.

Here are the reasons why your gym membership isn’t giving you the whittled waist you want...

YOU REWARD YOURSELF WITHOUT REALISING

There are a lot of conflicting reports about the effects of exercise on appetite. We’re all familiar with the idea of going for a walk to work up an appetite, but most research seems to suggest that exercise doesn’t necessarily make us eat more. Rather, it can make us eat the wrong things.

Study after study has shown that we’re notoriously bad at estimating the number — and type — of calories we’ve consumed.

One, which looked at more than 5,000 adults, found the participants under-estimated their consumption of fats, oils and sweets, and overestimated how much fruit and protein they’d eaten. By the same token, most of us woefully underestimate how much exercise we need to offset indulgences.

The other issue is that, even if you did nothing, your body would be burning calories. For example, a 10 st person just lying watching TV for an hour will burn about 70 calories. But exercise machines show you the total number of calories burnt — what your body is expending on its own and the extra you’re burning while doing exercise.

The rowing machine may tell you you’ve burned 250 calories for an hour’s work, but you’ve actually ‘earned’ only a 180-calorie reward.

So if you reward your 20-minute run (218 calories expended, but actually only 148 extra calories) with a latte (180 calories), you’re, in fact, taking on more calories than if you hadn’t exercised.

Multiply that on a weekly basis, and you can see how things get difficult.

STRESS IS SABOTAGING YOU

We're often told exercise is the solution to stress, but it actually releases the fight or flight hormone cortisol — also known as the stress hormone. If our bodies are functioning properly, most of this cortisol is offset by endorphins, or anti-stress chemicals, the body also produces during exercise. However, according to personal trainer Janey Holliday (makingthingseasy.com), if you’re already stressed and your hormonal system isn’t working as it should be, that excess cortisol won’t be efficiently offset, leading to even more of the stress hormone in your body.

DANGER OF THE SECRET CALORIES

Are you the type of person who swears they just can’t shift the pounds? Annoyingly, there’s probably something in it.

A recent review of studies related to exercise and weight found that people lost barely a third as many pounds as would have been expected, given how many calories they were burning during workouts. Many studies also report enormous variations in how people’s waistlines respond to the same exercise programme, with some dropping pounds and others gaining fat.

EATING LIKE AN ATHLETE IS BAD FOR YOU

If you take an energy drink to the gym, or carb-load on a Friday in preparation for your Saturday morning run, that might be where you’re going wrong. Thanks to health magazines and the internet, it’s easy to find information that may work for pro-athletes, but is actually unhealthy for the rest of us.

‘I’ve lost count of the number of fitness fanatics I have tried to help with weight problems, only to be told that they have to “carb-load”, or that they must have sports drinks, or gels, or snack bars,’ says Zoe Harcombe. ‘Actually, they need none of these. They’re full of calories, and fattening.’

YOU ALWAYS DO THE SAME TYPE OF EXERCISE

We’ve all heard people enthuse about the fact that they embarked on a new gym regime and the pounds just fell off. But those pounds don’t keep on just falling off.

Scientists at the University of Tampa in Florida found that what they called ‘low-intensity steady state cardio’ — something like running on a treadmill for about 45 minutes at a steady pace, or using an elliptical trainer for a long period of time — did result in initial weight loss, but that after a few weeks, subjects stopped losing weight. They believe that this is because the body adapts and becomes more efficient, so the same exercise requires less effort.

WHICH EXERCISE IS BEST?

Which brings us neatly to the type of exercise you should be doing to lose weight. Anything that builds muscle is, for the reasons above, a good thing when it comes to weight loss — so resistance training should be a part of your workout.

And although cardio exercise has a role to play, the way most of us run — or cycle, or row — isn’t doing us any favours. We tend to work at a relatively low intensity so we can keep it up for about half an hour, whereas what we should be doing is short, sharp bursts of exercise at maximum intensity, and then recovering for a shorter period of time — without the rewards afterwards.

P.S DON'T CUT OUT EXERCISE COMPLETELY

Exercise might not guarantee weight loss, but some is better than none.

IT’S GOOD FOR YOUR HEALTH

A review of research found that exercise is associated with a diminished risk of a number of conditions, including cancer, heart disease, dementia, stroke, type 2 diabetes, depression, obesity and high blood pressure.

IT GIVES YOU TIME TO YOURSELF

‘A walk, a swim or a run can be a real opportunity to escape from your busy life and spend some time reflecting,’ says personal trainer Janey Holliday. And while a workout in a busy gym may not seem like time on your own, it’s still the chance to focus entirely on you, your body and what it needs.

IT CAN BE A LOT OF FUN

There are so many different types of exercise that there’s bound to be one you enjoy. Whether it’s the more meditative yoga and pilates-style classes, dance-based aerobics, or kickboxing, find something you genuinely want to do and make sure it fits easily into your daily routine.

Read more:

Making Things Easy