Exercise is Bullsh*t - So Frickin' Mini

Hey, Donna, do you have 10 minutes to talk about this clickbait article that I just read?

I mean, you just said clickbait, so obviously. But I do need to leave in 10 minutes.

All right. So I was reading this article on the BBC Science Focus magazine. You know, these are part of my Apple subscription, so they just pop up in my face.But the title of the article was exercise won't help you lose much fat, but changing this will.

Yeah.

So of course I have to click on it. Right. Because it's clickbait. And when I'm reading through this, it opens with, if you want to lose weight, exercise really doesn't matter.And before we move on, I'm curious about what your take is. Just from the first sentence, I kind of agree.

I hate that it's a clickbait like that. And I hate these kind of articles because it's misleading to people who will not read the article because it sounds like, do not exercise.It's totally fine. Just change that one thing that you have to read through this article and figure that out. But otherwise you're fine. You don't need to move.Yeah, don't love that. But I do agree with the exercise part.

Okay.

With weight loss.

Yeah, with weight loss. Okay.So the article goes on to talk about, like, how there's some research about, pound for pound, like a hunter gatherer from Tanzania's community, where they're out hunting and gathering, burns the same amount of calories as a typical US Office worker. And then it goes on to explain about our basal metabolic rate. So every person, it's like. It's like a car. Right. And every car has a gas tank.And its size is related to the size of the car. Right.So like, a giant truck is going to have a bigger gas tank because it takes more to move that then a very small car will have a very small gas tank. And that's kind of the same thing for a basal metabolic rate.So if you have a person that weighs 50 kg and a person that weighs 100 kg, the body still needs to function. But the person who weighs 100kg, they are going to use more energy to live, to just be alive than the person who weighs 50 kilograms.And that's why they're relating these, like, rather slim hunter gatherers to these office workers who are not slim, they're maybe a little overweight.And they're just saying that basically the fact that these other people are moving more isn't really changing their basal metabolic rate because your body adapts. And it was like if you immediately start working out more, your body will adapt. I think we've heard that before.Or I've heard that, you know, somewhere

else I've been saying that, I've been saying that. I've been saying that forever. Our metabolism adjusts, so we need to kind of keep it on its toes.Like, if we're switching things around and doing things differently, it will react more than if we have the same exact schedule every single day, every single week.

Right.

What I love that they mentioned here was that the office worker moves as much in a week maybe as the Tanzanian moves in a day.

Right.

So we really have to understand how big of a difference there is between those two lifestyles. And we're still saying, yeah, but we're burning the same amount of calories, pound for pound. I do love that fact.

Yeah. Pound for pound. Yeah. But again, it's also the basal metabolic rate. This kind of.Basically, it's a calorie amount of calories that your body needs per day to live. And what the article is saying is that that exercise is a fraction of that.Like the most energy that you're going to use is for your basal metabolic rate. And you can't basically outrun a candy bar or you can't exercise away the food you're eating.And so that you, you actually really just need to focus on the food. And I think this is interesting because when I'm sick for like two or three days, I don't feel hungry. I know I'm, you know, and I.That is, the body's telling me, you don't need to eat. Right now we're focused on healing your body. And of course, because I'm not eating, I lose weight, but I also am laying in bed. Yeah, Right.I'm not moving.

Yeah.

So it's like, Right. It's like, it's logic.

It is logic. And the thing is that. And they explained it quite well in this article, our organs need a lot of energy.We are burning energy, thinking, we're burning energy, dealing with inflammation. We're burning energy. Literally every single main organ in our body, the heart, the lungs, the kidneys, the liver, they all need that energy.And we are burning it.

And the brain, especially the brain, a lot of energy, for sure.

And so if we're sitting there and we're in the office and we're focusing on the computer and we're thinking of things and we're trying to solve problems and we're doing this and that, we're burning energy, which is awesome. And if You're a fidgeter, by the way.If you stand up, if you rock your foot when you're sitting down, all of these things actually burn a lot of energy too. So yeah, all of those things can help for sure in terms of weight.But yeah, should we touch a little bit of like the health background of all of this? Because I feel like we're.

I do, I think so.I, I'm, I've just scrolled down the article and now it's talking about like, you know, we were just talking about adaptations and energy and it's saying like, basically if you're using a lot of energy because you're busy, busy, busy, you're moving all day and you're doing something and you know, everybody also has that when you go on vacation, you get sick thing, right?Because again, when you're moving around or when you're stressed or when your cortisol is high and you know you're in this fight or flight, your body is like po pushing out energy to make sure that you can run away, right?And then as soon as you stop using that energy, you go on vacation, you lay at the pool or whatever and now your body's like, hey, we have this extra energy, let's go reduce this inflammation over here, let's go fix that over there. And it redirects that energy to clean up the rest of the body and the processes that we have.So I think from a health wise, this is why, you know, thinking about meditation, thinking about getting your body out of fight or flight, it's.You're allowing your body to reallocate energy resources to helping you clean up the shit that's running around in your body that it doesn't prioritize when you're in fight or flight. I know that's like a whole nother topic, but I feel like that was really interesting to, to talk about.But what were you talking about from a health related perspective?

Well, I think that we need to touch on that one thing that they triggered us in the title.

Oh yeah.

Understand what it is, what it is that they're trying to say will make a difference and also what positive things

you get out of an exercise, right? So you're talking about the industrial packaging food. Because they touch on this, they're like, hey, listen what they've seen.And they already also say in the article that they don't have as much information about this as possible. Like the studies are not done well enough.But in general they see that people who eat ultr processed foods in their Diets are higher weight, like more, more weight. But they also say it's not necessarily the ultr processed food itself in general.Like you can eat some, but the point is that those are made so that you eat a lot. So if somebody exactly removes high processed food, then they have to eat other stuff.

By default you eat less.

Yeah, exactly.

I mean, like, what do you replace a processed food with?You'll replace it with maybe extra fibers and extra protein and maybe healthier carbs because even if it's white rice, it's always going to be healthier than potato chips. Right? Right.So at the end of the day, you're always going to help yourself manage to lose weight more when you're not eating foods that will keep you addicted to them and wanting more and not realizing when you need to stop or when you're full versus the foods that actually help you realize and understand when your body is full. And then it's much harder to overeat those foods because it triggers the hormone in your brain that says, yep, we're done now.

Right.

So I love that they bring that up. I'm, I'm disappointed that it's so far down that that article, but it is important.And of course what's important to understand is that exercise will help you in so many other ways.

Right?

Yes.Weight loss is important for so many people, unfortunately nowadays, but to keep your bones strong so that you don't break a bone and all of the things like we're losing so much muscle mass after the age of 40. We need to maintain our health by maintaining our physical strength with exercise.So we always need to make sure that we are moving and exercising not just for the sake of losing weight.

Yeah. And muscle cells are, are super important because those are actually metabolically more active than other cells. Right.So when you go and do a weightlifting exercise, so the actual time when you're doing some kind of weight resistant training, of course you're expending some amount of calories to do that. But if you are one of those super people with have lots of data or an athlete with a team, it shows that the actual calorie burn comes 12:24.Oh, shit. Okay.

Oh, Megan, we're out of time.

All right, so that's our 10 minutes. I guess we'll see you next time.

We didn't finish saying what we wanted to say.